| Abstract |
This project aims to use a mobile application to build a virtual community consisting of female creative practitioners living in Africa and involved in poetry, play writing, and theatre making both professionally and in community projects, with researchers and other interested parties engaged with literary or gender- based research in any part of the world. The mobile app will be available to all, including feature mobile phone users, and as an on-line site to computer-users. We envision this virtual community of women creative practitioners , theatre practitioners, researchers and other interested parties being able to 'discover' and engage with one another through this mobile app. Women creative practitioners who register will create on-line profiles with their contact details, the ability to upload playscripts, photos and links to video or youtube clips. All other users will specify their name, location and profession in order to participate in the forum discussions that are central function of this network, as well as accessing announcements and a live events listing. The forum is where we envision the collaborative analyse of issues and co-creation of knowledge regarding various concerns specific to the experiences of being contemporary African women will take place. This will involve moving away from static or macro approaches to our understanding of so-called 'African' identities that transcend the beleaguered discourses of 'gender and development' or 'empowerment'. Central to this project is the methodological approach that aims to place African-authored theories and practices related to gender, sexualities and identities at the centre of the study (see Bennett & Pereira, 2013). As such, the forum will facilitate discourse between female creative practitioners living in Africa regarding what issues related to the experiences of women in Africa need discussion, analysis and creative expression. In effect this will involve each participant both situating herself in her specific context, and then considering collective strategies for engaging in/ with these issues, as opposed to research questions being defined by what material or subjects are accessible, or pre-defined by the researcher. Conceptually then, the forums will aim to facilitate multiple levels of engagement, enabling users to interact with one another and compare methodologies, aesthetic choices and their impact on various communities in any way they choose, thereby broadening both content and the methodologies of our engagement with the emergent material. It will also facilitate other publics, including potential audiences, critics, producers, directors, artistic/literary managers and programmers to access and engage with under-represented creative practitioners, and thereby broaden awareness of these largely unrepresented women and their work. E1M will create the two virtual spaces, train PI and Co-I to manage and curate the user-submitted content, and report on site use, including running a regular survey related to site efficacy. As creative practitioner, Amy Jephta will curate the sites, moderating content, co-facilitate the forum discussions, and liaise between the Women Playwrights International conference committee and organization, the University of Cape Town and the research project. She and the PI will co-edit a collection of previously unpublished plays by African female playwrights (Methuen) that emerge from this project. As PI, Hutchison will co-facilitate the forum discussions, which will feed into her on-going research into how the aesthetics women creative practitioners in Africa are choosing to deploy in their work affect audience reception and engagement with the issues they raise. She will also participate in WPIC 2015, and co-edit African Theatre: Contemporary Women (James Currey) with African scholars Jane Plastow (University Leeds) and Christine Matzke (University Bayreuth, Germany) who will act as advisors to the project. |
