Dreams and Nightmares

Dreams and Nightmares was the selected theme for our term 1 programming. We used this to focus on the students visions, interpretations, desires and fears through various creative arts practices ending with a musical theatre performance.

These performances opened up insightful dialogue around the students thought's and fears which we will be unpacking in next weeks session. Here are few of Tatu’s Somfula's our DN facilitators reflections:

“Yesterday we managed to do performance of our theme. We had 13 kids who attended. The group performed dream-drama about a girl who liked playing soccer with boys her mom stopped her saying that she could be injured by boys. So she decided to play netball just to go on with playing something. We had narrator, actors miming and musicians doing soundscape. After the performance we discussed about some of kids nightmares in real life. They said when they fail at school, loosing someone they love, having a permanent disability due to accidents. They explained that whatever happens in life it will not stop them to pursue what they want to be.” - Tatu Somfula

“All the groups mimed, made sounds and narrated their dramas very well. As this activity included everyone with thinking of memorizing some scripts, it made everybody feel important and useful. And the kids enjoyed it so much. After presentations we had enough time to reflect on the activity itself. We spoke more about the theme and the kids shared some of the incidents that happened in the past as nightmares into their dreams. Mosa Makara, aged 16 shared his story about when his arm was broken and he was very scared if he would ever use his hand but managed to live with it as he used the other hand to do other things. Thabiso Dithlakanyane, also shared his when a car almost hit him so he was scared to walk on the road but he used some basic road usage guidelines then he got along with it. It was lovely to hear kids realise how they have ways of dealing with their nightmares instead of running away from them.” - Tatu Somfula