news

Soap Opera Meets Community Empowerment: Brookenya!

Published on March 23, 2006

By Kate Gardner, founder Community Theatre Internationale

Brookenya! brought together 150 people in three cities on three continents to create a grassroots global soap opera. The project created an ongoing story and cultivated a community of thousands around the world.

The producers came from all walks of life -- from the streets of New York, the shores of Lake Victoria in Africa, and from a shanty town in Peru. The youngest was 14, the oldest was 72, some had six figure incomes, while some lived on less than a dollar a day. A mix of different races and ethnicities, they shared no political or religious affiliation.

Together they wrote, acted, filmed and funded 100 scenes inspired by their lives and by their imaginations -- including an interwoven plot between Brooklyn and Kenya that gave the project its name. These scenes were shared with tens of thousands of people via intercontinental events, a video blog, international festivals and public access television.

Kate Gardner and the Brooklyn crew of Brookenya!

To share some of the Brookenya! story with the MediaRights.org community, I've answered some questions that I've been asked many times and some that I wish I'd been asked:

How did you come to this project? I've taken a long and winding road stretching from a small conservative town, to the Harrisburg Community Theatre, to many years as a community organizer for democracy and human rights. I trained professionally in the theatre and also did things like being a land surveyor and a private investigator on Wall Street. Ten days after 9/11, I founded Community Theatre Internationale to create community through performance across local and global borders.

What is Brookenya!? Film, theatre, cultural exchange, community building, education, entertainment, soap opera? All of these. None of these. Brookenya! is more like a place -- very Brooklyn, very western Kenyan, a bit Peruvian -- belonging to no single territory, but as real as any country in the world.

Who did you work with in New York? Whoever showed up --middle-aged professionals, teenagers, 20-something lesbians of color, aspiring writers, actors and filmmakers, and many people who had never been in front of a camera. The unique people made the project what it is. If, for example, Theresa Brown, a school secretary and filmmaker, hadn't volunteered to shoot and edit all of the US scenes, Brookenya! would have been an entirely different project.

Was it difficult to work with such a diverse group, especially since most of them had no prior filmmaking experience? I can't imagine working any other way. Multiplicity creates creativity. Working with people who both do and don't have professional arts training makes for a gloriously rich process and produces a unique and immediate product.

Why Kenya? Serendipity. I met Kitche Magak for two minutes. He was using participatory theatre to do HIV/AIDS education in Kisumu, Kenya, where three out of five people were sick with the disease and no drugs were available. We built a friendship over email and did a poetry jam between our two countries using instant messaging. So when I had the idea for Brookenya! I asked, and he said yes.

Brookenya! was a collaboration between producers in Brooklyn, Peru and Kisumu, Kenya, pictured here.

What was it like filming in Kenya? Miraculous. Every time it rains, which during the rainy season is every day, there is a blackout. To ask people who are so poor to volunteer for something that won't put food on the table takes a lot of chutzpah. But Kitche is an amazing man. We raised some money here in Brooklyn for basic production equipment, food, travel and small stipends for unemployed young people who worked on the project. Kitche and his team did the rest.

Why soap opera? Kitche wanted to address HIV/AIDS, but no one wanted to do it. Then I figured out that if the format was a soap opera, then we wouldn't be able to keep people away. Soap operas are both fun and serious. No issue is taboo: polygamy, racism, rape, homophobia, you name it. Soap opera is THE global entertainment form and anyone can do it. Participants experienced how making art out of everyday life -- which is often quite painful -- can transform it into something beautiful, dramatic, absurd and sometimes hilarious.

Making art is about transforming what is into what is possible -- the same premise under which social change activism operates. I really loved putting soap opera and communications technology -- two of the most ubiquitous tools of globalization -- into the hands of ordinary people so that they could play a direct role in how their lives are portrayed.

How do you distribute BrooKenya!? My approach is one in which process and product are inseparable, so we were simultaneously producing and presenting our work throughout the project. While shooting in public locations, we recruited participants and audiences. The screenings themselves were part of the production. Audiences were welcomed onto the set of BrooKenya! and invited to join in that day's filming -- whether it was improvising a greeting for another country or acting out a scene for the soap opera. The entire project was community-driven, so the distinction between producers and audiences was in constant flux.

A production team in action in Kisumu, Kenya

The 150 people involved in BrooKenya! were a built-in word-of-mouth network. As soon as we completed a handful of scenes, we shared them with this network. Our virtual screening room, www.brookenya.org logged over 20,000 visits. One thousand people attended simultaneous screenings held in Brooklyn, Kisumu and Lima. Scenes from these vastly different cultures were juxtaposed with one another to indicate narrative connections. Participants and audiences at these celebratory events communicated between countries via text messaging and web cams. I screened scenes and conducted soap opera making workshops around the world. When production was finished, we put together a short special for television, film festivals, virtual TV and podcasts. Now I'm thinking about cell phones.

What’s next? BrooKenya! inspired quite a few people to develop similar projects -- from Rwanda, to Singapore, to Palm Springs. I believe that there is a commercial market for this kind of media, which is at the intersection of mass entertainment and grassroots creativity, and I am looking for partners who can put some serious resources into such a venture. I am also developing a training curriculum based on the techniques I developed in BrooKenya! And, just in case anyone reading this is inspired, I believe there's a wonderful documentary to be made about the project. Don't hesitate to contact me with ideas about outreach and distribution!