English Theater

One of the Peace Corps initiated projects in the Mozambican school system is an English theater compitiion. Basically, schools from around the province will come together for a weekend and present 10 minute original plays about a social issue while showing off their English skills.  This year’s theme was “Choose your Future” and our students came up with a little play about staying in school.  Being novices to the competition, we weren’t sure what to expect.  The kids wrote the play by themselves in Portuguese and then with the help of their lovely English teacher (aka, Helen and I) translated it to English.  The students are always encouraged to write the piece themselves – but normally, it comes down to a teacher stepping in and taking control.  Needless to say, we were more than proud of our students for writitng the script themselves.

Our nine boys and one girl who participated were rockstars!!!  I’m pretty sure Helen and I looked like beaming stage moms as we watched them from the side.  We didn’t win any prizes – nor was it the most action-packed play.  But hey, we had no idea what we were getting into! And now, in the words of wise little Cloves (one of my star students) “Its ok that we didn’t win, I already have ideas on how to improve for next year.”   Plus, they all got t-shirt, certificates and pocket English-Portuguese dictionaries.  Pre-dictionary, Cloves used to bring a single, folded up paper to every one of my English clases.  It was a page from the dictionary in the back of an English text book he’d found somewhere. Needless to say, the shiny new pocket dictionary is a prized possession!

The Monday following the compitetion, I had arranged to have them perform the play for the entire school body (since they weren’t able to go to the actual competition).  I was a little nervous for them – a few weeks ago, another activista group did a play.  The students seemed completely uninterested in watching and ended up talking through the entire thing.  So when my group started and the 350 people in the audience crept closer and closer in complete silence, I was shocked!! Man, those kids were mesmerized! They couldn’t look away! When the kids took their final bow and the rest of the school broke into applause – I knew it was worth it. They were ecstatic and it was the talk of school for the rest of the day!