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Examining theater as a force for social change was also the focus
of Juliana Omoifo Okoh, a faculty member in the Department of
Creative Arts at the University of Port Harcourt in Port Harcourt,
Nigeria. Her goal was to examine the potential of theater as a
medium to convince Nigerian women that they can achieve positions
of authority in society if they liberate themselves from stereotyped
roles.
"I believe that women as mothers of nations can contribute
to and accelerate social development if provided with the proper
tools for such encounters," she states. "I wanted to
learn more about theater practice in general, and educational
theater for development and social change in particular."
A year as a researcher in the Smith College Theater Department
helped her fulfill that desire. She was able to study Latin American
playwright Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed and German
dramatist Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater theories and practice,
and the role they have played in American feminist theater.
The capstone to her Fulbright stay was the opportunity to attend
a workshop conducted by Boal himself at the Brecht Forum Theater
in New York. "I never dreamt that I would one day meet with
Boal," she states. "I only learned about his visit three
days before his arrival. By then, admission to the workshop was
already closed, yet the door was opened to me. It was a golden
opportunity that taught me volumes more than I could have ever
read from books."
Omoifo Okoh is also grateful to Smith College, which afforded
her the chance to take part in acting and directing classes, as
well as in departmental theater productions where she could understudy
different directors working with actors and set designers.
Smith's provost, John Connolly, took a special interest in her
research program and helped fund the extension of her grant. He
and Dean Susan Bourque also arranged for the college to donate
10 computers for Omoifo Okoh to take back to Nigeria to help set
up a women's resource center at the University of Port Harcourt.
She is also appreciative of the opportunity for one of her plays,
In the Fullness of Time, to be stage-read at Smith College, and
another play, Edewede, at the Tenement Museum Theater in New York.
"This would not have happened if Fulbright had not made
it possible for me to travel out of Port Harcourt to share my
theater experience with people outside of Nigeria," she says.
"It has been a truly miraculous experience."
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