224 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
THEATER AS A TRANSFORMATIVE RESOURCE
FOR THE HyBRID AND pERFORMATIVE
CO-pRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
In making cooperation the topic of the collective dance, the community took up a
core theme of the WFD training, translated and tailored it to the local context, and
mobilized cultural resources to inspire warm feelings and foster bonding. This use
of song and dance is seen in people Theater, which emerged from theater courses
at the University of yaoundé I, instantiating a post-colonial African art form that
encourages critical thinking and sustainable community development.
Its application is discussed by indigenous artist and scholar Gilbert Doho (2006)
in the book People Theater and Grassroots Empowerment in Cameroon:Singing is not enough in Cameroon—one must dance to the rhythm of song
and voice. In a country where social fragmentation is profound and dialogue
rare, the bringing together of partisans, of “enemy parties,” not only to meet
but to join hands, is an obstacle that people Theater overcomes easily.
Melody, words and gestures combine to bring not only pleasure to the
participants but also a binding feeling of love. The ears, the hearts and the
minds are called upon for both self and collective healing.
... Singing in a local language or calling upon particular people reaches
the heart and those called upon often show their pleasure and approbation
by applauding or even jumping into the arena to perform with the actors. In
a fraction of a second, an immense community sentiment is created in the
marketplace, the public square or the royal courtyard. (p. 164)While relationships among the various actors in the development process are com-
plex and power hierarchies and inequalities need to be taken into account from
a critical perspective, the lines between these actors can also be blurred (Crewe &
Axelby, 2013). This may have been the case when the performance at the end of the
WFD training blurred the boundaries of indigenous, expert, and individual knowl-
edge, putting these epistemological practices at parity, while the community experi-
enced a feeling of growing strength in articulating their own views of development.
Mr. Amadoua had learned dance and drama from older deaf people in the Extreme
North at a young age; he also drew from the ethnic dances of local tribes. The com-
mon use of ExNorthCamSL in the area is likely to facilitate access to cultural heritage;
the presence of deaf elders and transmission of ExNorthCamSL practices for over
100 years are factors that are not present in the country’s central regions. Mastery
of the “oral” (i.e., non-written) cultural tradition is illustrated by improvisation, the
foregrounding of the core training themes, and the integration of individual/group
interpretations referring to the Extreme North’s efforts to cooperate with CANAD.
Examining how linguistic and knowledge transmission are connected in
endangered language communities, Harrison (2007, p. 147) emphasizes the
relevance of improvisation:yet oral cultures lacking writing manage to transmit, remember, and build
upon vast systems of traditional knowledge... They do so without the