226 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
(UNAD) in partnership with the Swedish Deaf Association and Tyst Teater (Silent
Theatre Sweden). The group was trained by Tyst Teater and toured all over Uganda
with its productions. Deaf people’s daily lives were a source of inspiration for the
scripts, which were generated through brainstorming by the 11 group members.
This process supported inclusion and awareness raising, sensitizing both hearing
and deaf audiences on topics of HIV/AIDS, oppression, human rights, and equal
educational opportunities.
The group also performed around the world in the United States, Sweden, South
Africa, Spain, and Iran. In 2007, it performed at the WFD Congress in Madrid; this
was the first time that an African black theatre group performed on the WFD stage.
The Uganda Deaf Silent Theatre ran until 2011 and is currently in need of finan-
cial and structural resources, but drama has remained a core element of Ugandan
deaf culture and heritage, with performances at schools and bible story plays at
deaf churches (for further information and pictures, see Lutalo-Kiingi & De Clerck,
2015f, in press).
By using role playing in this way, the WFD made a connection with long his-
tories of performance in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Fabian, 1990; Conteh-Morgan
& Olaniyan, 2004), which may have fueled the dramatic spontaneity. These kinds
of informal, active knowledge production processes and alternative conceptions of
development can be “regarded as foundations or expressions of the way that com-
munities construct themselves, both internally and relative to other communities”
(Viljoen et al., 2007, p. 121).
Here I have discussed how, during transnational exchange in a development
program, Cameroon’s cultural practice of theater was creatively employed as a re-
source for the hybrid co-production of knowledge about development. How long
this creative and spontaneous use of resources can be sustained is the topic of the
next section.THE QUESTION OF SUSTAINABILITy IN THE SpACE
BETWEEN BELIEF AND pRACTICE—CAMEROONIAN
AND UGANDAN DEAF DEVELOpMENT
The performance’s empowering potential raises questions about the training’s
long-term effects; of continued exchange that may foster bonding; and perhaps of
repetitions, renewals, or variations that could turn the drama into a meaning-giving
ritual that might inspire collective action. Each social achievement (e.g., democ-
racy or basic health services) is at first merely dreamed of, and this space between
the lived and possible worlds touches on the limits of the WFD’s abovementioned
two-year training project, which encompassed Central and Western Africa and con-
sequently was restricted to two relatively short sessions in each country. Affluent so-
cieties tend to be more future-oriented as they are able to look for means to support
their hopes, but this is harder for disadvantaged societies, and they face greater
development challenges (petrella, 2004).
The question of continued exchange processes was often beyond the scope of
my research, but the 2nd Sign Language Workshop during WOCAL-7 in 2012 at