From On Air - Winter 2003

Peru Workshop Uses Drama to Create Drama

For the 10 participants in PCI’s October 2002 program workshop in Peru, shaping a drama that addresses health and social issues in the Andean Highlands started in earnest with a series of skits. But these skits offered more than fleeting entertainment value or social ice breaking. Instead, they laid out the groundwork for a weekly radio program that will address the region’s low levels of health, encouraging listeners to become more active in preventing disease and improving their own health status.

Improvising on themes outlined in the formative research of the social issues and cultural norms that will help the program accurately reflect life in the Andean highlands, participants in PCI’s Peru workshop dramatized women’s issues, gender barriers, and the social realities of disease transmission, especially HIV/ AIDS. The group also considered the dramatic potential of positive, negative, and transitional characters, fundamental to PCI’s entertainment-education methodology.

Discussing and analyzing the skits afterwards, participants remarked on how intricately they were able to incorporate key themes into the emotion and intensity of a spontaneous dramatic moment—an important factor in internalizing and dramatizing the program’s social framework. Participants also commented on the realism achieved in the skits, the authenticity of the dialogue, the effectiveness of using simple stories to deal with complex social dynamics, and the importance of being frank about issues of love and sex.

PCI’s partner in Peru is Calandria, a progressive social service agency that has been working with both media and grassroots organizations for twenty years. The program design workshop opened with an introduction to PCI’s methodology; a presentation of the formative research findings for the Andean program, including local knowledge, attitudes, and practices on a range of health and education issues; and overviews on gender issues and HIV/AIDS.

The PCI workshop included
participants from Boliva, Colombia,
Ecuador,and Peru.

The workshop included guest speakers from Lima, Peru and participants from Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador, all of which have Andean Highland populations facing similar health issues: a disparity between family planning knowledge and contraceptive use and extremely high rates of maternal mortality.

Establishing the radio drama’s fictional settings was another challenge tackled by workshop participants. Working in two groups, participants came up with descriptions of both urban and rural locales that will anchor the drama. Details on geographic features, social activities, and important cultural events were compiled for two fictitious towns: “Lomaluna,” an urban area facing a typical profile of modern social challenges, and “Santa Rita,” a rural area where age-old customs and practices are being transformed by current social and environmental pressures.

For listeners in the Andean Highlands, the weekly radio drama scheduled to begin airing in 2003 will explore critical health and social issues. One question left open from the program design workshop is what the show will be called: Aqua de Luna (Water of the Moon), Fochras Bajo La Luna (Madness Under the Moon), or Destinos Ocultos (Hidden Destinies). This decision will be determined from the pre-testing conducted among Andean Highland audiences, the only people who know which title captures their imaginations best. (Note: After this article was written, the title settled on was Loma Luna)

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