Teaching theatre for development in Ghana: Reflections on practice, pedagogy, and participation

Résumé

Theatre for Development (TfD) is well established in Ghanaian theatre arts programmes, yet there is limited scholarship on how university pedagogy prepares student facilitators for the ethical and relational demands of community-based practice. Drawing on long-term experience as a TfD educator and supervisor in Ghanaian higher education, this article interrogates the gaps between institutional TfD training and the realities of facilitation in Ghanaian communities. It asks how current curricula, practicum structures, and theoretical framings shape students’ capacities to work dialogically, ethically and reflexively with community participants. The paper adopts a reflective practitioner methodology, combining an interpretive review of TfD course outlines and practicum modules across major Ghanaian universities with critical analysis of supervisory records and facilitation experiences in multiple community settings. The analysis is informed by Freirean critical pedagogy, Theatre of the Oppressed, decolonial drama education scholarship, and indigenous performance epistemologies, particularly Ghanaian storytelling traditions such as Anansegoro. Four interrelated tensions are identified: the dominance of technique over ethical reflexivity in facilitator education; the marginalisation of indigenous performance knowledge in TfD curricula; the framing of participation around assessment and institutional timelines rather than communal accountability; and the structural constraints of short-term “community project” models. In response, the article proposes a set of pedagogical principles for TfD in African higher education, including re-conceiving practicum as apprenticeship in ethical practice and integrating indigenous performance epistemologies as core theoretical resources. It contributes to international applied theatre pedagogy by offering a situated, practice-led account of TfD teaching in Ghana and outlining how decolonial, community-embedded approaches can reorient facilitator education.