By Bonface Beti, Adey Mohamed, and Susan Frohlick

 To counteract the perception that HIV does not exist in Canada, African migrant youth from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Kenya who had settled in Winnipeg, Canada created and performed a short skit as a community-focused HIV awareness activity.

For youth who grew up in African countries grappling with high numbers of HIV infections—and with visible public health messaging—it might appear that no HIV/AIDS exists in Canada, given the nation’s relatively low case numbers and absence of messaging.  Yet, the misperception that HIV/AIDS doesn’t exist exacerbates potential harms of HIV stigma, stereotyping, and misinformation that could lead to untreated HIV. At the end of an ethnographic research project with African immigrant and refugee youth on HIV awareness, sexuality, and immigration, led by Susan Frohlick, she and team members Adey Mohamed and Bonface Beti stood at the crossroads of effective HIV intervention implementation. In conversation with youth research participants, we ultimately decided on an HIV awareness “pop-up” public event to be led by the young people as a promising intervention.

Drawing on arts-based approaches to community development and HIV work in refugee camps, Bonface used community-building improvisational theatre to coach youths in identifying themes addressing how HIV mattered in their lives as newcomers and urban residents. With a small group of youths who were already friends (two young men and three young women of diverse migration trajectories and backgrounds), Bonface engaged them in empathic listening and story-telling, core principles of playback theatre (Figures 1 and 2). Over the course of six meetings, the group developed a ten-minute skit to be performed at the pop-up event. To encourage involvement from community, the skit intentionally set up a dilemma for community members to respond with audience improvisation.

Because the skit re-enacted youths’ own story-telling about how HIV mattered in their lives, the skit highlights the youths’ agency and their cognisance of the complex presence of HIV in Canada (Figures 3 and 4). The following synopsis is based on a video recording of practice sessions plus fieldnotes from the event. We’ve used pseudonyms out of respect for the young people who, while they performed the skit publicly, nevertheless continue to face challenges within and outside of  their communities, families, and social networks about HIV stigma and, in particular, how HIV is bound up with experiences of racism, sexism, and heteronormativity. 

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It’s a sunny fall day in downtown Winnipeg in the Canadian Prairies in 2017. In the middle of Central Park, a troupe of seventeen-year-olds perform a play before dozens of onlookers, in hopes of raising awareness about HIV to the African diaspora living in the neighbourhood. The marigold long-sleeved shirts they wear bear an image they designed themselves—a butterfly outlined with the HIV awareness and solidarity ribbon as its center and the words “hope,” “love,” “support,” “united,” “brave,” “change,” “growth” filling its wings.

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Lucy and Mercy sit at a picnic table facing one another. They play two close friends. One of the characters (played by Lucy) is HIV positive. The action begins when Lucy’s character confides in the other (played by Mercy) that she is not feeling very well. She is depressed and needs to clear the air. 

Mercy asks Lucy what is bothering her. Lucy has been talking to two boys now for several months, and she doesn’t know which one to choose. She has identical feelings for them. She turns to her friend for advice on how to choose the one she will date. Mercy suggests that she meets both boys at the same time and place, a local café, to tell them together about her HIV status. Lucy will choose whichever of the two boyfriends accepts this difficult news.  

Lucy is nervous. “I don’t know, um, um, that’s so hard,” she says struggling with her words. 

Her supportive friend urges her on, “You can do this. You got this, best friend!” 

Lucy calls up one of the boys (played by Franco) on her phone to ask him to meet her later in the day. 

“Why not? I always make time for you. I’m so happy,” he says. 

Mercy then encourages Lucy to call the other boy (played by Mohamed). She does, and he, too, is happy to meet with her. 

“Sweetheart, for you, anytime!” he says. 

Once that call ends, Lucy is now worried about what she has put in motion. But her supportive friend promises to help her through it.

“Let me dress you up. Let’s go!” Mercy says to her friend.

 The two of them walk off to the side. 

Seconds later, the two teen boys, Mohamed and Franco, arrive at the front of the café (enlisting a nearby picnic bench). They instantly recognize one another and comment on their appearances. 

“Look how big you’ve got. Are you hitting the gym? I know you’re getting all the ladies,” Franco asks Mohamed. 

Mohamed replies, “Damn, no no, I only have one. I love her so much. You should meet her. She’s the best.” 

“Yeah, me too. I am also meeting my girlfriend here, man,” Franco exclaims. 

As they exchange these cheeky pleasantries, Mercy and Lucy arrive at the café and find the two buddies seated at the table chatting. A tense moment of anxiety hangs in the air for a minute as questions start to rise. Both boys make a move towards Lucy. Mohamed moves closer saying, “Hey babe.”

 At that moment Mohamed and Franco get a sense that they were being played by Lucy. They try to fight each other. Mercy and Lucy intervene.

Mercy asks the boys to stop their fighting and hear what Lucy has to say. Mohamed and Franco settle down and listen to what the girls have to say. Mercy moves away and waits for Lucy to talk. Lucy is anxious while the boys calm down. They sit down at the table again. She apologizes for not being honest with them, and then breaks the news to them. 

In a low voice she says, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t honest before, but I am HIV positive.”

Franco literally jumps off his chair.

He screams, “What??” 

Mohamed is shocked but composed. He puts his head down. Franco walks away leaving Mercy distressed. Although shocked, Mohamed moves closer to Lucy and hugs her. 

“It’s okay,” he says, comforting her. 

At this point the skit ends, temporarily. Franco asks the audience if they would like to come forward and replace a character in the final scene. Several audience members volunteer. 

Shahid, a young man, chooses to replace the boyfriend who ran away. Instead of running away, he tries to be peaceful and a little bit more magnanimous toward Lucy. He says, “I understand. You can choose him. I have no problem, and I am concerned about your situation. But I have no interest in continuing the relationship.” He changes the narrative by not running away. 

A second audience volunteer, a young woman, elects to play the role of the boyfriend who remained with Lucy comforting her. She comforts Lucy but then she talks to her with words of advice. “You shouldn’t be doing this in the future. You have to be open and tell people the truth. Don’t try to have two relationships without telling this person that this is the situation.” She changes the narrative by offering an alternative to secrecy.

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This event demonstrates an important way in which African diaspora youth, situated within local and transnational networks, are active agents in the circulation of HIV awareness messaging. Through such events they help keep their communities safer. The pop-up event was a knowledge mobilization strategy that placed the young people centrally as knowledge producers and experts about their own lives. Rather than ask them to consider how HIV can be prevented, a behaviour-based approach that is often viewed as better suited for public or sexual health education, we opted instead to engage them anthropologically with thinking about HIV as a complex lived social reality. Hence, in our research context, the open-ended question (about how it mattered in their own lives) that guided the development of the skit was a compelling approach to counteract the perception that HIV ought not to be a concern as they settled into their new lives in Canada. To the contrary, the young actors demonstrated how dating practices and cultural norms, gender dynamics and embodied performativity, ethics and morals around sexuality were closely entangled with navigating HIV as Black, racialized, heterosexual, young people. That the audience enthusiastically joined in the participatory theatre suggested that these themes also resonated more widely within the community.

The skit, its performance, and methodology through which it was created (multiple meetings, challenging talks about sensitive issues, and so forth) offers this lesson: Community engaged methods and humanizing pedagogies such as improvisational theatre are allies to young people in reclaiming human agency through imagination by tapping into their transnational identities and, thereby, can lead to power knowledge mobilization and critical reflection of health misinformation.

About the Authors:

 Bonface Njeresa Beti is a Kenyan international multidisciplinary practitioner with over ten years work experience as a peacebuilder and theatre-maker delivering inclusive intercultural pedagogies. He holds a MA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Manitoba, and is currently pursuing a PhD in the same program. He is the co-author of publications about theatre-based methodologies including the edited volume Engaging with Historical Traumas: Experiential Learning and Pedagogies of Resistance.

 Adey Mohamed is a social worker, author, and doctoral candidate in the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of Manitoba. She has been involved as a community research on the research project led by Susan Frohlick for several years.

 Susan Frohlick is a professor in anthropology and gender and women’s studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Syilx Territory and co-director of the Collaborative and Experimental Ethnography Lab. Publications related to this research can be found in City & Society and in Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health & Illness.