Episode one

Episode one introduces most of the characters and the story unfolds with Nandipha going to the clinic to get contraceptives only to be met by the rude nurse. She then sleeps with her older man “suger daddy” or Bra mike without protection. It becomes clear from the get go that Nandipha only likes Bra mike for his money.
       

    
  
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Episode two

In episode two we find out that Nandipha is actually pregnant and we are introduced to Sipho her ex-boyfriend who might also be the father of her unborn child. Bra-mike reveals his abusive side and slaps his increasingly suspicious wife and finally he encourages Nandipha to abort her unborn child. Nandipha considers suicide as she does not see a way out of her tough situation.  

    
  
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Episode three

And finaly in episode three we see Nandipha’s parents coming around and giving support once they realised that she was actually pregnant. Nandipha is not sure who the father of her child is but decides to name Bra-Mike the father.  


       

    
  
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Curtain Falls!

We are now done with all three episodes and ready to record the pilot show with in-studio guests. The overall idea is to have an in-studio discussion after airing each episode, in which we will have community members as guest’s to discuss the relevance of the radio drama, what it means to them and what lessons can the community take out from it. 

The project has presented great opportunities to Vicky and I to combine journalism with radio drama and I believe we have chosen an unorthodox yet effective manner of communicating with the community.

Firstly we drew from alternative journalism principles  such as civic and development journalism to helped us to generate relevant content through the workshops we designed and the focus groups session we held with general community members, by general I mean community members that are not part of the Ikhaya team.

With the content that we gathered journalistically we decided to report through a reality grounded fictional radio drama.  The dramas are reality grounded, in the sense that the issues that the radio dramas deal with are actual issues that the community we are reporting to are really facing. The fictional aspect of it comes in, when we create the characters that will deliver the story lines and some of the characters are over the top and stereotypical.

The overall end product sounds good and now our last task is to hand over the project to a third party who will run the project with both the Ikhaya team and Radio Grahamstown.

We will have a presentation where we present the unorthodox method of journalism meets drama. We hope the prospective party will be impressed and take this great initiative forward. 

One more Episode to go!

We have made a lot of progress in the mini radio drama series. We are now left with just episode three. Just to recap, here is a brief outline of all three episodes.

Episode one introduces most of these characters and the story unfolds with Nandipha going to the clinic to get contraceptives only to be met by the rude nurse. She then slept with her older man “suger daddy” or Bra mike without protection. It becomes clear from the get go that Nandipha only likes Bra mike for his money.

In episode two we find out that Nandipha is actually pregnant and we are introduced to Sipho her ex-boyfriend who might also be the father of her unborn child. Bra-mike reveals his abusive side and slaps his increasingly suspicious wife and finally he encourages Nandipha to abort her unborn child. Nandipha considers suicide as she does not see a way out of her tough situation.

And finaly in episode three we see Nandipha’s parents coming around and giving support once they realised that she was actually pregnant. Nandipha is not sure who the father of her child is but decides to name Bra-Mike the father.  

Moving Forward (one step at a time)

Well this week we have finished with episode one finally! The over all product sounds good however its not mind blowing! Immediately after the episode was finished I played it to a group of young high school girls. This will be an on going exercise where we play all three episodes in a focus group setting to community members that have a direct link to the subject covered by the drama plays. We identified high school teenagers, nurses, teachers and parents as possible sources for the focus groups. The point behind all of this is to hear how the stake holders feel about the manner they have been represented through the drama series.
Reason two is to get more ideas for the next episodes. This helps us get in touch with the community and really get their true feelings about the subject of the radio drama plays.

Still on episode one!

Well there is not much to update you on as we have not yet started working on episode two, however we added two new scenes to episode one this week. We also made time to make a couple of important decisions which are as follows:

a.We are going to adapt the short drama play format (5 – 8 Minutes) this format is also used by Mhlobe wenene fm which our potential listeners are familiar with.

b.We’ve planned to have a 30 minute show on Radio Grahamstown in which we play the radio drama plays and have studio guests debate the content of the radio plays.


c. We have met with Radio Grahamstown management and it seems we might be getting the 2pm to 2: 30 pm slot on Thurdays.

Radio Drama: Episode one

This week we have plotted the scenes and came up with characters for the first three episodes of the drama series.

We have given each episode a theme and the first episode’s overall theme is “young & sexually active”. What we hope to achieve with this episode is to create a general awareness of the struggles and issues that sexually active young people go through. It is important to understand that we got these story ideas from the real experiences of our group and the experiences of the group members’ friends and family members. Often there appeared to be a lot of stereotyping such as “girls are gold diggers and have multiple partners to pay for material possessions” or “it’s not a fathers place to talk about sex with their daughters or sons”. We’ve had to debate and edit out some of these stereotypes.

Second Blog: Further and deeper insight to community issues

We met with the Egazini theatre group for the second time last week. The workshop was held at the Africa Media Matrix building (AMM). The exercises included a listening session; we played a locally produced radio drama titled “Beauty & the beats”.

First Work Shop

A brief look at Grahamstown (Introduction)

Grahamstown is a small Eastern Cape student town that is reflective of South Africa at large, in terms of large racial inequalities. The town’s citizens, like everywhere in South Africa are racially divided in terms of their residential areas and wealth. You find black people in the largely poor townships and then not too far from there, you find the coloured areas which are also largely poor. There isn’t much of an Indian community here, however the little number there is, can be closely associated with the white community of Grahamstown. There is also a small but growing black middle class community; this community is made up of professional teachers, nurses and police officers. The white community in Grahamstown lives a very different life from the black and coloured communities. The white people in this town are more financially secure and are able to lead middle class lives, where as the black and coloured communities are characterised by large unemployment and poverty. The Egazini theatre group we are working with is located with in the largely poor areas of Grahamstown.

Radio Drama

As Part of the Particapatory Projet, we are going to create mini radio drama's based on the real life stories of the Ikhaya Theatre members. This is an exciting project however it should be challenging as Radio drama production is a new concept or genre of radio production that we have never dealt with before.