Brookenya : Building Cultural Bridges Using the World’s Most Popular Genre

I was scanning the Internet looking for theatre variations principally international theatre. Goggling led me to Community Theatre International which then directed me to Brokenly http://brookenya.org/The description was intriguing stating that they used a soap opera, Brokenly, for the purpose of” creating communities through performance across borders.” The idea of bringing together two diverse cultures, two continents, was a topic that I had an enthusiastic and inherent interest. The architects of Brookenya were Kate Gardner, Brooklyn native and founder of The Community Theatre Internationale and Kitche Magak, a Kenyan university professor. Since I wanted to know more about this community-driven cross cultural project, I emailed Kate Gardner asking her if we could meet and discuss the full picture of Brookenya for an article I was considering.

On a not so cold but rainy mid-January day, I met Kate Gardner at our agreed upon coffee house, Grounded, in the Village. As Kate began to describe the Brookenya project, it was evident that not only was I going to receive the details delineating Brookenya but also experience Kate Gardner’s very noticeable passion and excitement for that project.

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Brookenya is community-based collaborative interchange and “intra” change between volunteers in Brooklyn and Kinsumu, Kenya. Locally, you have a diverse group of neighbors representing a variety of ages, occupations, and racial backgrounds.Most likely would not have met if they did not become involved in the collaborative effort of putting together Brookenya. These volunteers Together they work in partnership in the writing, filming, editing and acting in creation of scenes (as many as a 100) for Brookenya. Scenes or sub-plots, Kate says, “ grow out

of the“ participants’ own experiences which have dealt with intolerance, discrimination, homophobia, sexual assault.” These experiences are translated and fused into themes for the soap opera melodrama found in Brookenya. The same cheating, pretense, arrogance, romance, deceit you would find in As the World Turns would be depicted in Brookenya. It was not unintentional that soap operas were chosen as a vehicle of performance. Soap operas, according to R. G. Allen, are the most popular genre of television drama in the world today. So here you have in Brooklyn, community member creating theatre and socially developing form the performance interaction.

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On the other side of the Atlantic, community members form Kinsumu, Kanya, who also come from differing ethnic background, ages and occupations also work to create plots for Brookenya.

We have community theatre occurring in Kinsumu not any different than what has been occurring in Brooklyn. The community is getting together because of the collaborative performance involved in writing, editing, acting, and directing scenes and sub-plots for Brookenya.

As you can see, we have two groups of writers, actors and show produces on two continents. However, through the use if cell phones, IM, text messaging, videotapes, email attachments provide a means to cross borders and globally dialogue via interweaving plots for Brookenya. Kate Gardner would say that this is indeed a “strange methodology for bringing disparate people together to create something that can make a difference. “

Brookenya, is not a place in the sense of being an empirical-observational space, it is more of a metaphysical space like Our Town where ordinary persons can experience each other locally and globally.

Mike Lavin

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A special presentation of BrooKenya! was seen in Brooklyn on BCAT on Wed., Dec.21 at 9pm and Fri., Jan. 27 at 8pm on Time Warner Cable channel 56,Cablevision channel 69 and streaminglive online at www.bcat.tv/bcat.