Braeburn Arusha is the view of the future

What you need to know:

According to a study in 2010 in America, Marines ‘who had reported PTSD symptoms were more than 6 times as likely to engage in antisocial and aggressive behavior than those who did not.’ This is not a new thing. History is peppered with examples of wars that came home. During the Vietnam War, for example, the murder and man slaughter rate in the U.S.A. more than doubled.

 What happens when you ask a group of teenagers what they think the future looks like? Braeburn International School Arusha did just that as they planned the setting of their contemporary production of Shakespear’s ‘Macbeth’.

The future, they decided, looks terrifyingly bleak. In a world ravaged by the effects of climate change, resources are hard to find and the waste of our current ‘throwaway society has to be re-used. There’s nothing else left, but desolation.

The horrific effects of conflict and war is played out in the minds and the actions of those affected and everyone suffers. As the stakes become higher, women are objectified, used and abused, and the only way to cope with the suffering is by trying to hide the pain through the abuse of drugs.

It is a world, our young people are afraid we are heading to unless, like Greta Thunberg, we start to take collective responsibility and speak out. Their play opens dramatically with a look at the violence of war: the killing, the blood and the hand-to-hand combat can’t simply be switched off when it’s all over. The students explained that they researched the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

According to a study in 2010 in America, Marines ‘who had reported PTSD symptoms were more than 6 times as likely to engage in antisocial and aggressive behavior than those who did not.’ This is not a new thing. History is peppered with examples of wars that came home. During the Vietnam War, for example, the murder and man slaughter rate in the U.S.A. more than doubled.

For these teenagers, it makes sense. How can killing in under one set of conditions be acceptable and heroic, whilst in another setting murder is no longer seen as an acceptable way of settling conflict? ‘War is hell’ and according to the Braeburn students, it should be avoided at all costs – other-wise, as the end of their play suggests, the cycle of violence, conflict and suffering will continue.

Wilbert Kapinga, who plays Macbeth pointed out, “I find it incredible, that Shakespeare wrote this play over 400 years ago and yet the lack of sleep, the guilt, the emotional detachment Macbeth feels are all symptoms of what we now-a-days call PSTD. It’s as though Shakespeare saw this, all those years ago, without all the research we have today. It suggests that inspite of all our development, we are all essentially the same as warriors years ago. We have learnt nothing and unless we change – we are all doomed. ”

Dressed dramatically in an armor made from old tires, Kapinga speaks prophetically and urgently about our need to find peaceful solutions to the problems we face today. Like Greta Thunberg, these young people from all over East Africa, are also speaking out, in their own creative way, about our need to change. Lady Macbeth, played by Charis Pulei, gives an equally convincing performance of a strong woman who won’t let anyone stand in the way of her rise to power.

By instigating the murder of the King, she becomes the Queen, but instead of the fulfillment she had hoped to find, she is faced with the destructive effects of her guilt. Isolated and alone, her husband turns on her until, towards the end of the play she realizes that life is not worth living and commits suicide in a stylized and choreographed piece of physical theatre. It’s hard to believe this disturbing interpretation of an old English Play has so much to say to a modern East African Audience but this group of students certainly found a way to make it relevant to our times.

Tuheri Loibooki, who played Macbeth’s best friend, Banquo, explained that the Performing Arts Department always try to help the IGCSE Literature students by putting on their exam text. “We’re at a disadvantage in Tanzania,” he explained, “as we can’t just go and see the play we are studying, and yet we are expected to write about a text as a piece of live performance.”

Their English teacher. Ms Alison Rogers, agreed and explained, “Stu-dents who have interpreted the text and worked on it in this way, don’t need to revise, as they know it inside out. This is the reason that our IGCSE Literature results are always so out-standing.”

The Form 5 and 6 BTEC Performing Arts Students are also sure to get outstanding grades from their original interpretation of this sinister play. Watching it, sent shivers through my spine in so many places: from the horrific murder of Lady Macduff’s family to the spine chilling ghost dance and the breath-taking final battle. It was hard to remember that these young people are not professional actors but simply school students who looked at on old play through a new and exciting lens to give us all a shockingly prophetic view of the future. Whether we choose to listen to their voice is now up to us all.