Phoenix Players

Phoenix's objective in staging its HIV/AIDS education play, Changing Generations, was to produce exciting entertainment while successfully communicating messages of social and public health relevance to the Kenyan population.

"Changing Generations" used a light operatic format. The context is graduation day at Nairobi University, where three young couples contemplate their forthcoming marriages. Each couple has its own tribulations: couple No. 1 is an inter-tribal marriage (Luo/Kikuyu); couple No. 2 involves marriage of a wealthy young man to an orphan girl; and couple No. 3 deals with issues of infidelity. The issue of HIV/AIDS was developed in the context of the couple No. 3 sub-theme.

Phoenix Players later produced two musical theatre productions, Aspirations and a revised version of Changing Generations. Aspirations used a musical comedy format in portraying 21 young Kenyans, each from different backgrounds and with different aspirations, competing to represent Kenya at an international convention.

Phoenix also produced a version of Changing Generations as a video that was broadcast on the Kenya Television Network to an estimated 1.7 million viewers.

HIV/AIDS, Youth.

"Performing arts can capture an audience's attention, be thought provoking, evoke identification and strong emotions, and present role models for behaviour change. Theatre can also overcome literacy barriers through face-to-face communication in the local language and idiom. The strength of theatre is that trained actors can reproduce a context that reliably evokes feelings, thoughts and reactions from an audience."