Rethinking the Interpretative Limits of Theatre for Development and the Politics of Nation-Building in Post-Socialist Tanzania
Stanley ELIAS, Mambo!, no. 111, 2026.
This article rethinks the interpretation of Theatre for Development (TfD) in Tanzania, particularly in relation to its role in nation-building during what I term the “post-socialist” period. Whereas dominant frameworks have positioned TfD as simply a form of resistance to the state or collaboration with it, this article explores the more complex and negotiated ways in which TfD has operated in practice. Drawing on the historical trajectory of University TfD initiatives, interviews, and performances, this article examines how practitioners navigated state power, paternalistic agendas, and grassroots participation. The article introduces the concept of a poetics of negotiation to describe indirect and largely non-confrontational modes of political engagement. Through strategies such as nostalgia, satire, and symbolic ambiguity, TfD reflected on the disappointments of socialism and the promises of neoliberalism, while also articulating alternative, everyday imaginings of the nation. Foregrounding conviviality as an analytical lens, the article highlights everyday negotiations shaped by unequal power relations. It particularly argues that while convivial engagement enabled limited forms of agency, it also constrained overt political critique, repositioning University TfD as a negotiated and politically bounded cultural practice in “post-socialist” Tanzania.
