Alexis del Vecchio ’07 recently participated in a humanitarian trip to Swaziland and South Africa where he and fellow students from Yale used their theatrical talents to raise awareness about the pandemic of AIDS. The trip provided del Vecchio a valuable opportunity to explore a vastly different culture, develop relationships with inspirational people and help improve lives by providing education through the arts. He tells his amazing story in, The Quest for Happiness- Reflections on Social Theatre, the Meaning of Life and the Importance of Faith and Hope in Our Globalizing World. Below are excerpts from his write-up:
Tony Kushner, in his Pulitzer Prize winning play “Angels in America,” describes AIDS as a disease which impacts the entire world and which leads to isolation and loneliness for its victims. Paula Vogel’s “The Baltimore Waltz,” on the other hand, tells the tragicomic story of a grieving sister who refuses to acknowledge that her brother is dying of AIDS. The two plays succeed in illustrating that denial, grief, and discrimination are a few of the struggles lived by people with AIDS and their families. Today, the disease affects more than a million people in America and thirty-three million people worldwide, while it killed an estimated 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children, and infected an additional 2.5 million people in 2007 alone, making it a health crisis at home and a pandemic abroad. This summer, I had the chance to participate in a humanitarian trip to Swaziland and South Africa where twelve Yalies used theatre to raise awareness about the pandemic of AIDS. Our group of students was a perfect sample of the Yale population: we had an equal number of males and females; there were one Asian-American and four African-Americans; the students came from all around the world—Canada, Pakistan, India and America—and a whole range of religions was represented: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and even Unitarian Universalism. We each came with our own baggage of culture, values, traditions and experiences, which we openly shared with each other and which infused our perspectives and experiences abroad. Before leaving for Africa, we spent a week in New Haven studying the history of AIDS as well as real examples of how theatre can be used to promote social change. We also spent a night at our professor’s house where she asked us to share something specific to our culture. I was deeply puzzled by this task. Having been raised by a mother whose work as a florist introduced me to people from all around the world—Italy, Russia, the Middle East, Vietnam, etc.—I had been exposed to many different cultures, but being white, I had never considered that I had a specific culture or even a race. The trip to Africa would completely alter my biased perception of ethnicity and race.
We spent the first three weeks of our voyage in Swaziland where we contributed with local actors to create an original play aimed at raising awareness about AIDS and promoting healthy sexual choices. We combined traditional dances and local rites in our collective creation and performed the play in local communities as well as middle and high schools. Inspired by “forum theatre,” we interacted with our audiences while performing the play, asking them at specific points in the plot what they thought the characters should do or say to make the right sexual choices. We even invited the audience to join us on stage and take on the skin of the character whose actions they wanted to change. Then, we took theatre classes at the University of Cape Town and met with local theatre activists in South Africa before being asked by our professors to create and conduct original theatre workshops aimed at helping people with AIDS, specifically HIV discordant couples, where a spouse is HIV positive and the other person is tested negative. Precisely, our teachers sent us on this task on a Friday night, asking us to prepare the equivalent of five days of theatre exercises over the weekend, while we would subsequently have to lead these workshops the following week. We were utterly discouraged and terrified by the colossal undertaking they requested of us, but rose to the challenge and created theatre games and exercises aimed at letting the couples express themselves and find solutions to their concerns and worries. We spent eight hours every day for five days with the couples, and divided the group so that three students were responsible for creating and leading the exercises every day. Two of my classmates and I were responsible for leading the last day of workshops and thus closing the weeklong “theatrical therapy.” In one particular exercise that I created, I invited my fellow classmates and African friends to close their eyes while I led them through a meditation and relaxation exercise during which they embarked on a journey to revisit their past and childhood. I asked them to recall both the happiest memories and most difficult experiences of their lives. I wanted them to relive their past so as to better understand the causes of their present grief, fears, and worries, and ultimately find solutions to these issues. Theatre allowed us to relate on a deeply humane level with our fellow participants who morphed from shy couples in their forties and fifties to unabashed actors, singers, and performers—all in less than a week. Some participants wrote me messages at the end of class such as “I do not understand the goal of this exercise, but it makes me feel better” or “Thank you, thank you, thank you, when are you coming back to Africa?” Reading such testimonies filled me with joy and convinced me that we had succeeded in empowering our African friends and providing the couples with a safe environment—a stage—to express themselves and voice their concerns. It seemed very appropriate to me that we used theatre to engage in a healing process with the people living with AIDS that we worked with. At the core of acting is empathy, or the ability to feel for others and put ourselves in their shoes. Thus, I believe that actors must have the highest interest in Humanity. The art of theatre allows us to transmit and communicate all the emotions and states that compose the essence of human beings: joy, laughter, fear, doubt, hope, life, and death. I so much feel that theatre is the most beautiful expression and celebration of Humanity possible, and that it fulfills our intrinsic and deep-rooted need to express and share our Humanity with others. Every morning on our way to the local community where we conducted the workshops, I noticed a sign which looked as though it had been painted by local inhabitants and which read: “Faith: The Restless Beat of Third World Beauty.” This reminded me that I had indeed witnessed beauty—and a wealth of friendships, values and traditions—everywhere I went in Swaziland and South Africa: beauty in the love of the mothers for their children, beauty in the rich history of Swaziland, beauty in the magnificent scenery and heavenly landscapes.
Healing the Soul
I also volunteered at an orphanage during my time in Swaziland. One kid grabbed onto me and never left me for an entire day. Another one was intent upon putting our hands next to each other and comparing our different skin colors, and said to me: “We might have different skin colors, but we have the same blood.” Then one morning, we woke up around six and accompanied the kids into the bushes where we participated in the Swazi custom of collecting branches for firewood. I watched aghast as the kids crawled barefoot under barbed wire to enter the forest and obtain the branches. Yet I did not see trauma in the children. I saw kids longing to be touched and hugged; they grabbed onto me and pulled my hair in every possible direction. I did not need to do much to feel I made a difference in their day; my being there for them was enough. This reconfirmed to me that simple deeds can have the deepest, most significant impact on other people’s lives. The AIDS orphans were certainly no orphans of the heart. They were filled with humanity and promise, and embraced life despite its difficulties. Through their struggles, they had not forgotten to be joyful. They reminded me that I am alive and invited me to live life fully, and helped me reconnect to my inner child.
Pay It Forward
I came back from Africa an improved version of myself; changed and yet so much the same. In addition to making me aware of my responsibility to help those in need, the trip to the African motherland awakened me to my inherent ability to have a positive and significant impact on other people’s lives. It showed me that we can indeed change the world little by little. And it reconfirmed to me that out of joy, hope, and faith, we can indeed overcome life’s most difficult struggles. I shall hope that many a soul in the lovely valley will find the same joy I get from helping others and that altogether we can allow ourselves to accept our own individual and collective ability to make change. In his closing address, Dean Butler described the future as the “gift unshaped.” The future is ours to shape: it is a crucible of possibilities unborn. As I am starting my second year at Yale, I am confident that one smile, one deed, one child at a time, we can help each other change the world. Speaking of children, I feel as if the Swazi orphans have never left me. I carry them in my heart everywhere I go. And even now, I still recall their long searching eyes, which looked into my soul.
