From On Air - Winter 2001

Breaking New Ground
PCI workshops encourage new perspectives on gender roles in India and introduce the PCI methodology to a renowned Pakistani scriptwriter.

In late August and early September, PCI trainers conducted three workshops: in Pakistan, a refresher workshop focusing on script design, and in the Indian states of Orissa and Punjab, transcreation/methodology workshops.

Transcreation is an exercise in cultural exchange. A story is adapted from the original to include culturally specific health issues, language, music, festivals, and icons. The radio program must be perceived as local so listeners will connect with the characters’ experiences.

Two previous transcreation workshops in India resulted in local serials in the four southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. The model for all these was Tinka Tinka Sukh, PCI’s immensely successful Hindi radio soap opera that aired in 1996 and 1997.

For the August workshops in Orissa and Punjab, our broadcast partner All India Radio (AIR) assembled teams of producers and scriptwriters. PCI training program manager Ann-Marie Ali and regional representative for Africa Kimani Njogu introduced the teams to PCI’s use of entertainment-education and the concept of transcreation.

The local formative research had identified gender relations as a high priority, particularly as expressed in dowry, domestic violence, and son preference. “But in the Orissa workshop, all the participants were male,” Ms. Ali remembered, “so we recommended that the creative team include women. The next day two women scriptwriters in their 20s joined us, and the information they brought was eye-opening.”

Writers and producers were encouraged to engage in role- playing and other exercises to initiate the creative process. “During role playing, one group unilaterally decided that the female member would act the part of an abused wife in a stereotypically victimized way,” said Ms. Ali. “When she refused, they couldn’t understand why. This led to a huge discussion about gender roles. In listening to this woman, the men in the group were able to understand a female perspective, and to examine their own preconceptions.”

By the end of the Orissa and Punjab workshops, the major characters, story lines, and overarching themes were developed, and the teams started writing pilot scripts.

Traveling on to Islamabad, Pakistan, Ms. Ali facilitated a three-day script-design workshop. The participants focused on a review of scripts written by Ms. Fatima Suriya Bajia, discussed initial results of the field-testing of the pilot episodes, and reviewed the key components of PCI’s methodology and principles of script design.

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