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. 2021 May;69(5):1298-1302.
doi: 10.4103/ijo.IJO_1468_20.

Using street plays as a populist way to spread eye health awareness: An experience

Niranjan K Pehere  1 , Sreedevi Yadavalli  2
Affiliations

Using street plays as a populist way to spread eye health awareness: An experience

Niranjan K Pehere et al. Indian J Ophthalmol. 2021 May.

Abstract

Street plays are a popular traditional medium of communication and entertainment in India. The objective of this paper is to communicate our experience about using street plays to raise awareness about children's eye health in a South Indian setting. Based on our experience of the prevailing misconceptions about children's eye health in our community, we selected some topics and prepared a blueprint of the scripts. We hired professional troupes who further refined these scripts into traditional street play scenarios by adding traditional songs, humor, and dialogues in the local dialect, leaving adequate room for improvisation during actual play. After a few rehearsals, we finalized the actual plays. Then, these were enacted in different parts of the city on different occasions, over a span of 3 years. In this descriptive paper, we share our experience of this exercise so that others may try and replicate this initiative in their areas. We found that the street plays were well attended by the people indicating the popularity of this medium in local communities. At the end of the street plays, a sample audience was interviewed about what they understood from the sessions, and most of them could reproduce the key messages. We found that instead of training our own staff, hiring a professional troupe was a more practical choice. Overall, it was a fruitful exercise in terms of the number of people that our plays reached out to effectively. Thus street play is an effective and popular means of disseminating eye health messages in our communities.

Keywords: Children's eye health; health education; street play; street theater.

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Conflict of interest statement

None

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Building up the mood for the play with folk songs and dance
Figure 2
Figure 2
Ophthalmologist explains condition of the child to the family
Figure 3
Figure 3
Health worker visits the family to address their concerns
Figure 4
Figure 4
Street play about squint in progress
Figure 5
Figure 5
Logistics of street play on a busy road
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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