York academics collaborate to create Radio 4 drama on the ivory trade

The play, available now to listen to on iPlayer, centres on Noreen, who returns to her native Zambia after 20 years in the UK. As the head of a wildlife charity she’s come back to give a speech about animal conservation in Africa but her family - who haven’t seen her since she left as a young student - want to talk about difficult issues closer to home.

For University of York PhD student Molly Brown, working on this play has involved going far beyond the focus of her research on ivory demand to gather evidence about the different perspectives held towards the ivory trade across the UK and Zambia. Jamma International, whose work endeavours to promote African expertise and bring community voices to the forefront of the conservation agenda, helped to facilitate interviews for Molly to learn from Zambian wildlife experts about their perspectives towards ivory trade futures.

“It's important to ask oneself here, given that there are African experts who work directly with communities whose lives and livelihoods are affected by African elephants and directly rely on natural resources, why are their voices not being championed in the ivory debate?” says Molly.

“Over this learning period, it became clear that the NGO voices most often heard in the UK ivory debate do not seem to meaningfully listen to African voices that hold differing opinions to those amenable to Western sensibilities. Given the depth of knowledge conveyed in this time-limited exercise to gain a better understanding of Zambian perspectives towards ivory, it seems that far more could be done to listen to diverse African perspectives to find sustainable solutions for complex issues such as ivory stockpile sales in the future. Hopefully, the lived experiences that provide the backbone to our play provide food for thought for considering how to bring people into the picture for the future of the ivory trade.”

Using the information that Molly generated, playwright May Sumbwanyambe, who holds an artist residency at then university, firstly developed actions and objective for his characters. “The key to writing a piece of drama is thinking about what your characters wants – what is their conscious desire?" says May. "In our play the central characters have diametrically opposing objectives. On the one hand we have an immigrated Zambian conservationist attempting to lobby for better wildlife trade regulations, and on the other hand we have his daughter's perspectives of loosening the ivory trade bans. These two goals drive the drama forward."

“The outer conflict is between what the characters want in the public or immediate area of their life and the obstacle that is preventing them from achieving it. As dramatists, we often frame this as “the obstacle” – or what is getting in their way. The important thing is that this should be stronger than the want of the character so that there is a struggle to try to overcome this."

“In drama, characters often do not recognise their inner conflict, but the writer needs to know it. The drama we have created is not only about opposing views in the ivory debate, but also a reconciliation of the lives of an estranged father and daughter which hopefully speaks to the relationship between the west and Africa.”