Traditional/indigenous children’s games are yet to be appreciated as sites of critical engagement. The limited available literature on traditional children’s games is mainly focused on the deployment of traditional games in the teaching of conventional curriculum subjects. On the other hand, applied theatre projects appear to mainly rely on ‘foreign’ games. Curiously, there seems to be bias towards theatre games from North America, South America and Western Europe. We concede that, to an extent, the deployment of foreign games has revolutionized and radicalized applied theatre practice in Zimbabwe. However, there is hardly any serious scholarship that examines implications of infusing traditional children’s games within gender and disability discourse for child-centred development. This article addresses the extent to which applied theatre practitioners may appropriate traditional children’s games in the quest to deploy theatre as a site of critical engagement against pervasive hegemonies such as masculinity, neo-colonialism and ableism that may impede on human-/child-centred development. Drawing from Africana Womanism and Critical Disability Theory, we argue that although currently few applied theatre practitioners are deploying traditional children’s games, there is scope for appropriating and contextualizing traditional games in subverting imposed ableist and gendered hegemonies. Applied theatre projects can offer space to recover the rich intangible heritage that is embodied in traditional games. Having established that indigenous African children’s games affirm the material body in general, we recognize the potential of applied theatre contexts to act as sites of taping from the wisdom of the past in order to invent the future in which Africa/Zimbabwean children are proud of their bodily realities as centres of human growth and self-construction.

中文翻译：

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传统游戏和以儿童为中心的发展：在津巴布韦应用戏剧项目中肯定残疾人和女性的身体

传统/土著儿童游戏尚未被视为具有批判性参与的场所。关于传统儿童游戏的现有文献有限，主要集中在传统游戏在常规课程科目教学中的部署。另一方面，应用剧场项目似乎主要依赖“外国”游戏。奇怪的是，似乎对北美、南美和西欧的戏剧游戏有偏见。我们承认，在某种程度上，外国游戏的部署已经彻底改变和激进了津巴布韦的应用戏剧实践。然而，几乎没有任何严肃的学术研究研究在性别和残疾话语中注入传统儿童游戏对以儿童为中心的发展的影响。这篇文章讨论了应用戏剧从业者在多大程度上可以利用传统的儿童游戏，以寻求将戏剧部署为批判性参与的场所，以对抗可能阻碍以人/儿童为中心的发展的普遍存在的霸权，如男性气概、新殖民主义和能力主义. 借鉴非洲女性主义和严重残疾理论，我们认为，虽然目前很少有应用戏剧从业者正在部署传统的儿童游戏，但在颠覆强加的能力主义者和性别霸权方面，仍有空间挪用和背景化传统游戏。应用戏剧项目可以提供空间来恢复传统游戏中体现的丰富的非物质遗产。已确定土著非洲儿童游戏总体上肯定了物质体，