Practically, how we work can be seen in the film titled The Tree Of Ghibet which began as an experiment in filmmaking without a screenplay. Instead, we created a simple plotline and filledl it in with a series of improvisations in radical theater, enacted with people from the local area.  This process came from two competing impulses:

First, we didn't want to descend on Cameroon with an inauthentic, outsider’s viewpoint of local living conditions and then impose that ideal.  We also didn’t want to reenact our misconceptions with actors from other regions (we recognize that in the areas that the Traveling Film School works in, there are few or no conventionally-trained actors).  Authentic portrayal was paramount. Our challenge was to work with non-actors, in our short time, with a miniscule production budget.

So, without the time, money, or resources to make a film in traditional methods, our plan became to forget ordinary first-world filmmaking rules.  We decided to jump into the film camp with a plot line and create story through improvisation, theater games, interviews, storytelling sessions, and personalization exercises to incorporate the stories and experiences of the local culture as best we could.  We wanted to allow the children to put their own hopes, experiences, beliefs, and fears about being homeless into a narrative in a fresh way.