A man dressed as a tsetse fly came to a soccer game. And he definitely had a goal

Don't worry, this six-foot-tall tsetse fly didn't bite anyone. He was part of a performance to teach Malawians about preventing sleeping sickness. Hannah Bialic hide caption

toggle caption Hannah Bialic

Don't worry, this six-foot-tall tsetse fly didn't bite anyone. He was part of a performance to teach Malawians about preventing sleeping sickness.

Hannah Bialic

The first time went to a soccer game, she danced on the field in a white lab coat alongside a colleague inside a giant tsetse fly costume. Most of the fans applauded. Some were baffled.

Neither was auditioning to be the new team mascot.

Rather, Veitch, who's a lecturer in parasitology at the University of Glasgow, put on this somewhat weird performance as a pilot for sleeping sickness street theater — using a theatrical event to teach people about a disease that affects about each year in Africa.

In Malawi's two endemic districts where the disease is spread by local tsetse flies, the number of people falling ill from sleeping sickness has declined in recent years, but cases still persist. Last year, there were only 40 cases across the country. But Veitch points out the disease is "often unpredictable," which means that the possibility of resurgence remains a persistent threat.

, a parasitologist involved in the project and the associate director of the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Clinical Research Programme, instead of "just throwing the message all over the country." In other words, she says, it's a way of allocating resources wisely.

, a Scottish art, theater and circus organization that runs an annual performance festival that brings cutting edge work to the streets and spaces of Glasgow. The sketches tend to be short, sharp, and interactive, she says.

One year, Veitch was drawn to an outside act that had repurposed an ambulance to teach people how to respond to someone having a cardiac arrest through engaging movement and comical water balloon antics. "And I thought to myself, we could be using street theater to engage people with parasitology," she says. So she approached SURGE and said, "We could maybe work together on something to do with parasites. I think we could create something really cool."

Veitch isn't alone in her thinking. A few years back, the World Health Organization published a on the role that the arts — including theater — can play in improving our physical, social, and psychological health and well-being, a particular concern in under-resourced countries.

at New York University, who wasn't involved in the sleeping sickness project. She adds that performance is just the right platform and artform to "increase a sense of self-efficacy — a feeling of being able to do something about a problem."

Veitch's conversation with SURGE kickstarted a multiyear effort for her and her colleagues in Scotland and Malawi, including an arts and theater group called Voices Malawi that educates people about various illnesses, including COVID-19 and malaria and that uses street theater as a teaching mode.

First, the team had to dream up a way to depict sleeping sickness through street theater. Musaya was excited to get involved. After studying sleeping sickness for 15 years, there was still a missing link for her — "how do we educate the community not to get infected?" She hoped this theatrical foray might provide an answer.

Bwanalori Mwamlima, senior health promotion officer in the Rumphi district of Malawi, says that developing the performance was an act of co-creation among scientists, health workers, performing artists and individuals who'd survived the disease. He explains that the messages they wanted to communicate were, "How is it transmitted? What are the [symptoms]? How can it be prevented? And what are the current interventions?"

Tsetse fly theater has its Malawi premiere

When the show rolled out in Malawi in the fall of 2022, here's what it looked like.

Communities were told that local football and netball teams would descend upon a particular field to play. Then, the day of the event, the performers (a team of nurses, clinicians, students and researchers) drove through town in a truck with music blaring. That got people to leave their homes and follow the truck to the edge of a soccer field. "We wanted to gather a crowd," says Veitch.

, which translates health and environment research into film and art, including theater pieces. He wasn't associated with the sleeping sickness project. Sharma argues that a performance "converts research into something which people can see and feel in a more personalized way." The result, he says, is that "you can actually use it the next day in your life. So I think it's a very powerful strategy."

For those who missed the show, Veitch says that video recordings will be used as part of Malawi's mobile cinema program, which ranges from big televisions on the back of land rovers to large screens set up next to marketplaces and other public gatherings. It's a common way to publicize health messages in Malawi. The goal, says Veitch, is to "extend the legacy of what we've been doing."

However, despite all the fanfare and promise of the program, Veitch, who says she wasn't into soccer when this program began, admits that she's still not a football fan.