Development institutions have in recent years realised the importance of indigenous culture as an important vehicle for communication. This has led to the creation of programmes in which local cultural forms have been "recruited" as the communication process for "selling" development strategies. The paper draws upon the author's experiences of theatre for primary health mobilisation and awareness in rural Malawi. The advantage of performing arts as a medium for development communication are that: 1) they provide a more entertaining form than monologous media, 2) they can easily use local languages and cultural forms such as songs and dances, 3) they encourage participation and debate in the audiences. The main disadvantage is that such intrumental use of the performing arts can lead to a cornmodification of culture which is manifested in: 1) the professionalisation of cultural workers in a context which is not normally commercial, 2) the reification and triviliation of community culture through the use of traditional external forms to convey messages totally at variance with their original context. Such cultural engineering, at its most insensitive can constitute a form of developmental imperialism which erodes rather than supports the cultural cement binding local communities. Suggested solutions demand agents' wide-ranging consultations, not only with development minded stake-holders, but also with those who possess cultural skills and interests.
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