Left in the Wake of the Practicalities

 

I've been reflecting a lot over the past week on different platforms for sharing or showcasing the work that I make and the importance of finding the correct platform, not just for the story but also the group who are telling it.

One of the projects I have been working on over the past few months is Saints' Youth Theatre. The group consists of 11 girls aged between 10 and 13, many of whom have very little experience of performing. It has been such a massive privilege to work with these girls over two terms and to witness, and I hope have some part in, their blossoming into more confident young women. Every week I have had the honour of working with these imaginative and creative girls as we have explored the idea of what it might mean to be left in the wake of the world.

One of my MA tutors, John Adams, said often last year that every project is about "what you can do in the time for the money". I can't help but feel as I reflect on this project that my ambitions of what I could do in the time were a little high. Not because the girls were not all talented and enthusiastic collaborators and performers, but because there just was not the time for the scope of the task.

That is not to say that what we achieved was a failure. But I have come to question the platform on which the work the girls had accomplished was shared. In just 42 hours of youth theatre sessions the group journeyed from a title and a collection of pictures of the London 2012 Olympics to a 24 page script that explored what happened when a young girl woke to find herself 100 years out of her time, in a world that looked very different to the world she fell asleep in.

The concept and story that the group constructed was incredibly impressive and their commitment to the story was unlike anything I have witnessed in my six years of leading devising projects with young people. In many ways, this is one of the most successful devising projects that I have ever led. But I have a nagging fear in the back of my mind that the platform on which the girls shared their work did them a disservice.

The performance was to take place in All Saints' Church - a large building that seats around 300-400 people and where anyone speaking from the front uses a microphone. While we expected nowhere near those numbers in the audience, it seemed to me that if the clergy would not speak un-amplified from the front of the church, how could we expect the voice of an 11 year old girl to carry in this cavernous space?

I got so fixed on this dilemma that in my mind the only way forward was to make sure the girls were miked up. In hindsight, this was a huge mistake on my part. I got so caught up in the need for the girls to be heard from the front and making sure that they didn't perform to an audience that, in the size of the church, looked empty. I allowed the scope of the practical "problems" stop me from being creative in finding solutions.

This week, we are running an interactive promenade performance of the Easter story, told through the eyes of Peter, for the local primary school. And with the unexpected late-march cold spell I've again been faced with this question of the most suitable platform. Around half of the performance was planned to be outdoors, but with windchill taking temperatures down to an icy -6 decisions had to be made on whether to re-think some of the locations.

And so our perfectly set hillside of the crucifixion had to be sacrificed for an indoor alternative. It has undoubtedly been the best solution, despite losing some of the aesthetic, because the children are warm enough to be able to concentrate on the story playing out before them and the interaction need not be rushed in order to get back into the warmth.

It has been in the relocation of this scene that I have spotted an alternative solution for last week's youth theatre performance. It had not occurred to me to section off a smaller area of the church for the performance, but standing watching the hillside scene played in front of a black cloth at the back of the church has unveiled the other option that I missed for the Youth Theatre. This smaller, more intimate setting within the church would have allowed the girls to speak without microphones and would have allowed us to keep the audience to friends and family, with the space looking busy without being overwhelming for the girls.

I believe in this setting the girls would have had less to contend with in the sharing of their work. It would have allowed them to relax. They wouldn't have had to deal with hearing their voices amplified for the first time and the feedback from the mics that was the result of not being able to properly tech with the microphones due to the cost of hiring them in. Therein lies a learning point in itself - a proper technical rehearsal is non-negotiable. By John's rule, therefore, microphones couldn't be done for the money as we couldn't afford more than one day hire. If I had caught on to this truth, perhaps I would have dared to find the more creative solution.

But all is not lost. The girls were as high as kites after the performance and the feedback from the parents has been very positive. All I can do now is reflect and learn from the process and use what I have learned to inform my future work. So, to sum up, what have I learned?

• Finding the most appropriate setting for the group is so important. "The best" for a group may not be the all-bells-and-whistles solution, it could be a much more informal sharing of work in a more relaxed atmosphere. The question has to be "which platform will allow this group to most effectively share their work in the most empowering way?"

• Tech is non-negotiable. If lights and sound are being used, both the cast and the operator must have a chance to run it through. If you can't afford to tech then you can't afford to use lights and sound. This feels especially important in a community-setting.

• Always push to find the "other option", even if it is discarded - best to have explored all the options and written them off than to get stuck on only one possibility.

London, you lied to me (spoken word)

 

The big news in the last few weeks has been that I am going to be moving back home to Glasgow at the beginning of April. It's a decision that I have been wrestling with for 6 months and part of my difficulty in taking the leap was due to a false perception that I had picked up that told me I had no prospects outside of London and that I would be going backwards.

This notion inspired me to write the poem London, you lied to me. I want to just make it clear that I hold no animosity towards London, this is purely an expression of the struggle I had to allow myself to consider leaving.

It's my first recorded spoken word piece, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Provision in Every Postcode

This week I received the news that I had passed my MA in Theatre Directing with distinction. It therefore felt safe to look back over my dissertation which had been a definite no go while the result was still pending.

My dissertation was an imagined youth theatre production of Abi Morgan's Fugee which was part of the National Theatre Connections Festival in 2008. Part of my study focussed on youth theatre provision and on methodology for directing a youth theatre production.

Here's an extract that sums up why I am so passionate about youth theatre provision in every postcode:

I have a specific interest in youth theatre and have found that often youth theatre provision can be ghettoised to areas of high deprivation, becoming the reserve of marginalised groups. While I do not contest the worth of having drama and theatre projects available in these areas, I think it is equally important to have similar provision in more affluent areas too. The argument against this is often that more affluent families can afford to pay for arts provision for their children. In these areas, however, arts provision tends to lean towards graded exams, for example, Associated Board, LAMDA and RAD, or stage school-esque performing arts schools that focus much more heavily on the performance as the product and less on the impact of participation.

Chris Johnston advocates that “none are excluded from participating at a grass-roots level” (1998, P3) however, if we fail to provide access to youth theatre provision in more affluent areas we are excluding young people in those areas from taking part on the basis of their economic background. Johnston also stipulates that:

There is no special qualification required to participate in drama work. You do not need to have lived a particularly vivid, difficult or disaster-strewn life to contribute; to have lived thus far is sufficient.

                                                                                                                                (Johnston, 1998, P14)

 

As Johnston points out, there are no benchmarks for participation. Neelands and Goode refer to theatre as “a process for the interpretation of human behaviour and meanings as well as for their expression” and suggest that it is born out of our response “to a basic human need to symbolize the world through art-forms.” (2000, P3).  It is my belief that, in accordance with Neelands and Goode’s assertions, young people from all backgrounds are engaged in the process of trying to make sense of the world around them and that access to youth theatre provision is essential across the spectrum of economic backgrounds. Clifford and Herrmann breakdown the process of participation as follows:

 

Through bringing our mind, body and spirit to the drama, we gain insight into ourselves (personal). Through working with others to create a play within the discipline of theatre, we develop skills to relate to people and build relationships based on trust, support, honesty and understanding (social). Finally, as we take our performance out to the wider community, we make ourselves heard in the public arena, allowing others to engage with our views and concerns and impacting the world we live in (political). It is the ability of theatre to transform the inner self, the group and society at large that makes it so powerful and appropriate a medium for work with young people.

                                                                                                                (Clifford and Herrmann, 1999, P17)

Clifford and Hermann assert that participation in the community theatre process leads to personal, social and political growth for those who take part. In my opinion, the opportunity to develop on a personal, social and political level should not be means-tested, but should be a right. This sentiment is echoed by Neelands and Goode who suggest that “meaningful and personally useful theatre activity is the right and prerogative of all people, enabling all to maximise the culture of their race, class, gender, age or ability.” (2000, P3)

 

Clifford, S. & Herrmann, A. (1999) Making a Leap Theatre of Empowerment. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Johnston, C. (1998) House of Games. London: Nick Her Books Limited.

 Neelands, J. & Goode, T. (2000) Structuring Drama Work (2^nd ed.) . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A subjective rambling on subjective and objective truth. I think.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend a week training with Adrian Jackson who runs a theatre company called Cardboard Citizens. Cardboard Citizens are the leading company in the UK using a form called Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) in their work with homeless and ex-homeless people in London. TO was pioneered by Augusto Boal in Brazil and has since been used all over the world as a means of opening up dialogue amongst marginalised communities about how they can best address the issues that face their communities. So much of what we explored during the training week made perfect sense for me and seemed to have a really clear connection with the things of the Kingdom. It was both the most bizarre and the most normal thing to hear phrases that we use in church all the time being used in this context.

 

We need to meet people where they are

 

In many ways, it shouldn't be a surprise that I discovered so much Kingdom in a practice of theatre that is concerned with empowering those who have been or are oppressed... in other words a practice of theatre that is concerned with breaking the chains of oppression... wait, where have I heard that before?

 

Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people (Isaiah 58:6)

 

I could see so much of Jesus in the work Boal pioneered and I am so excited about the possibilities of using this work for God's Kingdom.

 

My mind has been very full for the last couple of weeks while I have tried to process all that I experienced during the training week and one thing in particular that I have been left pondering is the concept of truth. As a Christian, I believe in the truth of God's Word, in His Truth and the truth of the gospel and His promises. Truth that often stands opposed to what we see in our day to day circumstances. A higher truth. An ultimate truth.

 

The course sparked a debate in my mind about objective truth and subjective truth. One exercise that we did involved someone sculpting the rest of their small group into a tableau which the rest of the participants were invited to look at. First, someone would describe objectively what they could see (a man kneeling on the floor with his head in his hands, a woman stands to his left, she has her hands in the air and her eyes are closed), then the group would be asked to comment from a subjective point of view - reading their own meaning into what they see in front of them (they are in a church worshipping and praying to God, for example). All of these answers were true. The objective truth being what everyone could see and agree to, the subjective being what we saw through our eyes that have been shaped by our lives and circumstances up until that point.

 

It made me think about events in life and how we can't help but hold a subjective truth of the event when we recount it because we see it from our own point of view. The way I describe a particular meeting with someone may be very different from how that person describes the very same meeting. But at the same time, there must be an objective truth of how that meeting went - a truth that is not coloured by the emotions and interests of the people it involves.

 

Likewise, while as Christians we all hold to God's Truth, we see His objective truth (the Word) through the lens of our own lives - our gifts, passions, circumstances, testimonies... which can lead to us appearing to believe things that seem to contradict each other. So, is it ever possible to see truth in it's pure objective form? Can we ever see things through God's eyes? And is it wrong to see His Truth through a subjective lens?

 

As I am writing this and wrestling with these questions, I feel compelled to believe that as we grow closer to God, we are able to look more and more through His eyes, to see people and circumstances in the Truth that God sees them. So where does that leave subjective truth?

 

Surely, we are not saying that our life stories - the things that actually colour our view - are not important? Because we only have to look at Psalm 139 to know that God cares about the details of our lives. And He knows that our experiences in life shape us - look at what Paul writes about endurance and how problems and trials shape us and strengthen us.

 

So, I am left thinking then, that we must take the subjective truth - the truth of how a circumstance plays in our mind, or the feeling we felt or feel in a situation - to God. We take the truth of what we experienced or are experiencing to Him and ask Him to show us His Truth in that situation or circumstance. We re-align ourselves with His Truth. Not ignoring what felt true to us and brushing it under the carpet when it seems to be in opposition to what we know God's Truth to be, but taking it to Him, placing it in His hands and asking - how can it be this and this?

 

I have no conclusion. I just know that in my life over the past few months I have found the truth of my circumstances has been difficult to reconcile with the Truth of God's Promises.

 

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. ² Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. ³ For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossian 3:1-3)

 

I think that when we take the truth we hold of our day-to-day and ask Him to help us reconcile it with His Truth it leads us to repentence, or to forgiveness, or to relook at how we dealt with a situation. I think it helps us keep short accounts, allow God to heal our hurts and brings us into greater freedom. I think.

 

Saints Youth Theatre

Last week was the first ever Saints' Youth Theatre project at All Saints Woodford Wells

We had 19 young people take part during the week to co-write and rehearse "Spoilsports" - a new play that asks can the power of the game unite a people who are torn apart or will the Spoilsports ruin the game for everyone?

Check out some photos from the rehearsal room and some of the feedback we received below:

“A brilliant, innovative effort. To involve so many children from concept to fruition and give them equal billing was a challenge well met!! "

“We thought it was brilliant. Amazing that it was all done within the week. Lots of talent. We look forward to more great productions.”

“Wow! It was lovely to come along and watch a very cohesive performance which included everyone. It had a lovely atmosphere amongst the kids and so pleased and grateful that you run it. Thanks for all the hard work from everyone.”

“It was really fun and I enjoyed meeting new people and improving my acting and drama skills.”

“I enjoyed creating the characters, writing the monologues and doing the different scenes.”

“I would recommend Saints Youth Theatre to a friend because I like coming here and always have fun.”

Saints Youth Theatre will launch its term time sessions for ages 10-13 on Wednesday 19th September for more information or to book your place contact All Saints Parish Office

Playwriting 101

I've spent the past week down in Shepton Mallet at New Wine's London and South East Summer Conference. Part of the reason I was there was to deliver a seminar on Playwriting within the church context. This is the first time that I have ever delivered a seminar, and while I am used to workshopping, facilitating and teaching, this felt much more formal and a bit more scary! But in planning what I was going to say and how I was going to approach it, I found that I had a pretty big revelation about drama within the church.

I found as I set out in my planning that I was reluctant to put too much weight on the aesthetic nature of creating pieces of drama for church. I felt that referring to these scenes or dramas or plays as pieces of theatre or pieces of art would probably sit uncomfortably for a lot of people because we all have certain conceptions of what constitutes a piece of art and who makes art and also who can access it, and the thought of part of a church service being a piece of theatre also seems quite controversial. But what I realised is that if we fail to recognise what we are writing and presenting as pieces of art or pieces of theatre then we are actually negating their purpose and losing the potential that they have to communicate with our congregation (or audience) on a different level to a typical sermon. So, I think it is important to recognise that drama in a church context is in a sense a piece of educational theatre. And theatre is art.

Anthony Jackson has written a book called Theatre, Education and the Making of Meanings and in it he says:

“A genuine work of art, it is often said, cannot be didactic. The novel, play or poem that sets out to convey information or to preach a message risks surrendering those qualities we usually value in art – complexity, ambiguity, multi-layered meanings, richness of imagination.”

Wow! What does that say about the kind of drama we see in church?

He goes on to say:

“The process of watching a play is ideally one of creative engagement, not of passive response. If educational theatre becomes didactic, if what it offers is reducible to the one-way conveyance of a message, then arguably it will have failed aesthetically and educationally, and for identical reasons.”

If we don’t recognise that what we are creating is a piece of art/theatre then actually we are missing the point in using it at all and if we try to force our message into the mouths of the characters we make them less truthful and believable – and so they become nothing more than a mouthpiece for our sermon... and for me that begs the question, why use drama at all? Why not just preach a sermon? We must embrace it for what it is - an art form - because in denying it we lose it's power to communicate.

It made me realise that I desperately want to see the church move away from pieces of drama that are solely for preaching a message, because what do they really achieve that can’t be achieved with more integrity by someone delivering a sermon?

I’m convinced that drama can bring something fresh and different to a church service and I think it is a mode of communication that is absolutely in keeping with the example Jesus gave us. Brian McLaren says the following in his book More Ready than you Realise:

“If you know anything about Jesus at all, you probably know that he was an amazing conversationalist. Unlike the typical evangelist-caricature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstractions and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself”

It seems that Jesus, too, is in favour of steering away from storytelling that merely preaches a message. In our pieces of drama, we don’t have to tie everything up neatly and answer every question – Jesus answered questions with more questions! The bible tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made – we are complex beings, full of contradictions – when we go down the route of storytelling that preaches a message we water human beings down to one-dimensional characters in order to put our message into their mouths – that doesn’t make compelling drama and I would argue that it doesn’t challenge our audience/congregation to think for themselves. Instead, if we create fully-rounded characters that open up conversation and lead us to ask questions rather than merely inform us of a message we are following Jesus example more closely

We were given freewill and the ability to make choices and decisions. More and more in our education system it is being recognised that the most effective methods of teaching are those that allow the students to be “active learners” by exploring and questioning and encouraging them to think for themselves. The church has to grab on to this too. 

As a writer of the drama in a church setting, you will most likely be given the topic or theme or premise of what it should be about – This will most likely be a thread that is running right the way through the service. It is our job then to find, to create, a story that illustrates that premise. Taking Jesus example with his parables – we should use a situation and characters that are culturally relevant so that the story is anchored in the reality of the people we are telling it to. We need to come up with a plot that paints a picture for the congregation.

When we think of the drama in this way, as one part of the whole service it helps us to clarify the task in hand. We can avoid the pitfall of feeling that we need to make every single point explicit in the drama, resting in the knowledge that the drama will be followed (or in some cases preceded) by a sermon that will open up the conversation and highlight the points that we want the congregation to consider. It comes back to the church being a body – we are all different parts with different functions and we work best together when we fulfil our own function and recognise the function of others.

When we are not writing for a church service and won't have a sermon to anchor our piece, the question we must consider is whether we are willing to take the risk that some people might leave without having received what we want them to receive. I would have to concede that it feels somehow easier to make sure that the audience definitely get the point that we want to make by stating it plainly (didactically) and making it obvious, however, I have begun to ask whether doing so takes the theatricality out of the work and whether such an approach just, at best, engages the intellect and misses the heart.

In the work that I write, direct and devise I want to be telling stories that convict the heart, stories with fully-rounded characters. The difficulty here is that I then relinquish all control and must lay down my agenda in order to allow the characters’ own voices freedom from censorship. The moment we lay down the opportunity to preach a point we open a door to the possibility that some members of the audience will leave without having received the message that we might have intended. But we also open a door to a much more credible, real and moving piece of storytelling.

The Product of a Year's Process

I'm coming to the end of my year studying an MA in Theatre Directing at East 15 Acting School. It's been an interesting year and I've been on a huge journey. I applied for the course because I felt like I needed to top up my toolbox for my work in Community Theatre and because I was frustrated with the low production standards in a lot of the work that I was seeing, and creating.

When I was studying for my BA in Community Arts we would talk a lot about the tension between process and product but I found I had got to a place, where I was constantly disappointed with the product. It was this discontentment that had led me to apply for the course, aiming to come out the other end better-equipped for work in the community sector and striving to raise the bar on the "product" of the projects I would work on.

So, I have spent a year in class with 25 emerging directors learning about Contemporary British Theatre, Comedy and Farce, Music Theatre and techniques for directing and was given the incredible opportunity to undertake an independent module assisting Matthew Dunster on his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Somewhere along the way I decided to allow myself to consider aiming to work as a director in the professional industry. It didn't ever quite sit comfortably with me, and I was never entirely sure why - was it a lack of belief in myself and my abilities? Or was it something else?

Somewhere during the rehearsals for The Dream it struck me why I felt so uneasy about working in the professional industry. I realised that for the actors this is work and so in their professionalism they leave their lives outside the rehearsal room door. In a community setting the actors are under no such obligation, they bring their lives and all that is going on in their world into the rehearsal room with them and we experience the collision of people's lives with the shared task of making a play or exploring a story together which creates a huge chaotic mess from which something beautiful emerges. The beauty we find in the community rehearsal room is a very different kind of beauty from that which emerges in the professional rehearsal room. The theatre we create in the community sector is raw and oftentimes with rough edges, but the theatre is not the only product that we create here. So perhaps all these years I have been asking the wrong question, perhaps instead of asking process or product, the question should be what is the product?

In the community rehearsal room there is more than one product. We are not just focussed on creating a clear telling of the story for our audience, but also on the impact that exploring that story (and exploring it together as a group) has on those who are telling it. It is the combination of both of these products and the huge chaotic mess I mention above that I get most excited about.

"Drama engages both the head and the heart. Learning through drama relies on the active involvement of our mind, body, feelings and spirit. In the realm of imagined experience, we take on roles of other characters and experience different situations, so that our understanding of ourselves, of others and of the world we live in grows. Drama provides an opportunity to address moral dilemmas, to express our feelings, to be creative and to explore new ideas and ways of being. Drama demands interaction between people - it is a social process."

Sara Clifford and Anna Herrmann

"Making a Leap: Theatre of Empowerment" (1999)

And so, as I come to the end of my year of study, I find I have come full circle and have arrived back on the path of Community Theatre, but this time around I know it is the path I am actively choosing and I know more clearly why I want to take it. I seek to make community theatre that gives equal weighting to both products, believing that creating a piece of theatre that's of a high standard will be a more empowering experience for all involved.