“If we’re really unlucky they’ll be on the train”

I’ve known about the Contemporary Music Festival in Huddersfield since I lived with Music students in my first year at Bretton Hall. However despite the fact the festival was always talked about in respectful and admiring tones by my contemporaries, I had never actually been until this Friday when I went to see the opening of 2011’s offerings. I have to admit I had an ulterior motive as in preparation for making a piece of theatre commissioned by The Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield I am taking members of my Youth Theatre to see lots of different performance genres. On the other hand I was glad of the excuse, finally getting to see something in person that you’ve been meaning to experience for a significant length of time is always satisfying.

The opening of the festival this year took the form of a music performance called “Ear Training,” a performance of contemporary music played by a mixture of orthodox and found instruments from trombones to basket balls. It was a promenade performance in front of and within the picturesque Huddersfield Train Station. Three main elements made up the event: the performers, the people at the station to see the performance and the unsuspecting general public who were simply there to begin, end or continue their journey by public transport.

During and after the performance I had lots and lots of questions I wanted to ask about the piece, but they were all the usual ones someone who makes performance would ask. What was the original inspiration? What was the balance of improvisation/composition/structure? How long had the artists been preparing? How much had they considered their set in their process? While I was asking these questions I realised that it would have been much better to be one of the people who were taken by surprise by the performance and experience it from their perspective. Equally they were in fact the most interesting element of the performance. Not all of them reacted favorably, some of them ignored what was happening altogether, others looked interested, others irritated. One woman said very audibly the title of this post as if she didn’t think the players could hear her, like they were on a different plane of reality almost.

We talk a lot about new audiences in this industry and it occurred to me this was a real and practical way to get a new audience to listen to something that they would not usually have considered. To bring it to them and to make it free, to challenge them but not to threaten, to play with socially accepted boundaries but not to rip them to shreds. There is a certain demographic that actively engage in contemporary music events and a large proportion of Fridays audience certainly didn’t fit neatly into this. As a performance I thought it was fascinating…not something I’d necessarily queue up to see and listen to again but thought provoking and therefore inspiring. Like many useful experiences I’m left with far more questions than answers.

In remembrance...

The 10th of October saw Yew Tree Youth Theatre perform an original piece of theatre at the Miners Memorial service at Selby Abbey. It was the fifth service of this kind and its purpose was to remember the men, women and children that have died whilst working in the mining industry.

It’s the second year we’ve been involved and this year, just as the last, I was overwhelmed by the enormous poignancy and depth that surrounds mining communities not only in Yorkshire but across the world.

The service was a diverse event with music from the Maltby Miners Welfare band, speeches from councillors and more importantly addresses from men who have devoted their life to this industry, which was and is absolutely a way of life not just a job. This year there was an added significance to the service with the plight of the 33 trapped miners in Chile remembered.

In amongst these elements was Yew Tree Youth Theatre’s performance within which a group of 16 young people unreservedly invested their talent, integrity and empathy to portray a way of living that has changed irrevocably within their lifetime. It was a wonderful thing to behold as despite the generational apartness everyone in the room was brought together by the sense of community and togetherness that is almost unique to mining.

The journey that the members of the Youth Theatre had undertaken to produce the piece of theatre we offered to miners and their families had been significant. In order to give their performance the honesty it demanded it had been vital that they learnt about a way of life so very different from their own and within that learning had come the realisation that the events at the centre of the piece of theatre…pit closures, the miners’ strike, the deaths of members within this community were far more recent that they might have imagined… that this had happened near them and in their lifetime…Hard lessons to learn but vital when confronted with the still raw grief of the families present at the service who attended to remember their own loved ones…

At the end of the service members of the youth theatre were approached by many of the people who had attended and from dignitary to those less lauded, but infinitely more learned about the community we had portrayed, their praise was both heartfelt and enthusiastic…all of them were both surprised and impressed by the work of the young people. I on the other hand was neither of these things as I take the fact that they are brilliant for granted sometimes but I was proud, proud of their ability to make the difficult journeys and overwhelmed by the enormity of the stakes and the depth of humanity that had underscored the entire event…

"Sometimes I don’t go to school; I go with Dad to the picket line and stand by the brazier for warmth. Mum says it’s no place for a child but I go anyway. I want to try and understand Dad’s world. The hours that he’s away from the house are just as long as before but now he doesn’t come back black with coal dust just weighed down with a battle that’s too big for him. So I go to understand, to stand with the other men whose families like ours are cold and hungry…to hold my Dad’s hand so he knows that if he thinks this is important enough to put up with living like this then I do too…"

What do you bring?

This is not a well thought out offering with a satisfactory conclusion…instead it’s something that I’ve been pondering since a youth theatre session I ran on Thursday…in fact I’ve been thinking about it for much longer than that but I refocused on it on Thursday. It’s centred on the question of what do people bring…and by people I mean everyone…what do people bring as individuals to a creative process?

There’s a whole thing that’s become embedded in my practice…about the youth theatre and drama workshops being a safe space…a space where other aspects of life, other concerns are left at the door. This isn’t original; it’s a mantra of lots of directors and practitioners. I usually give everyone a moment to focus on real life at the start of the session in order that it can be dropped for the rest of the workshop. In theory, as an ambition, that still stands and in part I still stand by it…but in reality, as is often the case, it’s much more complicated than this. The reasons for the complexity are plentiful and some more obvious than the others…but the one I want to focus on is the dichotomy between what we are being a richness we can bring to creativity and the fact that aspects of our selves are what hold us back from being brave, focused and open enough to truly engage with a creative process.

Our story, the one we have experienced up until this time, is one of the greatest strengths we have as an artist, the things we invent are unavoidably intertwined with it on some level…however equally, our stories are the ties that bind us to our fears and insecurities…that stop us being the person and creative practitioner we have the potential to be…One of the joys of working for a long time with people, which is a luxury of my youth theatre practice, is you witness them gradually unlocking parts of themselves to become a more open and developed individual and actor…or writer…or director. However I’m so very aware of the people that can’t let go of some of the things that hold them back…the ones that cling too tightly to the things that imprison them…those are the people I need to do better for…

As I said, no neat conclusion but some final thoughts at this point, in a career long journey I’m taking to understand all of this better…perhaps a better question would be what do we want to bring to our creative process and how do we best meet those ambitions? Which pieces of our story and ourselves are useful to us and which do we choose to cast aside? It’s a process requiring a significant weight of reflection, reflexivity and honesty…but worth having…

Generosity...

The last weekend of June saw the Yew Tree Youth Theatre host their second Shakespeare festival at the wonderful Clarke Hall a small stately home in Wakefield. With over 80 performers aged between 6 and 24, performing extracts from over 10 Shakespearean plays the preparation to ensure the events success was significant. In addition there was a high degree of gambling going on as we were utterly dependent on the weather…rain would have been disastrous.

In actuality we were compromised not by inclemency as there was glorious sunshine for the entire weekend but instead by the World Cup as the England Germany match meant we had to finish early…still everything else about the weekend was idyllic...

Now anyone who knows me will know that I am consistently proud of my youth theatre and the artists that work with them…we have built a community and culture based on the values of creativity, care and development and the results of being able to enjoy this culture for are significant. During the Shakespeare festival however this pride reached new peaks and this and all the other positive things I’ve said about the weekend can be attributed to the generosity that flowed in abundance throughout the whole event.

From the people who maintain Clarke Hall both paid and as volunteers allowing us free reign in their beautiful grounds and house, fitting us out with costumes and giving up their time…to the young people who in blistering heat and unfamiliar surroundings invested all of themselves in their performance. There was generosity everywhere in the parents that spent their weekend supporting their children…in the comments and compliments of the 200 strong audience, in the desire everyone had to help, to make things easier…nothing was too much trouble…for anyone…

And the result of this generosity…a complete revel in true Elizabethan style…artistically the gorgeous setting and costumes created an atmosphere conducive to delightful performances…but there was a deeper layer of reveling to be experienced. The weekend witnessed retired people reveling in their enjoyment of the work and world of young people, young people reveling in the experience of all things historical. Preconceptions were set aside and an openness took its place. All of the clichés about the universality of Shakespeare were proved to be true as his work provided a bridge between people of all ages, experience and walks of life.

Now here’s the final bit of magic because in those kind of interactions, the generous, reveling, open kind…there’s all kinds of learning to be done…learning that happens without people really being aware of it…whether it was about themselves, people they knew, strangers, Shakespeare or theatre, everyone went away having learnt something, everyone left just that little bit richer…

What a joyous way to spend a weekend…

"O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!"

Superheroes...

I had the pleasure of spending a lot of last week with groups of year 6 children from Castleford. The project was called Superhero and it involved feeder schools visiting the theatre in their soon to be high school, watching a piece of bespoke theatre and then engaging in a workshop about the issues within the play. The aim of the event was to prepare them for and equip them with the skills and understanding needed to deal with changes in their lives.

Obviously their imminent graduation into high school was at the heart of the project but both myself as the creator of the play/workshop and Targeted Mental Health in Schools as the commissioner wanted a wider focus for the work. There are so many life changes to be dealt with, sometimes on a week-to-week basis and that’s hard enough as an adult but harder for children who have often little say or control regarding the change. When you then start to think about children who are already vulnerable, expecting them to deal effectively with change seems like an almost impossible ask. As a consequence “Superhero” touched on moving house, moving schools, bereavement and family arguments, I realise this sounds utterly depressing but it wasn’t…promise…

Anyway the main point of this blog is almost a side issue to all of this. What I set out to highlight is how eloquent and insightful children can be when given the right environment. In fact I really wanted to say how brilliant children are. Now this isn’t news, lots of people have said this, lots of times…because it’s true. What it isn’t, however, is accepted, no matter how many times right minded people give examples of this eloquence there still doesn’t seem to be enough general effort made to create an environment where that eloquence is given voice. Similarly children aren’t given enough credit for being eloquent or brilliant, too frequently they are underestimated and underrated.

I’m spending this week analyzing the data captured from the project. This includes comments the pupils made on the characters and their situations and things they professed to have learnt from the experience of seeing the play and taking part in the workshop. Despite the tedium of the actual job of typing up far too many post-it notes I’m finding it fascinating. From the boy who promised to help his Mum tidy his room so they would both feel better to the girl who stated she realised that calling people names lowered their confidence there are so many insightful comments. What’s more they are comments from individuals who are open to change, who are up for the challenge of developing themselves. Impressive in any circumstances but breathtakingly so when you take into account they are growing up in one of the most deprived areas of the country.

To conclude, I’m making a stand for the 11 year olds of the world and saying surely it’s our responsibility not just as teachers but as adults too, to create an environment where children can be impressive, eloquent and brilliant…and yes occasionally breathtaking…

Whatever Happened to Grace Connor

The way my creative process for script writing usually goes is; either through commission or workshop (or both) the subject is set, then I write, then I cast, then I direct either professional or youth theatre actors and then I sit back and enjoy the results.
However this week saw the culmination of a very different process. On Tuesday I saw the talented CAT’s youth theatre (based in Southampton) perform “Whatever Happened to Grace Connor’” a play commissioned by them and written by me. I’d travelled down to Southampton earlier in the year to workshop ideas with them. Once back in Wakefield I set to work writing something that befitted their ambitions and talents. Once the play was sent they got to work in rehearsals and I pretty much moved on with the demands of two solo shows to write and a number of training commissions.
Going to see their performance was definitely a highlight of 2010. First there was the anticipation, wondering what a director had done with it; the lack of my usual control over interpreting my writing was both unnerving and exciting. Then there was sitting front of house and seeing the audience arrive to watch something I’d written. Finally there was the rediscovery of the play seen through and interpreted by theatre makers both directors and actors.
Of course there were things I’d seen differently and of course there were surprises but this wasn’t a bad thing. It’s a brilliant thing to see what your work says to people who can’t see inside your head. Listening to the laughter of the audience and the comments they made as they left, having no idea who I was, was of course gratifying. Possibly the most gratifying thing, however, was watching an ensemble of 16 actors who owe me nothing commit to a performance of my play, making every endeavour to perform it to the best of their considerable talent. I felt a genuine gratitude to them for creating something of such value out of my words…
And the final bonus of the evening, I got to chat to the cast at the end about the journey to performance and their positivity and enjoyment of realising “Whatever Happened to Grace Connor,” made the long trek northwards well worth it…an achievement in itself…

A vision of success...

The last week has been spent using drama techniques to try and teach ambition to year 9 high school students…funnily enough it’s really, really hard…

The students we’re working with have been identified as having potential but for a variety of reasons they aren’t fulfilling it. As usual the reasons for this are complex, often deep rooted and invariably intertwined: Lack of confidence, difficulties at home, a peer group that undermines their efforts to succeed, learnt behaviours or coping strategies that do not include conforming to others expectations, a resentment of education…the list is sadly endless.

However there is a universal theme that has emerged through the workshops we’re delivering and that is the student’s inability to visualize and/or articulate what success would look like for them. The question is met by the majority with general answers of “Money,” or “A good job,” or “A big car,” but very few of these potentially able young people know what kind of job or how they’re going to be able to earn the money or how they’re going to afford the car.

The consequence of this is that they are moving through life without a road map…with no destination they have no idea whether they are on the right track, no grid references to check their progress and in turn this makes things so much harder. Makes success, which is hard enough for young people with their life experience anyway, even more unreachable…

All this is indicates another potential way in which we can offer assistance as educators. In finding ways to help young people to see in clear terms what they want…in assisting them to draw their vision of success…in giving them the words or courage to articulate it to others, so it can be affirmed and developed in the telling and the hearing, we arm them with an invaluable tool to aid them in the process of actually reaching it…and that to me sounds like a worthwhile way of spending the day…