An Unorthodox Egg Hunt

Just wanted to share a rather amusing, but albeit faintly ridiculous game which I co-devised today… and in doing so illustrate the usefulness of overtiredness and a willingness to risk and improvise.

I had been in line to potentially take over from someone who had dropped out of the Most Mira Youth Arts Festival in Bosnia this year, but on Friday I received an email sadly informing everyone that due to funding problems the festival was being postponed.  This is always sad to hear, especially when it is something that is almost unique.  Most Mira have been running the festival for 3 years, the focus of which is to bring children and teachers from schools in communities divided by the war in the nineties and engages them in arts activities for 10 days. A large part of the work is also to train and mentor local Bosnian artists so that they might continue the work themselves after the festival has finished.  However, without going into the whys and wherefores of the importance of this work or the lack of funding, Most Mira had already planned a training day with Artswork on group dynamics and one-to-one coaching in order to help us support our local artist mentees during the festival and so they decided to go ahead with it anyway.  Which is how I found myself in a workshop at 10am on my only proper day off of a couple of weeks.

The workshop began with a brief chat about what we would be doing followed by the Most Mira staff and the facilitator promptly standing up, gathering their things and walking out of the room.  Puzzled, we all looked at each other and then noticed the instructions written on the flip chart,

‘YOU CAN OPEN ONLY ONE’

Eh?

Then we noticed two envelopes on the floor underneath. ‘Read what they say.’ someone suggested.  One said,

‘PLAY IT SAFE’

the other,

‘TAKE A RISK’

'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice.

Pretty quickly and painlessly, we decided ‘Take a risk’ was the one we wanted to go for, despite a brief thought that perhaps it was some kind of double bluff and 'Play it safe' might have been more interesting, it was opened and the contents revealed.  We were instructed to split into small groups, choose a parcel from the selection on the table and prepare a creative response to its contents to present to the group.

My group, consisted of myself and two women who were part of the dance team.  We were all feeling the Sunday morning vibe, so when we opened our parcel to find a sheet of stickers with illustrations of different kinds of eggs and the names of the species of bird written under them, the feeling of 'meh' followed by 'Oh fuck' was palpable.  My head swimming with exhaustion, the only creative response I had at that moment was to curl up into a foetal shaped ball and hide, however, as today was apparently the Orthodox Easter Sunday an egg hunt was quickly suggested.  We were pretty clear that we didn't want to 'present' anything and so determined to get the group to do something we could watch and with overtired hysteria prevailing, things got a little silly, especially when we started trying to subtly stick the egg stickers in out-of-the-way places with everyone else still working in the same room.   

Nonetheless, down the rabbit hole we went and eventually this is the game we devised:

Part 1

1.  Find an egg sticker and read the label of the type of bird it came from.

2.  Stick the sticker on your forehead. (Egg on face)

3.  Mime hatching out of the egg you found.

4.  Take on the exact characteristics of the bird you are and continue moving around the room and interacting with each other.

Part 2

1.  There should be one less sticker than there are players. The last person left without an egg sticker, becomes the Easter Bunny.

2.  The Easter Bunny must hop and chase the birds to steal their eggs.

3.  The Easter Bunny must return the eggs to the basket (empty sticker sheet)

4.  The birds must try to protect their eggs as best they can, however once their egg is stolen they must then become a sad version of their bird and continue moving around the room mourning their loss.

5.  The game is over when all the eggs have been returned to the basket.

I have to say watching this game was the most fun I've had on a Sunday morning for a very long time.  The confusion of people asking each other  'But how does a Rufous-naped Wren behave?!', the sight of the poor Animator (and only man in the room) who had to become the Bunny and hop around trying to get stickers off the bird's foreheads and the poor mourning birds was too much to bear at times... 

I personally can't think of a better way to spend my lie-in!

The 'Fuck It' Button

It has been noted in the past that I have a tendency towards almost psychopathic levels of enthusiasm when I am passionate about something.  I say psychopathic because I have discovered it is rarely dented, let alone de-railed, regardless of the strength of any barriers or detractors present.  Generally, I consider this to be a positive attribute, despite it meaning that I rarely say no to things, even if it means pushing myself to exhaustion.  

This week I have been taking part in Forum Theatre training at St Mungo’s hostel in Willesden with Catherine Pinhorn and Tony Cealy courtesy of The Change Collective.  The course was something I’d been wanting to do for some time and so was really very excited to be beginning it last Sunday morning… (yes, I did say Sunday morning).  During the week we spent a good deal of time exploring the techniques which form the arsenal of the Theatre of the Oppressed, developed by Brazilian theatre practitioner, Augusto Boal.  We also indulged in a little Feldenkrais and later in the week, shared our stories in order to generate material for the performance due to take place for the hostel residents on Thursday.  The process definitely consolidated some things which I had questions about in the making of a piece of Forum, having studied Boal in some depth but having almost no practical experience of it. We also had a fantastic forum with lots of really brilliant St Mungo's 'spectators' intervening on the action of the play. On that front, I finished the course today feeling confident and ready to get cracking on using what I've learned.

However, what I wasn't prepared for was of a more personal nature.  What I discovered was The 'Fuck It' Button. Now, don't get excited, the FI button is not related to sex.  No, it is a button which once pushed, triggers disengagement at best and conflict, self sabotage and anti-social behaviour at worst. In my case, the FI Button has, over the years, resulted in numerous personal and professional derailments, negative risk-taking behaviour, not insignificant heartbreak and a raft of cracking hangovers.  Strangely enough though, I had never actually explicitly identified it until today.  It was named for me by a fellow participant on the course who works as a substance abuse councillor in a rehab facility.  During the evaluation session in the afternoon, I had expressed my growing frustration with the lack of energy and commitment to the work of some of the other participants.  Having trained rigorously as an actor several years ago and now working as a drama practitioner, the work is something I take extremely seriously and I am very aware of the importance of being 'present' in the moment. In fact, it is about the only time in my life, if I'm really honest, that I am completely mentally and physically committed to anything, preferring to spend much of my spare time in my own little world. Above all, I am horribly aware of the negative effect a lack of enthusiasm can have on a group. This was something I had discovered during my first drama training and rediscovered during my Masters; something which I think, at times caused some distance between myself and my fellow students.

The participants of this training week were from a range of backgrounds, but the common feature being that the majority were not from a performance background. Therefore, it turned out that my idea of physical commitment and theirs were certainly on different planets, if not in separate solar systems. This is where the surprise came for me... as a facilitator, I would have given my all to build the energy and encourage greater engagement and I would certainly have been a whole lot more sympathetic to those feeling challenged by the work. However, as a participant, the 'Fuck It' Button got pushed and thus began my descent into negativity, frustration and eventually, complete disengagement at certain points. Why should I bother killing myself to get the work done when no one else is? Of course, for the performance I summoned up the required energy to pull it off (as you do), but I'm interested in my response, as it feels so very alien to who I am in this work.  

The beauty of engagement in the arts is that through the work we are often faced with our own internal oppressions and consequently are forced to examine them in order to overcome them.  During the week, I had shared a quote, which has kept returning to me over the last year or so, although I have no idea who it was who originally said it.  'The people who get in the way of the work, are our work'. It's true. In the field of the Applied Arts there are numerous people who can get in the way of the work: the government, funders, councils, prison staff, religious bodies, school boards, charity workers, councillors, participants... you name them.  Often they are people who have perhaps never taken part in creative activities and so have no understanding of what it is we do, seeing us a being a bit 'artsy-fartsy' or in some cases they are ideologically opposed to what we do. There are many reasons.  However, what happens when the person who gets in the way of your work is you? 

How does one dismantle one's 'Fuck It' button? 

‘You’re not scared: You’re METAL!’ or How I nearly broke the play.

This is a case study I wrote last year about the Pret a Manger sponsored 'Set the Scene' project which I worked on as a placement from Central School of Speech and Drama.  It's rather longer than your average blog post, but an enjoyable and interesting read nonetheless, I hope!

Let us speak frankly.  I am present in this case study.  I am present as a student and as a practitioner, as an observer and as a participant.  I am present as a fledgling researcher, experimenting with critical, micro-ethnographic, post-modern and phenomenological approaches to case study. Through these lenses, I hope, as Nicholson suggests, to ‘convey something of the messiness of reality and explore its incoherence’. (2005:65). As a result, in reporting the intrinsically interesting areas of this project, some of my descriptions fall into the realm of phenomenology in that they are drawn from the ‘way social reality is produced through interaction’ (O’Reilly 2009:121) and take a more anecdotal form (Simons 2009:76-77) At other times my observations become more reflexive in recognition of the impossibility of ignoring the impact of my role at the site of research when my position as ‘accepted stranger’ (O’Reilly 2009:176) shifted to that of creative assistant, as I gained confidence and engaged in the process.  However, above all this, I am present as someone who immersed herself in the journey of a group of young, homeless and vulnerably housed people for two months and began to find her own voice, while participants found theirs and so I attempt to document the nature of that journey and suggest the negotiations of ‘subjects in dialogue with each other’ (Madison 2005:9)

With these considerations at the forefront of my research, I hope to render, as best I can, a picture of the small victories, failures and contradictions, experienced by all and examine of the nature of personal and creative risk, in a C.C.T.V. ridden, risk assessed, post 9-11, post New Labour Britain, as experienced by this group of young people.  Consequently, the form of this case study is informed by its emergent content, in that some of the voices you are about to hear are not only those of the support staff, facilitators and participants, but those of their characters too.  I have endeavoured to clarify with footnotes, references and appendices where the words they speak are derived from, but as it became clear during the project, there is a very thin line between reality and fiction, so thin, that as the young actors developed their characters and director, Terry O’Leary scripted them, it became difficult at times to distinguish between the two at all, as these two characters from the play can confirm.

ABDI:              ‘Do you know what?  It wasn’t easy being human.  Very messy.’

CHRIS:             ‘Very confusing.’

MADDY:          Well, yes. Quite.[1]

Kathleen Gallagher states ‘One can never be sure to what extent life seeps into dramatic writing, what liberties are taken, what imaginative trespassing has taken place, in the journeys into one’s own or another’s life’. (Gallagher & Fine 2007:106) In the spirit of this statement, I will concede that the same applies to my own writing here as I ‘approximate the way of the artist.... in aspiring to describe and interpret... encounters’ (Simons in Winston 2006:45) However, I argue that as I pledged along with the young people at the beginning of this project to take some creative and personal risks, it is only fair that I should remain true to my word and follow this course to the end.

Anyway, enough about me, the young actors of this piece are infinitely more interesting than I could ever be, but where to start?  Let’s start with comfort.  Start with Tony McBride’s ‘Challenge by Choice’[2] model. Start with the three concentric circles of comfort, stretch and panic. Start at the end; back in the centre, in your comfort zone and work your way outwards, through the stretch circle, touch panic on the outside and keeping going until you get back to the end…

DESIRE:                       ‘Do you lot want to hear something?’

MADDY:                      Did you want to say something about comfort zones, Desire? Sure, go ahead.

DESIRE: (raps)            ‘Yo! Who’s there to provide for the homeless?

                                    No-one!

                                    Got no food to eat,

                                    J.S.A. money already gone,

                                    Living in a place we can’t call home.

                                    Money spent on smoke,

                                    That’s our comfort zone.

                                    Depression seems to be the issue,

                                    She can’t hack this, not used to being alone.

                                    Have it your way, see your G.P.

                                    Get depression pills for me.

                                    No way!  I can’t pretend, won’t pretend.

                                    Do your job man! 

No idea what it is to be me!’[3]

MADDY:                      Thanks for that Desire, nice to see you’re so enthusiastic!  After all, I thought your comfort zone included turning up to rehearsal hours late and listening to your iPod during scenes?  And by the way, isn’t your comfort zone a little bit too close to panic for comfort, if you see what I mean?

DESIRE:                      ‘Don’t hate, [Maddy]: relate!’[4]

MADDY:                     Terry, why don’t you pull her up about this attitude?

TERRY O’LEARY:         ‘I’ve got nothing, there’s nothing I can say.  That’s what you’ve chosen to do and I’ve really got no time to focus on you.  I need to get on, you play catch-up as and when you feel like it... sometimes when you withdraw your love, it’s like “Hang on a minute, that’s not what it’s supposed to be like.  You’re supposed to start shouting at me.  You’re supposed to be making an example of me, but ignoring me is not what I thought”’[5] (O’Leary 2011)

MADDY:                      Ok. So, basically you’re letting her push your buttons and not reacting, to highlight to her, her challenging behaviour?  I think I get it: Challenge by Choice, right? Choosing to step out of your behavioural comfort zone for a while, in order to try something new.

Comfort

The Circle Bar at the Roundhouse has three walls constructed mostly out of glass and with the unseasonably warm April weather, combined with the afterglow of performance; it makes for greenhouse-like conditions.  There is a burble of excited, congratulatory chatter between friends, family and staff.  The cast receive their audience’s praise; some shyly, some cockily, some warily as though still not sure how to take positive feedback.  Adrian Jackson from Cardboard Citizens is milling around, chatting to some of them about the project.  Those familiar with Jackson’s professional reputation are eyeing him talking animatedly to Mark[6], a young man with a passion for Death Metal and someone who has found the process a particular challenge.  He is also blissfully unaware of their envy: one gets the feeling that praise from Adrian Jackson is the Holy Grail for some of the participants. 

The crowd is called to attention by Terry O’Leary, Associate Artist at Cardboard Citizens and Director of the Set the Scene 2011’s production, ‘Audition of Dreams’ There are speeches and thanks to everyone and then, a nice touch, awards for the cast.  Someone has bought mini, fake Oscar statuettes, each engraved with an award category:  Best Rapper/Dancer, Best Puppeteer, Best Wolf Girl, Best Death Metal Head Ever, Best Presence in the Room. There has been much discussion over the last two days about what the award categories should be.  I am standing behind Adela, as they call out the award for Best Vocalist.  As soon as she hears her name, without missing a beat, she turns her head and finds me immediately, only to give me a smug ‘told you so’ look.  The irony of this is not lost on me. I had also been consulted on the award categories and heartily agreed with this one, although some might argue, that in a one horse race, winning is a pyrrhic victory: Adela had indeed been the only vocalist in the play.  I laugh to myself, but it’s the first time I have been able to laugh about it, since that afternoon’s dress run, but more of that later.

Stretch

Let’s go back to a taster session at the Roundhouse on a chilly afternoon in February.  I have to admit I was a little apprehensive about this session. I have worked with young people before in arts and educational settings before, but this was predominantly in China where young adults are invariably more compliant, particularly for a foreigner.  In this context, I am aware that I am a foreigner of a wholly different kind:  white, middle-class, highly educated, privileged and never been homeless. As I hover in the reception feeling somewhat like an imposter, there are one or two young people waiting and so I decide to talk to them.  I approach a handsome, friendly-looking, young, black man, dressed impeccably in the uniform of the young urban male: baggy jeans, hoodie and baseball cap.  “Hello.  Are you here for the drama workshop?” I ask.  The young man, looks me up and down like a butcher eyeing a particularly fine side of beef, and shifts position towards me a little, “Er, yeah. What are you here for? Drama as well?” he says, quite softly with a flirtatious smirk.  “Yes. Kind of.  I’m...  sort of... one of the facilitators...” I answer.  The twinkle in the eye and the smirk are quickly extinguished.  Message received: I am off limits to this apparent player. However, now that flirtation is firmly off the table, we can have a real conversation.  I discover his name is Lucas and that he is new to drama.

There is another reason why Lucas has stuck in my memory of this day.  During the workshop, the participants were asked to talk about themselves while a partner listened and then the partner performed an impersonation of them to the whole group.  Lucas worked with Daniel, a young man who had presented himself as a very confident and experienced actor, having worked with the National Youth Theatre and Cardboard Citizens in the past.  I had noted that when Daniel had introduced himself at the start of the workshop, Lucas had clearly marked him out as a bit cocky and therefore, as he saw it, his main rival for alpha male of the group. What none of us knew at this point was that Daniel had previously subjected himself to a three year, self-imposed silence and freely admits that this cockiness is a ‘mask’ he has since adopted when feeling insecure or anxious[7] (Tierney 2011).  However, that day, Daniel shared a confident and fairly accurate rendition of Lucas, at which all of the group, including Lucas, had laughed with recognition.  However, when asked by Terry how he felt about being ‘done’ by Daniel in this way, Lucas, laughing, said “Well… you made me look like a cunt!”  Not quite the response everyone had expected, but the timing of this very direct feedback caused everyone to laugh, albeit slightly anxiously on account of Lucas’ language.  On reflection, I wondered, despite it being made to seem banter-like, what Lucas had meant by that comment? Daniel’s ‘Lucas’ wasn’t unkind or mocking in any way, just accurate and yet did Lucas really feel affronted at being faced with this image of himself?   

This incident came back to me in week five, when Lucas was asked to embody a list of characteristics which are said to belong to the Good Wolf, in a story which is told by a character in the play.

JASMINE:        “Don’t be scared” said the Granddad, “We all carry two wolves inside us.  One that is brave, loyal, intelligent, gentle, protective, loving...”

During this list, Lucas had been asked to slowly stand, climb up onto a chair and physicalise all of these qualities.  On the first try, Lucas stands up on the chair and as he embodies the words, his torso starts to turn to the left, leaving him almost side-on to the audience.  Terry asks them to stop and go back, reminding Lucas to keep facing straight out front.  Again, Jasmine begins her story and once again, Lucas’ left shoulder begins to creep back and his body follows.  This actor is trying to hide.  Why?  Is this such a big risk for him? Is he scared to take his place on the stage?  This is strange for one who seems so confident in many other respects, especially with the opposite sex.  Maybe it’s because this actor, I later discover, is struggling to stay in recovery, is struggling to stay on the right side of the law, and is struggling to marry his public image of Player and his private tendency towards deep, intellectual reflection[8].  Emily Momoh, the Roundhouse’s resident youth support worker, who supports the conception of drama as a reflection of an internalised self, pointing out that when ‘you’re just in that zone... it all seems ok and quite normal, but then if you see it in the mirror, it doesn’t look so attractive!’ (Momoh, 2011)[9] Perhaps for him, he was still looking in the mirror and seeing that image of a young man struggling which was forcing him further into his personal stretch zone.  It is also possible, however, that this actor just thinks it looks better played that way.

And what of the other wolf in our story?

JASMINE:                    [the] one that is a loner, savage, sly, cruel, greedy, destructive.

Our gentle giant of a Death Metal fan, Mark A.K.A. Darkhole Villain, takes his turn to embody this wolf.  He slowly and gingerly climbs up onto the chair, his large frame slightly encumbered by the black padded parka coat that appears to be surgically attached to him, regardless of temperature. He begins to transform into what, unfortunately, looks more like a frightened puppy than a savage wolf!  Terry stops him, asks him to stop hiding his face and try again.  Mark had earlier that week asked both Terry and I to be much harder on him when he makes mistakes, to shout at him; so far, all that has happened is that Mark has had lines taken away from him.  After another failed attempt at embodying this savage wolf Terry shouts ‘I’ll give this to you Mark, if you just dare to be!  You’re not scared: you’re METAL!’[10]   This time, (albeit, with me standing on a chair at the back of the room physicalising the wolf for Mark to mirror), he gets it!  He not only gets it, but improvises a lone “Awooooooooooooooooooooh!” at the end!  This is major progress for someone who admitted to being afraid of ‘a lot of things... [he] was keeping in... [his] stomach’[11] and had, only days earlier, ripped up his script during the lunch break and announced that he was dropping out of the project.  Emily Momoh explains that this darker side to Mark’s identity was something he had been struggling with, in that as a young black man interested in Death Metal music, he was aware of going against the dominant stereotype of the young black male and as a result excluding himself from his peers.  The main challenge for him was to decide whether that was a part of his identity that he could accept himself and by doing so, also be able to embody that savage, lone wolf of the story.

DARKHOLE VILLAIN:  ‘Got to take risks!’

Mark was also, despite suffering from dyslexia and literacy problems, incredibly articulate and vocal about feeling let down by society and government.  He claimed to have kicked in a few windows (with his face covered) during the previous weekend’s anti-cuts rally, despite his claims of not being very political.

DARKHOLE VILLAIN:  ‘Defy the tyrant! Don’t be silent!’

Chris Johnston points out ‘Artists and creatives who rage against the system, turn instinctively to others who rage’ (Johnston 2004:107) a raging echoed by Mark and his character, Darkhole Villain. Many of the young people on the project expressed the desire not only to do drama, but to meet new people and there were numerous references to getting on with people they normally wouldn’t talk to.  As Lucas admitted ‘Usually, I wouldn’t have really got on with people who were homosexual, I recollect when in the Hub when Terry asked us to put a dance together and I was with **** (an ‘out’ gay male member of the cast), it was something different for me.’[12] (Tierney 2011) But who or what are these young creatives raging against? Is it themselves, the Cop in the Head (Boal 2006:40-46), family, the Government, Society?  Maybe it’s all of these and none of them.

These young people are a generation who have grown up in the context of New Labour’s ‘Third Way’ policy agenda (Byrne 2008 151-168) which would have them labelled as ‘NEETs ‘ (ibid. 160) but was actually more concerned with ‘incorporation’ (ibid.166) back into the neo-liberal mainstream of good producer consumers.  However, I question if exclusion is a passive action being done to them or if it isn’t that they exclude themselves as an act of rebellion because ‘reality to a lot of young people is bullshit’ (Momoh 2011).  

DARKHOLE VILLAIN:  ‘That’s it!  That’s it!  You care about real stuff.  Stuff that hurts.  You make me ask the question.  About me.  Little sister, you make me think.  Think about what was wrong with me.  What did I lack in my liberation effort?  The revolution will not be televised.  That was a lie.  They just forgot to mention, we aren’t interested.  The Only Way is Essex!  Why did I continue to believe things will get a little bit better?  ‘Coz I believed in my society, which made me the greatest second class citizen in history!’[13]

Perhaps this raging against the system is a hangover from New Labour’s Respect Agenda which proposed ‘to promote respect positively; bear down uncompromisingly on anti-social behaviour’ (Home Office in Gaskell 2008:2).  In a society which promotes ‘a specific conceptualisation of... youth as potentially dangerous and in need of (state) control’ (Gaskell 2008:3) and ‘unnecessary and excessive risk is commonly associated with deviation from the... culturally determined norm’ (Harari 2009:174), perhaps the need to feel stretch and panic, whether a negative or positive experience, has become an essential coping mechanism and the level of mistrust of society’s dominant forces has led to a tendency to react with what is commonly perceived to be ‘anti-social’ at any perceived moment of objectification by the state.

However, to suggest that any of these young people are really that radical would be misleading.  As I have already proposed, the line between reality and fiction is gossamer thin and the image of the revolutionary, I suspect, is mostly fantasy (Momoh 2011).  This notion of fantastical, unrealistic thinking and that some young people are ‘locked into a fantasy kind of idea about what [they] are capable of doing and what [they] deserve’ (Johnston, C. 2004:109) is illustrated in a most unnerving way by our last character.

Panic

RACHAEL:                    ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’

Adela A.K.A. Rachael, if you remember, the award winner for Best Vocalist at the post show celebrations, sees singing as a large part of her identity. It was something she spoke about often and with authority.  Consequently, when she was asked to sing in the show, she obliged willingly.   She had two short songs, one near the beginning and another to close the play.  However, at the tech rehearsal it became clear that the final song was problematic, sung acapella in an acoustically problematic space.  Clearly struggling, Adela was singing the song flat.  Terry and I decided that perhaps we could persuade her to cut the worst offending section and with my own training as a singer, I might help her with some guidance on phrasing and pitching.  Having spoken to me about her singing teacher, I assumed anything I had to say would be familiar to her.  How wrong I was!  As soon as the subject was broached, she claimed to not understand what I was suggesting, looked at me as if to say “What the hell do you know?” and with that, I saw the metaphorical shutters lower over any window of opportunity to improve matters.  ‘Are you OK?  I ask.  ‘Yep, I’m fine’ says Adela, and stomps off in the direction of the bathrooms. Suddenly panic hits me.  Had I been too harsh?  Had I been undiplomatic in my approach?  Had I not been constructive? I thought I had developed a good rapport with her.  I tell Terry what has happened and she assures me it’s fine, but when we come to that afternoon’s dress run, it is very clear everything is not fine.  When Adela’s first line comes, there is a gap in between cues you could drive a bus through, which is finally broken with the most monotone, lacklustre, uninspiring response known to man.  I see the eyes of cast members flick across in confusion and I feel myself sink into my seat.  She delivered every line of that run in the same fashion, including the songs, slumped in her seat on stage in front of the Artist Director of The Roundhouse, who had come to watch. There were also threats to leave before the evening performance, sending a wave of panic through the whole production. She didn’t leave, of course. This diva was going nowhere.  Later she claimed that it was because during that week everyone had started to boss each other around a bit too much and it had got out of hand[14], but it is interesting that when I caught up with Terry a couple of weeks after the end of the project she told me that Adela, who is also attends sessions at Cardboard Citizens, is still ignoring her and she has alienated herself from the rest of the cast of ‘Audition of Dreams’:  apparently the feeling is mutual.

One last note on comfort, stretch and panic: after the last performance, Terry sidles up to me in the pub and says “I’d have never told you this before, but that’s the first play I’ve directed that wasn’t Forum.”

Bibliography

Boal, A. (2006) The rainbow of desire, (trans. Jackson, A.), London & New York, Routledge.

Gallagher, K. & Fine, M. (2007) The theatre of urban : youth and schooling in dangerous times, Toronto, Buffalo, University of Toronto Press.

Gaskell, C. (2008) ‘”But they just don’t respect us”: Young people’s experiences of (dis)respect citizenship and the New Labour Respect Agenda.’ in Children’s geographies, vol. 6, no. 3, August 2008, London, Routledge: 223-238

Harari, D. (2009) ‘Risk in performance: Facing the future, in Theatre Research International, vol.34, no.2, Cambridge, Cambridge Journals: 173-179

Johnston, C. (2004) ‘The Role of the Camshaft in Offender Rehabilitaion’ in Balfour, M. (ed) Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice, Bristol and Portland, Intellect Books: 107-122

Madison, D. Soyini (2005) Critical Ethnography: Method, ethics and performance, London, Sage Publications Ltd.

Momoh, E. (2011) Interview discussing the Set the Scene 2011 project, 27.4.11 (see abridged transcript, Appendix D)

O’Leary, T. (2011) Interview discussing the Set the Scene 2011 project, 26.4.11 (see abridged transcript, Appendix B)

O’Reilly, K. (2009) Key concepts in Ethnography, London, Sage Publications Ltd.

Tierney, J. (2011) Evaluative group discussion (I) with selected cast members, 14.4.11 (see abridged transcript, Appendix E)

Tierney, J. (2011) Evaluative group discussion (II) with selected cast members, 14.4.11 (see abridged transcript, Appendix C)

Winston, J. (2006) ‘Researching through case study’ in (ed.) Ackroyd, J. Research methodologies for drama education, Trentham, Stoke on Trent: 41-62

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[1] Throughout, all characters and dialogue devised by the participants, scripted by Terry O’Leary for ‘Audition of Dreams’. Character of ‘Maddy' added by me as a device for this case study.  Any other exceptions are stated separately.

[2] Appendix A

[3] Rap written by the actress playing Desire, included in ‘Audition of Dreams’.

[4] Field notes: said by the actress playing Desire. Also Appendix B

[5] Appendix B

[6] Names of participants have been changed throughout.

[7] Appendix C

[8] He had badgered me throughout the project to give him a copy of my field notes to remind him of what we’d done, but I suspect he was curious about why I found the process so fascinating from an academic aspect.

[9] Appendix D

[10] Field notes.

[11] Field notes.

[12] Appendix E

[13] Edited version of a poem included in the play which Mark claimed to have written.  I can not confirm or deny that his claim is true.

[14] Appendix E

His Teeth

Continuing on my prison related theatre theme, last night I went to see His Teeth from creative arts company, Only Connect.  I am quite familiar with Only Connect as an organisation because I wrote a case study about their work in the resettlement and rehabilitation of ex-offenders for my dissertation.  However, I had never actually seen a full production by them.

His Teeth, written by Ben Musgrove, is inspired by the stories of Only Connect member Ralph Ojotu and tells the tale of a young man, Eric (Kareem Dauda) who comes to the UK illegally from Lagos, only to find himself under the control of human traffickers Roger (Dymond Allen) and Derek (Junior 'Mila' Miller).  Unable to run because of his illegal status, Eric finds himself minding trafficked children and is irresistibly drawn to drug addict Sarah (Eleanor Wyld).  Unfortunately for Eric, Sarah also happens to be Derek's girlfriend and when they finally do manage to run away together, Derek brutally murders (by decapitation) a young boy who was in Eric's care, thus framing Eric for the murder. The plot is complicated by a sub-plot involving the police officer (Harry Raffety) who becomes obsessed with not only catching Eric, but also with Sarah. A confident Harry Raffety handles his character's slightly bizarre progression very convincingly, but despite this, the narrative is often confusing and would possibly have benefitted from further dramaturgical work.

However, Designer Takis' gauze box, inside which the majority of the action takes place and the projection work of Mic Pool, leads us on an atmospheric journey from the jungles of Nigeria, to the council estates of London and are used to great effect to suggest the paranoid and drug-addled mental states of the characters.  Having said that, the gauze box at times was limiting as it meant that often the characters appeared to be in 'soft-focus', which was appropriate sometimes, but I personally would have liked to have been able to see the often nuanced performances of the actors.

Which brings me to the real revelation of the piece: the cast.  The majority of the actors are ex-offenders or at least have a some point been at risk of offending and similarly they have had no or little theatrical training prior to joining O.C.  Only Connect prides itself on producing professional standard theatre (as it's ticket prices will attest!) and certainly the production values here would not have looked out of place in any mid-scale theatre.  Often I suspect people are generally kinder when critiquing theatre staged with non-actors and this practice is open to debate when paying audiences are involved, but certainly these actors could hold their own with any seasoned professional.  While one must give great credit to Director, Maggie Norris for coaxing such detailed work out of her inexperienced cast, Kareem Dauda in particular, brought such vulnerability and poignancy to the role of Eric and, as the central character, he held the play together with great aplomb. Dauda is due to start professional training in the new year and despite his hang-doggedness about the lack of agents willing to come and see an ex-offender during our conversation after the show, I have no doubt that he has a good chance of being able to secure more paid acting work in the future.

Think Tank, New Philanthropy Capital recently published their research into the economic value of the arts in the criminal justice system and coincidentally use Only Connect as a case study in this report. There has also been much general discussion about the economic value of the arts in our society of late, however, much of this discussion, I feel misses the point.  Yes, there are transferable skills to be gained through participation in the arts which will improve people's chances of employment or, in the case of offenders, reduce the economic consequences of crime by reducing re-offending.  However, the focus on the economic is only half the story.  The sense of achievement to be gained from taking a bow at the end of a performance or seeing your artwork exhibited or your writing published cannot be measured in economic terms, especially when one considers that 42% of male prisoners (52% for young offenders) were permanently excluded from school (Prison Reform Trust 2011:54) and that only one in five are able to complete a job application form (ibid.).  If you have already been failed or betrayed by the mainstream avenues to becoming a functioning member of society, these not insignificant moments of victory can be a powerful catalyst to change, after all, many prisoners haven't even been particularly successful in crime or they wouldn't be in custody in the first place!

Director, Chris Johnston (of Rideout, Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) writes excellently about the 'easy dreaming' (Johnston in Balfour 2004:107-122) of the offender which often involves fantastical, but poorly thought through solutions to problems.  He goes on to say 'the act of dreaming is a kind of self-hypnosis in which unsustainable aspirations are buckled on like the armour of ancient warriors' (ibid.)  This dreaming, whilst often being compensatory and escapist, is of course a product of incredible imaginative powers and it is these imaginative powers which, when channelled in a more structured way, can allow the opportunity for participants in arts projects to explore these poorly written personal narratives, articulate the inarticulable and begin to imagine new personal narratives or at least entertain the possibility of their existence.

In the case of His Teeth, and also of Unprovoked (see previous blog post) for Ojotu, Foley and the actors, being given the opportunity to tell these stories, has, no doubt in their own ways, been transformative for the tellers and for the audience a chance to consider what one's own narrative might have been in similar circumstances. While everyone will take something different from stories such as these, one cannot put a price on these experiences.  As Einstein once said 'Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.'*

*Thanks to whoever it was at the recent Anne Peaker Debate who expressed something similar!

Unprovoked

Last night I jumped on the 31 bus to one of my favourite venues, The Roundhouse in Camden to see 'Unprovoked' by Kathrine Smith. The play tells the harrowing story of the murder of the 15 year old daughter of Mary Foley at the hands of another young woman at a party in 2005. The story leads us through the events surrounding the death of 'Olivia' (Lala Semakula), through the trial of 'Chloe' (Daniella Lamattina), her killer, and chronicles how Foley came to find it in her heart to forgive her daughter's killer.

Featuring an all-female cast of young actors, the tale was simply staged by Directors, Angus Scott-Miller and Emily Momoh with minimal set, using only projected images as a backdrop. This story needs little embellishment as the emotional journey of Mary Foley through shock, grief, anger and finally reconciliation, a journey deftly handled by Lorna Gayle, is moving to say the least. It is especially inspiring to know that Foley has continued to work with The Forgiveness Project to tell her story in prisons and youth groups to prevent more unnecessary deaths of young people at the hands of their peers. The play serves as a realistic portrayal of the growing, but little reported on occurrence of girl-on-girl knife crime and reflects the messiness of urban teenage relationships, the nature of violence and the power of forgiveness.

Mary Foley, was present for the performance, the first time that she had seen the story played out in front of her. She sat dead centre in the front row and after the performance, despite being visibly moved by what she had seen, she took part in a Q & A session with the audience, supported by Marina Cantacuzino from The Forgiveness Project. What struck me was how this quite ordinary woman, caught in a quite extraordinary situation, responded in such a way that makes us all question, how strong we might have been, faced with such monumental trauma. Foley, however, is quite clear on the factors which led to forgiveness. She described becoming aware of changing, putting up barriers and retreating from her family and friends. She eventually found herself in a very dark place, full of bitterness and anger but it was at this point when she began to entertain the word 'forgiveness'. The more she reflected on what this word might really mean, the more she realised that actually, as she says 'forgiveness is not a weakness', but it is in fact, a way of taking charge of our lives and removing the power from those who have hurt us.

Another factor which was key in her path to reconciliation, was correspondence with her daughter's killer and beginning restorative processes. The more she began to find out about this young woman's childhood, one which had been filled with domestic violence and abuse, the more she was able to look beyond the pain and grief, to see the bigger picture and the humanity of her daughter's killer. As Foley says, this doesn't mean that it justifies the violence or that it negates the inherent injustice of this brutal and unprovoked attack on an innocent young woman. Quite the opposite, she sees it as 'an act of freedom' and her continuing educational work as a way of paying tribute to her daughter.

Inevitably, the subject of this summer's riots was raised in the Q & A and we can, I believe, learn much from Foley's experiences. She is adamant that communication and open-heartedness is the way forward. By taking the time to listen to what is going on in the lives of our young people and to genuinely try to understand them, we might begin to instill a sense of self-worth and self-respect. The celebration of their gifts and talents, rather than the 'monstering' of these disaffected young people, might just encourage them to in turn, celebrate their own gifts and talents and those of their peers. After all, as Foley herself speculated, after hearing about some of the troubled lives that these young people lead, could you honestly say you'd be any different in the same environment? It is perhaps easy to be dismissive and indignantly say "Of course I would!" but on the opposite side of the same coin, could you say you'd be able to forgive, like Mary Foley did? I'd like to think I would, but I suspect I'm not that brave.