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? 

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!