Sharing the devising projects

One of the main assignments for the applied theatre course requires that two groups of students work with facilitators on a devising process that could be used to create a community-engaged theatre project. Our facilitators, Declan Gorman and Jenny Macdonald, each take a group and spend about five days modeling their individual devising processes in a concentrated experience. It’s important to note that these processes usually occur over weeks or months, but because of the short duration of the course, Declan and Jenny find ways to telescope their processes so that students achieve strong results in an extraordinarily short period of time. It helps that these students are talented and game to be working in this fashion, but it’s still a superhuman undertaking.

The final sharings of these projects occurred on Wednesday, August 8, in the Beckett Centre Theatre at Trinity College. We were happy that many of our facilitators from the Abbey Theatre, Upstate Theatre, and ANU Productions were able to attend the sharing. We were also joined by a group of young people from Tallaght, who are working with Jenny on another long term community project. This support from our friends and colleagues meant a lot to all of us, and we’re grateful for their attendance.

Sharing new work or work in development requires that the audience understands the context in which the work was created. In this case, we wanted to be clear that the students were learning a process rather than trying to create a finished product. After discussion with Jenny and Declan, we decided to frame the sharing as “evidence of a learning process.” Declan used this phrase to describe the potential of the experience, and I think it aptly represented the purpose and result of the devising process. Jenny’s work with the students focused on devising a performance piece beginning with their own personal stories, whereas Declan’s work focused on devising a fictional script that was then animated through a staged reading.

Each time I experience this devising process in Ireland, I’m appreciative of the opportunity to re-see the students as artists and to see many of them defy my expectations. From the very first day of our work together, I asked the students to experience the course work as artists and fully engage in all of the processes, rather than getting too engrossed in observing the processes from a meta perspective. This particular group really took my charge to heart, and I’m appreciative of their commitment to explore the art form through this creative devising process.

Applied theatre pedigree with Chrissie Poulter

The final week of the Ireland applied theatre course began on Monday with some input from Chrissie Poulter. Chrissie has served as an academic tutor and a devising facilitator for the program in years past, and after a three-year career break, she is back as a faculty member at Trinity College. She offered to share some of her thoughts about the longer history of applied theatre and community arts in Ireland, and I thought that her experience and expertise could provide valuable insights for students as they began to consider their final project for the course: a prospectus for an applied theatre project partnering with an organization in the United States.

Chrissie met with the students on Monday morning, a bank holiday in Ireland, and I was most appreciative of her willingness to come in and speak with the students. Chrissie spent her time introducing some of her past projects as a way to illuminate the history of community arts and the development of applied theatre practice in Ireland on both sides of the border. She then transitioned into a discussion of how the prospectus for a new project needed to contain enough information and background for a potential partner without becoming too academic. This point really grounded the expectation for the prospectus assignment, as students will need to make sure that their projects are nested within the larger field of applied theatre without alienating the prospective partner by using too much “insider,” academic terminology. Chrissie summed it up by suggesting that students think about representing the body of applied theatre work in their own proposals and communicating their pedigree to the prospective partner. This language helps to clarify that the facilitator need not be a full-on expert in the given area that the prospectus suggests to address, but that s/he needs to understand the ancestry of the practice. By illustrating this understanding, even an early career applied theatre facilitator/practitioner can gain the confidence and support of a potential partner. Chrissie made the distinction between being an academic and a well-informed practitioner. The two do not necessarily need to be mutually exclusive, but it sometimes it can be useful to isolate the strengths and nuances of each identity, particularly when the practitioner is working in an academic environment.

As I’ve said on this blog before, Chrissie Poulter is one of the strongest and most nuanced facilitators that I’ve seen at work. I’m grateful for her time and presence on the course, and I know the students felt the same. I look forward to seeing how her input influences the final prospectus assignments that I receive on August 22.

Back to devising in an urban context: on the ground in Belfast

Our third and final day in Northern Ireland featured a fair amount of rain. No downpours per se, but quite a bit of misting and drizzle.

We started with a trip to Victoria Square, a new, ultra modern, high-end shopping mall in Belfast. At the top of the mall stands a large, plexiglass dome offering a 360 view of the city. We took the lift to the top, had some input from our tour guide Jerry, and then Jonathan set the group to work on another collection of tasks. He asked the students to work in groups of four and to consider the following questions:

How do we come to know a place? How do we penetrate its histories?
How do we account for a place or help other to access it?
How can a creative process and/or performance help us claim/reclaim a space?
What/who qualifies insider/outsider?

These questions have been at the heart of our inquiry throughout the course, but I think the rich history of Belfast actually helped to clarify the importance of these questions in an applied theatre context.

With these questions in mind, Jonathan then asked the group to engage in what termed a cultural treasure hunt. He sent the students out into the area surrounding Victoria Square and asked them to gather information from people they met on the street. Here’s the list that he provided for students to consider:

PLACES REMEMBERED:
i.e. a place…
- where you bumped into a friend
- that reminds you of someone else
- that you know a story about
- where you used to go
- that you visited only once
- where you have never been
- that reminds you of somewhere else

PLACES LIVED:
i.e. a place…
- that I last visited
- where I meet people
- that I’m on my way to now
- where I always go
- that’s hard to find
- where I always meant to go

… and a PLACE NOT YET COMPLETED.

Jonathan asked students to collect the person’s name, the place, and the significance of that place. He also emphasized that these did not need to be extraordinary or historically significant places. This exercise was about mapping the experience of the everyday life of a place.

After 45 minutes, the students returned, and Jonathan gave them the following set of instructions and parameters for their compositions:

- In sight of/reference your PLACE NOT YET COMPLETED
- Re-imagine this space as one of the significant places captured in the first exercise that has been destroyed/demolished and is now being rebuilt with a new purpose
- Include two ‘characters’ you encountered in Part 1, one of which must be identifiably outside of the narrative (looking on)

- No spoken words
- 1 still image
- 1 slow motion section
- Clear beginning, middle, and end
- Be respectful/mindful of the life of the space
- Ensure you select a safe place to perform/spectate.

Twenty minutes later, traipsing through a light rain, we witnessed four original pieces on the streets of Belfast. A few people stopped to see what was happening, but most people just kept walking, more interested in staying dry than what some street performance. After the showings, I was struck by how much closer I felt to Belfast. I’ve been to the city five times now, but this fifth time was really “on the ground” in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. “Knowing” a place really demands a deeper level of interaction with that place and more importantly the people in that place. It’s a lesson learned, one that can carry into locations that I “think” I already know.

Following a lunch break, the group moved into the afternoon session with Jonathan at The MAC, a brand new arts venue in Belfast. We received a tour of the space, which features state-of-the-art theatres, galleries, and rehearsal spaces. It opened in May and is a beautiful example of how alive the arts appear to be in Belfast. Jonathan broke the group down into smaller working groups, and then each group was asked to create a verbal pitch for an applied theatre project that would pull from the work completed in the morning and be appropriate for the MAC spaces. I also asked the groups to consider articulating a question that they might be trying to answer through the creation of this new piece, while also making some kind of offering to the community that they might work with. Again, this focuses on the idea that we can’t just swoop in and take stories. What are we offering in return?

After the pitches, we made our way to a boat cruise on the Lagan River, offering another view of Belfast from yet another perspective. This cruise was followed by a short reception on the Belfast Barge, a floating restaurant-performance space-museum. Jonathan arranged for a community artist to join us, Conor Shields, the director for Community Arts Partnership. Conor spoke with our group about his experiences running this large community arts organization. He talked about obtaining funding from large government agencies, working with artists in communities, and making sure that the art-making is of the highest level. Here are some key points that Conor made in his comments to us:

- Conor spoke a bit about the history of the term “community arts,” and how it is having a resurgence. “Community arts” is an ancestor of the terms “applied theatre” and “community-engaged theatre.”

- the idea that in Northern Ireland, he was looking at “non-confrontational ways to support contention.” I love this idea that contention is allowed to exist, and that it can be supported rather than smothered.

- “Quality processes with well-compensated and supported artists will yield strong products.” Slightly paraphrased, but Amen!

- He talked about how community arts can offer people a way to represent themselves in alternative ways.

- Conor also made a clear delineation between the artist working in a community vs community arts. The way I interpreted his comments, I came to understand the artist working in the community as someone enters and uses the stories of a community in some way, but might not be interested in or concerned with the community being fully involved in the art-making process. Community arts would actually be focused on how the art-making is embedded with the people of that particular community and how they are involved in the process and product. These terms are still coming into focus for me, and I need more time to sit with the differences. I’m grateful to Conor for making the distinction between the two approaches, as it’s been weaving in and out of our discussions throughout the course.

After that lovely time on the Belfast Barge, we boarded our bus back to Dublin. We may have experienced Belfast and Northern Ireland through a bit of a whirlwind tour, but ultimately, I think I came out with a stronger connection to an amazing city that’s growing and changing quite quickly.

Please see below for some images from our final day in Belfast.

Devising in a natural context: the Giant’s Causeway

The second day in and around Belfast featured a trip to the Giant’s Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage site composed of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns that have been formed over 60 million years of volcanic and geological activity. It’s a scenic ride up the coast from Belfast to the causeway, and after the work that we’ve been doing in urban landscapes, it was fantastic to spend the day in a natural setting. We worried about the weather, but Mother Nature was kind to us with lots of sunshine.

As stated above there are clear scientific explanations for the development of the causeway, but there are also myths and legends that explain the formations as well. Irish giant Finn McCool and Scottish giant Benandonner apparently had some disagreements. Finn tricked Benandonner into believing he was bigger than he actually was, and Benandonner fled back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway as he ran away. This is one version of the story.

Working on an applied theatre project in a new location requires that we get to know the culture of that place. When I talked with Jonathan about the Belfast leg of this course, I knew that I wanted the students to have the opportunity to work on some site-specific work outside of an urban environment. Given the richness of the stories of the causeway, I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to engage in some original creation.

Students were given about 90 minutes to walk around the causeway, and then the group reconvened. I then broke them into four groups of four and gave them devising parameters to create a short, site-specific piece somewhere on the causeway. The piece had to be presented in a way that established an intimacy for our group, so as not to infringe on the experiences of others at the causeway. However, that did not mean that other people might not begin to watch and take in what the performers were doing. The devising parameters were as follows:

1. Choose a specific location on or around the causeway for the performance of the piece. Allow that location to inspire the creation of the piece as well.

2. The piece must have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

3. Use the number 12, 6, or 4 in the piece in some way.

4. Include a moment of discovery.

5. Conjure something from the myth/legend of the causeway.

6. Use the following text from Othello, Act II, scene i:

"The great contention of the sea and skies parted our fellowship."

7. Make an offering of some kind to the place.

The groups worked for 45 minutes, and then we promenaded to each location to view the short performances. I felt a great sense of pride watching the work that the students created in this devising exercise, as they truly found ways to engage with the site as an artistic home, albeit for a short time, while using their own creativity to re-tell the story of the causeway, often with some very different twists from the “accepted” myths and legends. This raised some questions about other audience members potentially overhearing these stories and thinking they were “true.” However, myths and legends, in their re-telling, shift and change from one teller to the next. And the students’ creations really drove that point home.

Reminder: We have to think carefully about authenticity and responsibility to the place that we are working in. It’s why one of the devising parameters involved making an offering to the causeway itself. We can’t take the stories of a place or a community only for our own benefit or purpose. Hopefully, the work that we create can also give something back to that location or group of people that we’ve worked with as an artist in that community. Again, the notion of insider/outsider came to the forefront of the work, and students continued to make those connections for the remainder of the day.

Giant’s Causeway should be on any trip to Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland. It’s not necessarily as majestic as the Cliffs of Moher or some other sites, but there’s something quite magical about it. It inspired some memorable performances for me, and I feel that I know the location better than I did after my first time, because the students immersed me in the world through their creative engagement with place.

Below you can see some pictures of Giant’s Causeway and the students’ devised work, and click here for an almost 360 view from out on the causeway itself.

Arriving to Belfast

I had to suspend my blogging over the past few days, as we were on the road in and around Belfast, and our accommodations did not have wireless internet access. My iPad does not plug into ethernet connections, so I had to go silent for a time.

On Tuesday evening Jonathan Harden joined the team in Dublin to provide an orientation to Northern Ireland and Belfast. Jonathan has taught on the applied theatre course since 2008, and this year he once again curated our experience in Northern Ireland. In his session Jonathan asked students to share what they felt they knew about Belfast and Northern Ireland and what questions they had. He shared some of his own thoughts, perceptions and experiences, but emphasized that this was only one story. I had asked Jonathan to focus the work in Belfast on the notion of being an insider or an outsider to a particular community and how that might affect the way an individual becomes familiar with a new place that s/he might be hired to work in. Even though Jonathan was born and raised in Belfast and spent much of his adult life there, his recent relocation to London has changed his own experiences of the place that he called home for many years.

We made the two-hour bus journey to Belfast on Wednesday morning, and Jonathan met us at Queen’s University. After a lunch break, we got back on the bus, and Jonathan conducted a tour of the city, pointing out various sites and locations, including the shipyards where the Titanic was built, and eventually taking us to the end of his street in West Belfast. This would have been a largely Catholic, republican neighborhood, meaning that the residents would have wanted independence from the United Kingdom. East Belfast would be largely, Protestant, unionists, people who were happy remaining under British rule. Throughout his tour Jonathan emphasized that these terms are only so useful in the contemporary discussion of Belfast, yet it was compelling to see the reminder of the divide in the various flags, banners, and murals on display in each of these neighborhoods. Jonathan also took us to a peace wall that had been erected to cut down on violence at the height of the Troubles. Throughout our tour I was reminded of the moments in my childhood when Peter Jennings of ABC News would report on IRA bombings in London and the hunger striking of Bobby Sands. Re-visiting this history just reminded me how important the visit to Belfast is for this course, as it allows us to gain a deeper understand of the entire Island of Ireland. The tour concluded with a visit to Ulster Museum and an exhibition on The Troubles that was informative and seemingly quite fair in its depictions of both sides of the conflict.

Following the tour and a quick check in to our rooms at Queen’s, students and staff had a chance to experience the excellent restaurants of Belfast, as Jonathan had booked a number of fantastic options. After dinner, Jonathan conducted an unofficial tour of some of Belfast’s best pubs, and the walking from place to place immediately allowed us to gain a better understanding of being “on the ground” in this compelling city. Pubs included the The Crown Liquor Salon (1826), Kelly’s Cellars (1720), and The Duke of York (1710).

See images below from our first day in Belfast, and click here to see a video of our stop at the peace wall separating East and West Belfast.