tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11502419531248303232024-03-05T20:59:40.397-08:00People Make TheatrePethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-65863795993470006632022-10-17T09:39:00.004-07:002022-10-17T12:20:07.889-07:00Art that helps. <p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;">ART THAT HELPS</p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;">We live in strange times - I wonder if you feel this - that nothing seems sure. What we do. What we are told. What we live on. All shifts - or crumbles. That’s my perception, just my perception. </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;">I don’t know my role now, all my life I have helped make a thing loosely called theatre. Sometimes it was the performance of some words that someone had written, individually. Sometimes it was a meeting of a group of people to muck about. Sometimes it felt like an excuse to gather. I liked it when there was a mix up of people. Christmas was fun. But now I’m older, and I’ve stopped. Or paused. Or hesitated. </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;">In these strange times I am thinking about what sort of theatre things are useful - I mean is getting together and mucking about particularly helpful at the moment? It’s so complicated - and contested - and noisy. Noisiness isn’t welcome. Do we have the energy now for contests and complexity? </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;">While I sit in my not knowing state, I notice arty/theatery things that do seem useful. I remember a couple of old projects that seem to be relevant. I read about Greek Theatre, particularly the Chorus, and I see a people like Eric MacLennan and Esther Campbell sensitively shifting their practice. Both artists have moved from one specialism to make projects with volunteers. There are a couple of commonalities - both use skills learned in their previous practice to deliver this new work and both happen to have made recent work in, and about, woods. I will talk to both, write up the conversations - perhaps there will be others.</p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;">1. ERIC </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;">In 2021 the artist Eric MacLennan conceived and produced a project called The Lesnes Hundred which invited 100 members of the public to nominate 100 ‘unsung heroes’. Eric recorded interviews with each nominator talking about their choice. Each nominee was then linked to a tree in Lesnes Woods, ancient woodland in South East London. The 100 trees representing the newly sung heroes were then curated into a walk and subsequently became the subject of a book. The interviews are available to listen to on Sound Cloud. The book is available at <a href="https://metalculture.bigcartel.com/product/the-lesnes-hundred"><span style="color: blue;">https://metalculture.bigcartel.com/product/the-lesnes-hundred</span></a> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb-TLbOa3QLv_09IKQWsIt7X-hIrCpxwgkrs8iygIOwdzAq5HJubAndO4V5VkWq--1VoKQo52emRpruYuMxcQ2b1s7zS_zOJ8Z00Au-3SMoT7tT8p6kzDfySI65XDaxQHwCQGgMfUNCvVR6I1r3pUUxxYglvfDJ1BqZolx7P5DFLC-__SeUZtKtmR_/s853/eric1.jpeg.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb-TLbOa3QLv_09IKQWsIt7X-hIrCpxwgkrs8iygIOwdzAq5HJubAndO4V5VkWq--1VoKQo52emRpruYuMxcQ2b1s7zS_zOJ8Z00Au-3SMoT7tT8p6kzDfySI65XDaxQHwCQGgMfUNCvVR6I1r3pUUxxYglvfDJ1BqZolx7P5DFLC-__SeUZtKtmR_/s320/eric1.jpeg.webp" width="288" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px; min-height: 12px;">I had previously collaborated with Eric on various performance projects - mainly promenade theatre and pantomime. When Eric launched the project I nominated a relative who had been a carer and inspiration for me in my early years. I was then surprised to discover that a friend and colleague, Dan Copeland, had nominated me. Thus I experienced the project from two separate angles. </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px;"><b>The following conversation took place in August 2021.</b></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Jonathan Petherbridge:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>So the project you created, The Lesnes Hundred, had a clear function for me, and I think for the other people that I observed when I came along to the opening event, so what I'm interested in is, creative work that has a utility, art that has a utilitarian purpose. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Eric MacLennan: </b>It's very satisfying to make something that has a utilitarian use, because then you feel you're not making something that's frivolous. When I started working with people on this their responses told me that this was an important thing for them to be celebrating… an unsung person. And what they were getting from it was also important to them. And people very often would thank me with great enthusiasm, or they would talk about the person and say, do they qualify? When will you let me know, if I can be part of this project? And I said, "you're in, we're talking now". </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Tell me where it came from?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>So for 30 odd years, I've been very happy working as a jobbing actor. And the nature of that means that quite often you have to do another job. And for many years that was fine. I worked for a publisher, and it was quite easy to dip in and out of that. But as I got older, it got harder. I felt I was sort of betraying myself, every time I had to go back to the office, I felt that was not me. Once the pressures of money started to be less of an issue and I felt more confident I started writing applications for small commissions. And to begin with I didn't get them, and then the writing of them gets a bit easier. And what was interesting about that was that quite often, they will be asking for something specific. And you would answer the question as if it was about solving a puzzle, they're asking for something, how do you do this? And so some of the commission's I've done - and I'm interested in work that's crossing boundaries, it's more than one art form - it would come out of an unsuccessful application. So the original one for The Lesnes Hundred was up in Northumberland in areas where there's low participation in the arts. Often places where people buy the most lottery tickets is where there's the least engagement in arts.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">: </span>Yes.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>There are various organisations that are trying to address that with work that's accessible, that attracts people to art who often feel art is not for them. And I'm interested in that - I'm really excited by those things where you're saying "No" this is not a middle-class club, it’s for everyone. So, the call-out in the north of England was for a park, and it was an interesting area - the Charlton brothers grew up in the town, it’s a mining town, it had this history of trade unionism and great sports people footballers and cricketers, and I looked at photographs of the park and it was ugly and I thought, well, maybe you could attract people into the park if all the oak trees were named after footballers. And the chestnuts were people from the health service or whatever. But they didn't quite go for that.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>So, their objective was to attract people into the park - to animate the park </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>They wanted to celebrate the park, which was unloved and they wanted an art project to do that. So that was the problem or puzzle I was trying to solve. They said no, thank you very much. But there was enough in the idea about naming or renaming trees that continued to percolate. Then the Lesnes Hundred project, or, rather, the Estuary Festival, were looking for works for their festival along the Thames Estuary. And by that point, I had started thinking about unsung people. It was partly through the pandemic where we'd been clapping for heroes as that was called and I was inspired by Postman's park in London, which was that place where they celebrated people who'd sacrificed their lives to save others, and I thought actually this is an interesting thing - to celebrate the unsung. And when I pitched the idea to the Estuary Festival, and to London Borough of Bexley, they liked the idea and so that's where it started. And they want people to walk the site. So making something where you're getting people to walk around makes sense. The thing that I've done is largely invisible, but if people know about it, they can find the trees. And they can find the stories, the interviews are on Soundcloud so they can access them. </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>I experienced it from two sides, I saw the invitation to nominate somebody, and I did. Then I went to the launch event and discovered that I'd also been nominated. Then I had the privilege of listening to both interviews on SoundCloud, one of which is me talking about my Aunt Doris. And then, I listened to the interview between you and Dan about me. And it was interesting and useful to hear you reflect on some things that I've done - I didn't know that people thought those things. So it feels like something that could be a service… that could be accessible for everybody, just a regular conversation between a persons friends, about that person. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>I think that's wonderful. And, it's been, it's been one of the privileges of my life making theatre with you. But I would, I would be too shy to say the things to you that I said to Dan, because… we don't do that for some reason. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>So recording the conversation and putting it on SoundCloud introduces a curtain. I, who or whoever, can sit behind the curtain and listen to what's being said in the conversation - it's a veil. In these times, it might be a useful device to help people feel valued. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>I wanted people to pick people who were still living, I thought, we're celebrating the trees, and they're living. And I want people to celebrate unsung people who are living. But inevitably, people came to me and they said, my husband died last year, and I want I want to pick him. And I thought, well, I can't say no to that. But the ability to be talking about someone who isn't there in the room, be they alive or dead seems to be very valuable. And most people have provided a photograph of the person. And that's a really lovely collection of faces, and you look at the faces, and you can see the kindness on those faces. And just hearing about someone's life, there's a children's poet in Sweden, there's a caretaker who's only known as "Caretaker Tony". And he’s someone who is just looking after this estate, and someone who lives there, knows that this person is keeping it running smoothly for no reward, no thanks. So that's a story that I think we enjoy hearing.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>So what would you call yourself when you're doing something like this?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Well, when I'm doing something like this, I'm rather delighted that people introduce me and they say, ‘Oh, this is the Artist, Eric’, and I think, great, I'm an Artist! And I suppose you know, I've always felt my work in the theatre is as an Artist, but I'm aware that it can be seen as a frivolous activity. When I started making my own work, the first thing I got funding for was a thing called A Voyage Around My Bedroom. And it was cross between installation and performance - the performance was one-to-one. And when the forms went back to the Arts Council when the project was finished, and then got logged away, I then looked at the final document, and it was funded in the section of visual arts. And I was delighted I thought this will have been logged as theatre. But no, that project has been categorised as visual arts. So in some places I get called an Artist.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>OK. But the people who came along the launch event what do you think they would have called it?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>We dithered over what to call the event and in the end we just called it the Celebratory Event. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>That’s interesting when we were considering what you might call yourself I wanted to suggest celebrant, although it’s a bit religious… or humanist. You’ve used the word ‘celebratory’ a few times, and also ‘frivolous’... you've apologised twice now, for the frivolity of pure art. But I'm suggesting that the project has intrinsic value. It encourages social cohesion. Knowledge, friendship. Everybody there was glowing that afternoon, everybody watching the project and walking around was at least three inches taller than they normally are.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Yeah, well I'm delighted to say that I felt that too. And I think part of that glow comes from having investment and ownership in the project. People turned up there knowing that it was a real thing - it was dealing with a real person - they were doing something real. And when they went to their own tree, often it was an emotional thing. And there were tears, they had a real investment in the thing. In terms of the title of the Celebratory Event. Some people said, ‘Oh, when are you doing the performance?’ And I sort of hesitated thinking, well I know I'm going to have a singer there to celebrate the event but it's not a performance. I'm going to be there as myself. And I might say ‘thank you for coming, everyone. We're going to go over here now’. But I'm not going to be performing. And so when people said, “When are you doing the performance?”, I felt I had to correct them that I felt it wasn't a performance, it was a real thing. It was a gathering of people, in the same way that people might gather, to celebrate a wedding or gather for a funeral. Or they might gather because a bridge is going to be opened. We were there to do a task, which was to say, these trees were now named, we'd cut the ribbon, that job was done.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>A task. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>A task.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>One of the other things that struck me about the project is that it seems appropriate to now, to these post-pandemic times. Is that satisfying to you you as a ‘celebrant artist'?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Well, I nearly went into the church, and of course, there are many similarities between the church and theatre. Someone who's got a loud voice and likes dressing up,</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>I was going to ask you what skills are required? I mean, if you're saying it's not a performance. What skills were required from you as somebody who spoke and also somebody who curated the event?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>I think I have the ability to be quite gentle and approachable. So... I don't arrive and say, Hello, I'm the celebrant artist. I arrive in front of the public in a very humble way. And this is something I've learned from my days of doing promenade theatre with you, where you perform in a public space. You can't say, we're doing our show here, go away - it's a shared space, you have to arrive with humbleness</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP:</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>So humility is one skill </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Humility is a skill. And an aesthetic sense, a sense of what is beautiful. I spent a long time working on images for the project, the design of the map, working out what the tags are going to be. So that the of the thing has value, so that people who are coming along participating, they're not going to get a little leaflet with typos on it, and think, ‘Oh why am I doing this, it's rubbish’, they're going to come along and think, well, the production values are very high. So, this bloke, Eric, I'm really delighted that he wants to hear about my caretaker Tony, because this is going to be valued.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>It's serious. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>It's serious.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>It's serious, and it's and it's valued. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>I have to approach people as I do in life, with respect. Again, it comes back to the joys of working in theatre, where it's a team effort, and everybody's job is important. That's very important in my work not to think like some artists who feel they are more important than the consumers of their work.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>It feels to me that this is a new genre - although actually, it may be a very old genre. But it’s something that blends art and celebration. And in a way it does sound frivolous. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Yeah. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>But it's serious. And participation, as you said, is another aspect. And territory. One of the things that surprised me was I had expected the trees to be saplings. I thought it was a new planting project and I was slightly worried about it as some would survive and some wouldn’t because they're saplings…but they weren't saplings, they were mature trees that have been given an additional identity.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>That's nicely put. Thank you.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>But going back to performance, I notice in your pieces that there's usually a moment when we do something collectively, that in the drawing project, you do that thing with a string, and then the very ritualistic handing out of crayons and stones. In this piece, the collective thing was breathing. And you showed lungs and trees, and we breathed together. So, there was a collective moment. It is very unusual to do something unexpected, with a group of people that you have not met before. And to do something that could be regarded as frivolous, but that actually connects and attunes us. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Well perhaps celebration is not the word, perhaps the word is ritual. And those collective things are very important to me. What's really nice about doing something like that, and it happens with The Open Air Drawing Room is that you're doing something that works like follow-my-leader, so you're not reliant on text. And people who don't have English as a first language can still participate.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Because it's quite clear that I'm, I'm lifting a stool. And then we're all doing that we're all putting it on the floor. We're all standing, we're all holding hands. And you just find that we all know what to do without having to say, "can you now do this?" which is lovely. But then there is a genuine joy that comes from the fact that you find everybody is doing something together.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>I think it's something that needs a critical mass of people. You talked about the seriousness or the importance of the endeavour… the number of people who have turned up at a given time and are willing to muck about brings an import to the thing we're doing, whatever that thing is called. What do you think is required from art or theatre now? Is it different at the moment?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>I think I've always been interested in things which are experimenting.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>And I don't think that's any different now. In terms of in terms of The Lesnes Hundred we were limited to gathering people in groups of 27. So just on a practical level, the organisation has been done in a particular way, a lot of the meetings were on zoom, rather than face to face. But I don't think I would have approached it differently, except we're in a changing world. And I think, as I say, one of the themes of our time is celebrating the unsung, specifically the health service. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">S</span>o it felt that was an appropriate angle to take.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>It's as though nature, in the guise of the pandemic, has insisted that art makes us attend to certain things, it’s insisted on social distancing, limited numbers, and doing things out of doors. This all currently comes first, so theatre buildings have been relegated in importance and artists have been forced to do more listening. What do you do next? You’re making a book of Lesnes, but you were saying about recycling project proposals that haven't yet found backing? What have you taken from Lesnes? </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Well, I did a kind of miniature town twinning project that has similarities with this called “In visible (L)ink”, where people were linking let's say, a park bench in Lewisham, with their Auntie in Canada, a park bench there in Canada. And again it's about people. And that was something that I was able to take to different towns. And it occurs to me that the The Lesnes Hundred - it would have a different name obviously - could be done elsewhere. But it would depend on what the needs of that place might be. And it might end up being a different project. I don't necessarily see that it's something that would happen somewhere else. So that so that's one possibility but I have to have to see, with 100 to 200 people that their ownership wants it to continue. But I'm planning a walk in the autumn to walk the whole site, and to hear the stories. It'll take about four hours and my hope is that it potentially could become an annual thing. So that we know that, you know, whenever it’s the 30th of September, there is always a walk of The Lesnes Hundred.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>How would you summarise what we've been talking about?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Are we talking about crossover arts?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>I think what I'm talking about isn't the crossover between art skills or art forms, it's the crossover between what people at the moment crave and art. It is what a society that has been isolated and separated and has been collectively depressed needs or wants. How creativity and skill can help us lift that and bring back some… social cohesion is the wrong word for it, perhaps it’s social fabric. Weave or re-weave the social fabric or just check the fabric and the warp and weft of it. And, you know, that's, what I felt that the Lesnes Hundred did, because it dealt with ritual and territory? But was it celebration? Was it information sharing? Was it Yoga?</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>All of those things except Yoga.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>And yet breath is at the centre of Yoga, and you started with breath. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Yes, breath because the other big theme of our day is the climate emergency. And without the trees, we would have no life so it feels it feels that a very important part of the project is to try to highlight how important the trees are, and how, as well as cherishing people, we should cherish the trees. Joseph Beuys made a wonderful project in the 70s in Kassel in Germany. The project was planting 7000 trees. And he thought about the number and in the city he felt 700 wouldn't be noticed. But 7000… people would think, yeah, there is a project here that is noticed. And in a way that project is continuing now, after his death, the trees are still loved, and Kassel is a different place. But sewn into the project is the fact that as a piece of art it doesn't fit in the commercial art world - it can't be sold. Similarly, the Lesnes Hundred cannot be sold. I feel if I was making editions and selling them, the focus of my work will be different. But a lot of the performances that I make now have funding to pay for them, so the public who participate they don't pay and that feels good. They do more than not pay, they actually contribute the material, they contribute the material and often they get given little gifts. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JP: </b>The public have given their labour. At the centre of the Lesnes Hundred are 100 lives, and those lives have been lived and then they have to be recounted and considered, and you then forage that material. And there is the gifting of that material, and when you arrive at the free event you know other people have generously given the gift of their story. So at the event there is a spirit of generosity – it is tangible - and being anywhere where people are generous is uplifting. For one reason or another when art is generous - when you have that that sense of a gifted performance or gifted material, that is invaluable. But it’s actually valuing people.</p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">What you're saying about the commercial arts sector reminds me of Banksy trying to put things into a public space and then people trying to either cover his works with perspex and charging people to see them or taking them down and putting them in a gallery so they can use them as an investment opportunity. Not only does it negate the free event and cut off the access to see the thing - and to be part of a gathering – but it also crushes that spirit of generosity.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>EM: </b>Yeah. And the commercial art world is very tied up with people investing in it and those people decide what is valuable and what isn't valuable. And here people are giving stories that they regard as of enormous value. They are setting out what is truly valuable. </p><div><br /></div>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-14783461244799317342021-08-17T08:36:00.000-07:002021-08-17T08:36:33.143-07:00That which must be done - on Art and Ritual in a time of lockdown<p>March 2020 saw the shock of locking down. The confinement to our homes. The discovery for many, of Zoom. The fear of touching surfaces, door handles, people. Breath and voice became dangerous. The great separation and then the great confinement.</p><p>Gatherings were quite suddenly forbidden. Shops closed. Panic buying signalled the full horror of the situation before being displaced by the full horror of what was happening in hospitals - and then in care homes. All this came before we had knowledge, data, vaccine. </p><p>Everything stopped. </p><p>Then online social hyperactivity started. The quiz. The sea shanty. The kitchen disco. The desperate search for a way for musicians to play together in the same time but not in the same place (the Stones got there first I think). </p><p>Now… nearly 20 months later, I'm still asking the same question that has haunted me throughout - is there anything Theatre can do to help? Behind the question lurks an anxiety - is there any need for theatre now? </p><p>There's been time to read. Right now I'm two thirds of the way through Art and Ritual by Jane Harrison. First published in 1913 - finger on the pulse as ever, Peth - she's tracking where it all came from and looks at three concepts and the order in which they arrived. The Dromenon (from which we the word drama comes), the Theatron (theatre) and the Orkestra (you can work that one out yourself). </p><p>The ‘Orchestra’ is the area on which the chorus performs, and this came first - it’s the centre, the kernel of it all. Originally in the Agor or market place, the ‘Orchestra/Orkestra’ was a round flat area where Rituals took place - where dance and chanting was done to celebrate the important moments of the year and of life. </p><p>The ‘Theatron’ originally denoted the place of seeing - where the audience sits, and this only comes along later - when Ritual turns to Dromenon/Drama. Jane makes much of the word Dromenon - she translates it as 'that which must be done'. </p><p>I'm fascinated by the point at which the audience were added. When the doers were joined by the gawpers. Or some of the doers, chose to sit it out and gawp. Or maybe some people weren't allowed to do and had to watch - the children, the womenfolk, those who weren't initiated. </p><p>As she says there wasn't originally an auditorium, then as more people watched raked benches had to be built in the agora so the gawpers could all see the ritual. Then the seating collapsed. So some bright spark worked out that the hill beside the Acropolis offered a less rickety seating arrangement and the Festival of Dionysus was re-sited and that arrangement became the basis of what we call a Theatre. But we did it before we watched it.</p><p>But what was it that was performed? Well, the ‘thing that must be done’ were Rituals either heralding the approach or celebrating the arrival of the meaningful events of life - Summer, Spring, deep Winter. Death, Birth, Fertility. </p><p>The Orchestra was occupied by the chorus. Jane uses a lovely description of the chorus - “doddering and pottering old men, moralising on an action in which they are too feeble to join". This appeals to me because I seem to find myself in the company of potential chorus members quite a lot at the moment. And they are feeble, but they are also principled, angry, experienced and loving - with occasional episode of doddering thrown in. </p><p>This doddering chimes with my question about theatre. Is theatre doddering and pottering - or does the societal hesitancy I see currently suggest that 'the thing that needs doing' might be of higher priority than 'the thing that needs gawping at'. </p><p>The thing that needs doing might well be just gathering and sitting/standing/gawping and breathing together. Or perhaps the gathering might be more active - moving/singing/speaking/chanting - but done together, as a chorus. But if this a ritual to celebrate the thing, what is the thing we feel compelled to celebrate? Is it actually the gathering itself?</p><p>In these days of zooms, emails, texts and tweets perhaps gathering to gather is a radical and required action. Perhaps this is the function theatre needs to take on and to be explicit about. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-107724233292988522021-07-11T04:55:00.000-07:002021-07-11T04:55:13.213-07:00Where were you when England won the World Cup?<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Where were you when England won the World Cup? </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In July 1966 I was 11. It was Antony who mentioned the World Cup. He suggested we might be able to get tickets. He was right.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We'd recently to Hatch End. I was an only child (not my parents choice). I was quite used to my own company but my parents worried that needed friends. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In one week I was taken along to the local scout troop <u>and</u> enlisted in the church choir - neither of which were in my or my family’s normal experience. At neither did I make any friends. But two other boys lived nearby. Across the road was Peter - also an only child - and along the road a slightly older boy, Anthony. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Peter’s parents were Austrian. His mother cooked schnitzel and noodle soup. He had a snooker table and the run of a large garden in which we would play football. He had an Arsenal shirt and a leather ball. I liked facing penalties, diving spectacularly in the mud to push the ball round the imaginary post. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I have few memories of Anthony but he and I went to watch Watford, then languishing in the third division with Pat Jennings in goal and it was on the train back from a match that he mentioned this thing called the World Cup.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We definitely saw the opening game at the old Wembley, a boring 0-0 draw with Uruguay. I don’t remember an opening ceremony but there was an air of excitement. We came back for England’s 2-0 victory over Mexico. I can’t remember whether we saw their next win, 2-0 again, against France - I think we did. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Seared into my memory is watching Englands quarter final against Argentina. A horrible dirty and broken game which saw the Argentinian captain Rattin sent off - but refusing to leave the pitch - England sneaked a late winner. This was a Saturday afternoon, a heatwave, we stood high up in the stand (in all the other games we had been close to the pitch, and most were night matches). We could hardly see but there was definitely a different atmosphere now - a tension, a sense that England could be in with a chance of winning the tournament.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I was now getting more interested. I read the sports pages in my father’s paper. In the other groups North Korea were the surprise package until they came up against Eusebio’s Portugal team. Germany started with an imperious 5-0 thrashing of Switzerland. Then Brazil failed to beat Portugal and went out. It was getting interesting. How much of this was on tele? </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">England met Portugal in the semi’s on the Tuesday evening. They won 2-1. Were Antony and I there? I have a feeling we couldn’t get tickets - bear in mind there was no buying online - did you just roll up and pay at the turnstile? I don’t know, he was the one who got the tickets, I just tagged along. What we did know was there was absolutely no chance we would get tickets for the final. But it was ok, it was going to be live on tele. We even had colour now. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But... my Dad had a friend - Uncle Ronnie (not a real Uncle). He was a referee in the Manchester Central League. Apparently he had two tickets going spare. Uncle Ronnie later gave me his autograph book. He watched Manchester United and Lancashire Cricket Club. Not only does it have the Busby Babes and Charlton and Best, it has Benfica, Brian Statham, Puskas - but why did I end up with it? It may have been a sympathy gift - given to salve my disappointment.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">When my mother heard about the tickets she reminded me that I had a prior commitment. The scout troop I had been forced into, were going on their annual camping expedition. I was signed up. My parent had paid the subs. I had to go.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So on the morning of Saturday 30th July 1966 about 20 boys and the various leaders, boarded a coach. I tried to take my transistor radio - it wasn’t allowed - no radios were permitted, and of course there were no mobile phones. We were driven out to somewhere in the home counties - Oxfordshire I think. We put up tents - slept 6 to a tent. I hated it.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Over the next two days there was no news. No-one knew the result. Or if they did they kept it from us. On the Tuesday there was a break in one of the long marches we were subjected to. We stopped in a village where I sneaked into the paper shop and managed to get a look at the back pages. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">What had I missed? England had scored a disputed goal to snatch a draw. Then they’d strolled on to beat West Germany - but it had been in the balance until the last moment of extra time. Clearly I had missed a tense, skilful, dramatic and unique match. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">55 years later I realise I’d missed being part of a historical moment. Clearly I was robbed, and the anger and sadness actually gets worse as time goes on. Today - on Sunday 11th July 2021 it’s a few hours to England taking on Italy in the final of the European Championship. The media call it the most significant game since 1966. They keep going on about it. Wall to wall coverage provokes me to write this. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This used to be a story I enjoyed sharing and laughing about but the passage of time (and England’s poor performance) have turned the story into something crueller. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I want to go back and speak up for the 11 year-old me - to argue with the grown-ups, to refuse to go, to feign illness or just find a place to hide until the coach has pulled away.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I’m sure I don’t have to ask parents today to watch the game with your children - enjoy whatever emotions it throws up. Cheer and cry together. These events don’t come along every day. You might be lucky to see two in a life time. Or one. </p>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-45262320584477691772020-09-21T10:11:00.050-07:002020-09-21T10:23:19.784-07:00The Re-Marking, 5 (From the woods to the river)<div class="separator"><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></p></div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For some reason hitting dates and marking moments can be important to me - not only does it bring an excuse, it allows the seasonal reminders to come into play. And in the same way I left Bubble exactly 30 years after starting, so I have chosen to start this last blog at the same time and day of the week as we met up in Oxleas Woods. Midday, Sunday 3rd August 2020.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Then, as today, the sun was shining and up around the cafe on the hill people were doing Sunday - longer dog walks, the proper breakfast, maybe a newspaper. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the bottom of the hill Dan was not alone - Clive Llewellyn, actor of this parish and his partner Janet were waiting. Sandy, Wilf and Carlotta - arrive with their coffees. Andrew Stern - a Greenwich resident, activist and connector, with fellow participants Judith and her daughter Danielle who have brought their inter-generational relationship to our inter-generational projects. Then Sam and Lukas, friend and actor Tanya. Pip, May - and yep, Nao Ngai - who first worked with the company as a technician many years ago and has lit shows and provided support, connections (and Japanese late night picnics) over the years. Then another Tania, - Tania Peach, production manager, another Greenwich-ite who made early outdoor shows possible. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And Oxleas was the venue people who wanted the hard core promenade experience, came to. These are ancient woods, dense, hilly and wild. Every year that we did a show here I would come and plan the route. Every year I would get lost. Occasionally the stage manager leading the audience would get lost. There’s a lot of old magic here. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Before we set off we have a task. Jools Voce - artist, performer, workshop facilitator, writer and thinker (who I should have mentioned at Canada Water because she was a key artist on the Great Outdoors) cannot be with us in person but has sent a series of tasks for us to undertake.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We follow the instructions and listen to Jools’s words…</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm43I_Ye0j3kBaMGwxrsP5aBM0JyPsgC1oLoEGTOh399kBt08mICVYN_1HcTHsx2O-KPF8ycqQ1zygbNAHAe-4hC51WCGkzwvf82amrCwDWaX3JZz-NtIWoxPniC9Q359fQFA_Gule-uE/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="398" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm43I_Ye0j3kBaMGwxrsP5aBM0JyPsgC1oLoEGTOh399kBt08mICVYN_1HcTHsx2O-KPF8ycqQ1zygbNAHAe-4hC51WCGkzwvf82amrCwDWaX3JZz-NtIWoxPniC9Q359fQFA_Gule-uE/w400-h233/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE2ik7WAe3BEVqqQVUF4q3tna5hqZ2k-jz9Qpe1A9mcr8bH1ru1tlAOtvxhGxCebN94mpeVQ1sPaRPJRHzPVEIJ8HtRTfQR9L4FpYxEMkJNNbZJcA4TG2jlFEO2G8vd3hMLx2npEiKeTY/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="746" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE2ik7WAe3BEVqqQVUF4q3tna5hqZ2k-jz9Qpe1A9mcr8bH1ru1tlAOtvxhGxCebN94mpeVQ1sPaRPJRHzPVEIJ8HtRTfQR9L4FpYxEMkJNNbZJcA4TG2jlFEO2G8vd3hMLx2npEiKeTY/w400-h248/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYQIOLmZvZ_V1l0K1TMjBF-hGXRHPwoAhBms8D1mGQnXQslq03gtrSekm5BSGuY5TQwswOvIYQEs7U28yWqzGSYhurWixnxub8tpEqDQUHhxDyvl87lWbn9byMh_nCNx1rCpxEuFuJKLI/"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUj7kLRvcAg2SQoG8FctpTVLHNBWSy6fnQwLHxjaH4dDObXk5n2KLe5YLW4BBgMEFdKCT3uG2WWSxZn_3IWU8HUfb6zEiSXpW3S035cj9ms__8VhfCaWtrjnYS_X2HFz-rrtcCRl4czCg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUj7kLRvcAg2SQoG8FctpTVLHNBWSy6fnQwLHxjaH4dDObXk5n2KLe5YLW4BBgMEFdKCT3uG2WWSxZn_3IWU8HUfb6zEiSXpW3S035cj9ms__8VhfCaWtrjnYS_X2HFz-rrtcCRl4czCg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQeciKwqfXnNEeI30i81tng7MudGk5fW9RrpJj2KdfgUH7pWlocVI1jQVAEo5fJv6GVEv07UDeWPLnfYV1OZmTcv1c3mTb92EUxSBQwUHJs5lCGVuuduSs5260mmq5firqaBllCCWANoU/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQeciKwqfXnNEeI30i81tng7MudGk5fW9RrpJj2KdfgUH7pWlocVI1jQVAEo5fJv6GVEv07UDeWPLnfYV1OZmTcv1c3mTb92EUxSBQwUHJs5lCGVuuduSs5260mmq5firqaBllCCWANoU/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgvZPr_M9xitDJDB0sOmWawL53ne23TqYG8ibs2wC0xcO8uJIumtFfisSz0cXAievlAvlaPS_iCga80xHcs6dMPH3g1sZaCyzUl6YBgChadjTnGSoNNXKOgisAOShUXnKIqM4_RSbQOGs/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="400" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgvZPr_M9xitDJDB0sOmWawL53ne23TqYG8ibs2wC0xcO8uJIumtFfisSz0cXAievlAvlaPS_iCga80xHcs6dMPH3g1sZaCyzUl6YBgChadjTnGSoNNXKOgisAOShUXnKIqM4_RSbQOGs/w400-h266/image.png" width="400" /></a></div></div></div></div></div><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Jools has written seven - postcards. We read them at the next stops facing in the directions asked. They explain her and her families connection to the woods, of her brother being a park keeper. They describe her work-journey with the company from participating performer to director, they explain the need for good boots, they talk about the show Jools made and performed here, about the fact she and Amanda called me Aslan and they talk about the community of theatre making and how it touched her and others. She nails it. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We need to visit some of the performance sites. We set off into the woods past the outdoor gym and up on to the plain to talk about the various images we remember from scenes which we performed here. Then to a clearing on the edge of the woods where we are joined by Ken and Farhana - who has written various scripts for the company, and a tall man on a bike Mr Nick Khan - who gave many fine performances with Bubble in summer and Christmas shows and who is yet another local!</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As ever Oxleas offers us a variety of environments. We stop and enjoy Jools’ words and remember bits and pieces of projects but the power of the woods rules. The overhanging branches break the sunlight, the leaves gel the rays and coloured light bathes our eyes. The wind moves the grass and strokes our faces. The different surfaces of the paths play into our muscles in subtly changing ways. There are smells and sounds too - it’s all very primal and I’m having a bit of a moment.</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdYwCX0k7CQWLEsi4EUlDic1JjBW_cvuJ8Ic9nD3jmuKQiTPdFcufEJ_SYRmFh2xLzZT_YEZOl2IW9eTt5jv2SXyOmeO2r_0f37yNiVjKp9atQQyEQFGdLF91pKp9UHsV-CCfFQTog4mc/s1024/3A7FF656-0B53-4FBA-9846-CDF1D86D7738_1_105_c.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdYwCX0k7CQWLEsi4EUlDic1JjBW_cvuJ8Ic9nD3jmuKQiTPdFcufEJ_SYRmFh2xLzZT_YEZOl2IW9eTt5jv2SXyOmeO2r_0f37yNiVjKp9atQQyEQFGdLF91pKp9UHsV-CCfFQTog4mc/w400-h300/3A7FF656-0B53-4FBA-9846-CDF1D86D7738_1_105_c.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNaBCiY_dMoR17KALiGJAobMvjXAlQ0_4VK6Mnsh6wGW1uGs8zszWMLTTJPWDwI_ZxuP2X0cZoEaq7NzCAJPnpHCvGqfqq3sXjhTX63GjCzuRMolAiO2nLF9qXMFtWVKhr0qqIWlfIQgs/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNaBCiY_dMoR17KALiGJAobMvjXAlQ0_4VK6Mnsh6wGW1uGs8zszWMLTTJPWDwI_ZxuP2X0cZoEaq7NzCAJPnpHCvGqfqq3sXjhTX63GjCzuRMolAiO2nLF9qXMFtWVKhr0qqIWlfIQgs/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRE4Du7mjFj-TZ4nArXZtey5_YuuJ9r-VDf6gjf7x1s7BkfMQhaL80OOF74UfDIsFz63QG7Yr9GEwz9sHPmL-cf9kA2bAxKNZpipY4TM0fkyU4Uw31Y_dsQv8flUtc1w08cQ7eAyTx2I/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRE4Du7mjFj-TZ4nArXZtey5_YuuJ9r-VDf6gjf7x1s7BkfMQhaL80OOF74UfDIsFz63QG7Yr9GEwz9sHPmL-cf9kA2bAxKNZpipY4TM0fkyU4Uw31Y_dsQv8flUtc1w08cQ7eAyTx2I/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIaWgnpC8KX8UqZJX5BxB4AN3Db8r-t31SbsnkL-GZMbt5P-4uJz9Z_i6YcYGhdOzXKRBkA3Sg1WYOblbG52BZ3OtLcAT1WgqfrjyoiyKUrK87a1MT6jkIu0V0cvCtflarGgslaJ_9K_o/w400-h300/image.png" width="400" /></div></div></div></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Up tp Sevendroog Castle and finally out of the edge of the woods and overlooking London - well the South Circular/Shooters Hill but. We cross Woolwich Common and talk briefly to a woman who is trying to collect the litter that has been left. She works up to and along a invisible borderline - her aim seems to be to keep a certain zone clean while the adjacent zones remain covered in detritus. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We cut across Charlton Park - the grass is baked hard here and meet up with Iris - company archivist, supporter and participant. She has been in quarantine but we are passing her house and she will join the caravan for a stretch. We wind through Maryon Park or is it Maryon Wilson Park? There are two, and Andrew tries to explain the difference to me - but it won’t stick, why give two different patches of greenery the same name? We visited one or the other just the once. There was a spectacular electrical storm, the show was abandoned, but that night some of the inhabitants of the park decided to de-construct our set and seating. They left the pieces laid out on the damp grass like an airfix kit - attach piece A to component B, proceed to part C..etc.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I had announced at the start that the theme of the day was to be images - and yes we have conjured up memories - henges made of fridge freezers, singing sirens, fighting lovers, flaming arrows. But images of rain, interrupted shows and the sodden crew are just as strong. Water pouring off the roof of the beer tent. Steam rising from the damp rugs left out to dry the following day. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s a bit of a schlep now to our next stop, Greenwich Park. The procession gets strung out. I worry that we might be pushing it but people are chatting away - Farhana and I talk scripts and writing projects and Ken and I talk about failing eyesight and hospital appointments. Sandy and Nao have their photograph taken.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTF3A_hTYbdHnurQUMSYO04GK0-pPvC8pBZFCwR6myaS0yEXH-mJY4Y5S5PRnqqQs1TF4RK-OhMySGgJU4EV3d_5hSlhemLEICGNKnbVsa2cdRrMFqFersMUf8Ov_3n7sJCWufAgLgnyU/s4032/IMG_6918.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTF3A_hTYbdHnurQUMSYO04GK0-pPvC8pBZFCwR6myaS0yEXH-mJY4Y5S5PRnqqQs1TF4RK-OhMySGgJU4EV3d_5hSlhemLEICGNKnbVsa2cdRrMFqFersMUf8Ov_3n7sJCWufAgLgnyU/w400-h300/IMG_6918.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">At Greenwich, near the bandstand we are met by the Ogras - Shipra, producer, critical friend and key bubble saver, her family Arun, Aya and Zooni. She brings love and a much appreciated tub of Samosas. I pass round cherries - cherries have been on offer on every one of these walks. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Down into Greenwich we go past the trees and bowls of Greenwich park, past the vistas and statues to meet Theresa and Richard - Theresa worked as administrative director for Bubble, cooked many meals but no books. She too is a stalwart of the extended company. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">And Lily is there - musician, writer and the MD on our last big show, Primary in which she dusted off and tamed the Marimba. Lily, Sam, Tanya and Wilf are of the same generation and all as children watched bubble shows. It gives me much pleasure that in the last few years each has helped make theatre with us as a professional artist - both in, and out of, doors. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Down to the Cutty Sark. Memories of dancing cup cakes in Urban Dreams and then right on cue Tommy joins us. Once a member of the youth theatre, now a member of the Board - his first show was Urban Dreams which his mother Leslie wrangled him into. And now Eva turns up, and I ask her to try and wrangle Danielle and her mother Judith into the Mayflower project. As we stride past the artificial slopes of the Laban Centre she drops into step beside them. By Deptford they are on onboard. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Nearing 11 miles on the clock now we decide to give the Albany a miss and head for the Dog and Bell. We stop by the adventure playground to take a pic of the surviving team. It’s been re-named the Richard McVicar playground and Mac, as he was know, was another friend of the company. I’m hoping Nicole Charles might join us. Another who grew up with Bubble, in her late teenage phase she pulled together a project on street arts. With Macs help Nicole interviewed the young people of Deptford who used the playground, and then made a show which was performed here - I remember her mic in hand, pulling in the audience. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Then it’s 2000 and high on the walkways of the playground, the monstrous Humbaba is slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu as three goddesses in tall purple wigs incant to the mortals below. They looked like a cross between the Supremes and Marge Simpson. Nicole was one of the trio.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxqnujzyw57mqHUbJHJ6LA8MbifltI1tf3WcsbuJBbYdisrR260gcnEQadFtzKeNPCqrZ_4tNBTnreW_Jm0w7WvQ1ZAZoAXsbpwWLonLTGqYkoehAZzydpT2lydgUJa3fgqC5iqAfqkmw/s1024/8dcc9032-9620-4c0e-97ae-b0e1ace7d89f.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxqnujzyw57mqHUbJHJ6LA8MbifltI1tf3WcsbuJBbYdisrR260gcnEQadFtzKeNPCqrZ_4tNBTnreW_Jm0w7WvQ1ZAZoAXsbpwWLonLTGqYkoehAZzydpT2lydgUJa3fgqC5iqAfqkmw/w400-h300/8dcc9032-9620-4c0e-97ae-b0e1ace7d89f.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Nicole comes to Deptford but can’t find us. In the pub friends come and go, Angie Bain turns up - she too has been looking for us, searching the streets of Greenwich without luck. But she’s here now. Then Tania Peach drops in with her daughter, Katie - another young artist making her way in the world.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I enjoy the London Pride as Nick Goode, another Bubble alumni, plays fiddle with the band in the garden. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s been 27 friends today and just the one dog. The endeavour has worked - it has eclipsed recent events and exorcised some ghosts. It’s been a slice. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There will be one or two more Re-Markings coming up, but in the meantime...</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">ta's.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ta</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To all who came and made it.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To Dan for advice on flaneuring and pics.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To Sandy for ordnance surveying and yarns.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To Fran for natural history and pics.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To Pip for proof reading and love.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Peth 21.9.2020.</span></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-38918440300251966862020-09-21T09:40:00.006-07:002020-09-25T02:20:34.247-07:00The Re-Markings, 4 (Dodgy Southwark).<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Southwark is the home of Bubble. Over the years we have drenched the borough in theatre. My list shows 16 places where we have made significant performance pieces - and that’s before we get round to the schools, the sheltered housing units, the youth settings and the businesses. Yep, drenched is the right word. Has it made a difference? That’s for another day.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We’re going to visit 8 of those venues and along the way I want to big up the practitioners whose ideas we nicked. And it’s just as well we’re just doing the eight, as this particular 9.5 miles will be undertaken on what is officially ‘London’s hottest day on record’. It gets to 37.8 degree Centigrade - which is a neat 100 degrees Fahrenheit - well that was actually measured at Heathrow. But believe me when we gather at The Scoop, even though we’re beside the cooling waters of the Thames, it’s frigging toasty. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We gather at 3pm. According to the records, at ten to three it was a mere 37C (with a 15 mph wind and a visibility of 16 km, so what are we complaining about?) Dan is waiting - he has a hat today, very sensible. Some arrivers are expected - my son Wilf, the chair of trustees Simon H, councillor Damian, Dame of the parish Simon T, choreographer/quizzist Maggie, participant Ken - who clearly can’t get enough of this, and Pip. But two are unexpected - Martin, who started with Bubble as a young theatre maker but has been a company member for the last few intergen shows. Then a strange man in beard, baseball hat and sunglasses, who I do not recognise… until… of course. Andy Serkis - actor, saxophonist, Gollum and now motion capture guru/big cheese director. I am touched - Andy and my (and Pip’s) working relationship goes back to about 1986 - when he was just out of uni and I was cutting my directorial teeth in Lancaster. He worked with Bubble in the tent, in a good production of Threepenny Opera back in 1990. It’s great to have him along - that’s until I ask him to get behind a camera - but more of that later. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Scoop was the site of the Bubble pancake race - notorious, dangerous, cold and wet (sometimes), hated by (most) staff, loved by participants, a bit ridiculous. An annual event of egg finding, flour gathering and pancake tossing which brought a bit of messiness to this semi-public, privatised space. It was also the site of Forty Walls and Ten Doors - a community piece which filled the Scoop with people and moving walls. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We head for Bermondsey - along the river with Mr Hughes taking short cuts and dropping in bits of local history. We dodge through estates and across the squares of South London. It’s hot. Is that a London plane or a cactus I see through the heat haze? </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyr51rTuHhBNhwWgQOxZMN941JQXGS-ioq95vTa7kZYC0hNEICgNtmBcreuco8oeCMXBkIAbwz0SAbBPEDcfOxq9PmFv2-SVlqkntqN5DZH4R-nTTBNUmWeXBriR5XqDXnMvhvc8VvHmE/s1024/0241A276-D216-4F74-8898-25D65ED835C0_1_105_c.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyr51rTuHhBNhwWgQOxZMN941JQXGS-ioq95vTa7kZYC0hNEICgNtmBcreuco8oeCMXBkIAbwz0SAbBPEDcfOxq9PmFv2-SVlqkntqN5DZH4R-nTTBNUmWeXBriR5XqDXnMvhvc8VvHmE/w300-h400/0241A276-D216-4F74-8898-25D65ED835C0_1_105_c.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We arrive at Kintore Way and sit on the grass across from Kintore nursery. I want to talk about Vivian Gussin Paley as it was in the reception here class, that I first properly tried out her story gathering, story enactment technique. Vivan is a hero of mine. She brought simple theatre making into a kindergarten setting in Chicago, reflected on and recorded what she was doing, then wrote beautifully and succinctly about the serious business of children’s play. I was lucky to visit and observe her working, then to adapt one of her books for the stage. I was also fortunate to meet some the children at Kintore. </p></span><p></p><div><div><p></p></div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There are two I remember. A girl who wouldn’t take up the offer to tell a story - and who the teachers believed didn’t speak English. And a boy who did accept the challenge. In week 1 his story was ‘my brother and I watch TV’. That was it. Week 2, when I asked him if he wanted to develop his story he extended it to ‘my brother and I watch a cop show on the tv’. Week 3 he took no prompting - ‘my brother and I watch a cop show on the tv and the baddies come out of the tv and chase us’. OK, that’s interesting. But in week 4 ‘my brother and I watch a cop show on the tv and the baddies come out of the tv and chase us and we chase them back into the tv and fight them’. </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">While the boy was playing with concepts of narrative a la Vonnegut/Beckett, the girl was building up to opening her story telling account. When she did start she told a beautiful extended story, (in English) about her grandmother, a swimming pool and the gobblers (aka sharks). </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As we sat on the scorched grass and vultures circled above, I explained Bubble sort of had a Grandmother - Vivian, and a Grandfather, who I would talk about later. I read from a letter Vivian had sent, then we set off for the Biscuit Factory and Southwark College to remember custard cream making (From Docks to Desktops) and then foraging for testimony about schools deploying a little kit of smells and textures to prompt (Primary). </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These and our next two stops - Dilston Grove and the Swedish Church were all animated by projects researched and performed by intergenerational teams of (mainly) Southwark residents. Artfully designed by Pip and skillfully scripted by Simon Startin, these were prime examples of what I call Vernacular Theatre - made from local materials, by local people, for local purpose.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the Swedish Church I pass round a picture of Len Hatch - ex Docker, contributor, critic and the inspiration for from Docks to Desktops. We read from the play - it’s a piece taken from an interviews with Barry Albyn, undertaker. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">‘When I was a kid and I walked along Tanner Street, all I could smell was the hide, the leather. As I walked up Bermondsey Street there were other smells, because you had where they made mink, which were quite vile smells, then you walked further up and you had the perfume factory. Then you’d get to Pearce Duff’s and you had the custard stewing, you know. Then you’d get to the Blue and have Edwards or Spa bakery with that lovely bread smell, then you’d get to where the biscuits were being baked, coconut on a Thursday, Bournville on a Friday, you know. So everything in this area is summed up with smells. There are new smells now. There’s the Mogul I can smell, with the lovely spices as you go past. There is the Turkish bakery at the back of the shop opposite. The smells are still there. The smells are just different. And the people are just different’. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiig10_2H0MnIWX_mjE3XhEiny2leTgMke1xY_7jmr7CfQGINw3_9TggGiG_zM54y6Mtdg4xAZq-EeFOIq7S3YigB2jpHwJcFFpR-TxO96U363LI4KDUDF5F8nqZ26hVIIaHffaV5b5qg/s1024/09001819-6072-4CBE-9D03-BF21EAD20A9D_1_105_c.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiig10_2H0MnIWX_mjE3XhEiny2leTgMke1xY_7jmr7CfQGINw3_9TggGiG_zM54y6Mtdg4xAZq-EeFOIq7S3YigB2jpHwJcFFpR-TxO96U363LI4KDUDF5F8nqZ26hVIIaHffaV5b5qg/w400-h300/09001819-6072-4CBE-9D03-BF21EAD20A9D_1_105_c.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Arriving at Canada Water square we step over the bleached bones of commuters who have succumbed to dehydration and are joined by Marigold - producer and maker of intergenerational projects, Lucy Bradshaw - Bubble’s senior co-ordinator and intergen performer and Marva - who not only has been a stalwart of almost all of our pantomimes but appeared, with her daughter, Georgia in a project performed here, in this very square. </p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A bespoke piece inspired by the water fowl on the lake to one side and the tube and bus station on the other. Made for the expansive square with about 90 performers, a live music score, Wellington boots and a lot of plastic rain ponchos. </p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">On we go - across the lovely Russia Docks Woodland, where I announce ‘Bubble did precisely nothing’ - but no, someone corrects mem we did a bugs and slugs project here. There’s a lovely rolling conversation going on now, artists, friends, family talking about what happened, what is happening now, what might happen soon, it’s getting slightly cooler. A camel train lopes past, merchants with silks, perfumes, spices. Aromas of the desert are carried on the mistral. </p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Then I get us lost - the only time on the Re-Markings so far. But on this long hot walk it really isn’t the time to add another half mile to the itinerary, but I do. </p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Finally we locate the Pump House. This is where the ‘Grandfather’, Augusto Boal comes into the picture. He came to Bubble back in the early 1990’s to teach and talk about his practice of Forum Theatre - one of his Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. Andy, Simon Thomson and I all attended those early workshops some of which took place here. The learning impacted on all three of us and informed the work we have made since. There’s a short passage I want to share from one of Boal’s books…</p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">‘The theatrical profession, which belongs to a few, should not hide the existence and permanence of the theatrical vocation, which belongs to all. Theatre is a vocation for all human beings: it is the true nature of humanity’.</p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It’s time for a team photograph. Luckily we have an Oscar winning film-maker in our midst so I entrust Mr Serkis with the task. Unfortunately it seems he was suffering from heat exhaustion and his sweaty finger slipped on the focus button. </p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p></span><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaMCJqtsG6nIHTbBDYUUlRZBhMo6qAAlExcjsKXtpYDDcoALGcgMdRjPmrNxBpApEq0VRSRlAb1JcLrrIeq8auHY6-RW4UdTdyuCUw-RuvX4fwu-bgvUpg3PqEXPcKmAbb5k_kGQvPma8/s320/IMG_2110.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaMCJqtsG6nIHTbBDYUUlRZBhMo6qAAlExcjsKXtpYDDcoALGcgMdRjPmrNxBpApEq0VRSRlAb1JcLrrIeq8auHY6-RW4UdTdyuCUw-RuvX4fwu-bgvUpg3PqEXPcKmAbb5k_kGQvPma8/w400-h300/IMG_2110.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Several pounds lighter we drag ourselves along the riverside path to our final destination. Cath is there to meet us very sorry that she was unable to partake in the hike but she has many many good reasons. </p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">While The Ship has never been a Bubble performance venue it has played an important part in the story. The pub sits opposite Bubble HQ. When I arrived in 1989 it was known as the office and too much time was spent there solving the problems of the current project and discussing the the ways of the world. Times and licensees changed but it is still the go-to place for after work wound-licking/plot-making/sorrow-drowning and re-marking marking.</p></span><p></p></div><div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3itSI8z8EMRnPksKMiarjgE2Tx8i9lkZ4L8c_Vbfu8V61EwjYsxbZn_f087XxdW-I9Vjf06WfYOmwwSiLjj__lC9_mKnYtWlTSLMxh_w6uE_wfWAZipEUsb2P6_z8oq_bKCF4Yr5yyo/s4032/IMG_9940.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3itSI8z8EMRnPksKMiarjgE2Tx8i9lkZ4L8c_Vbfu8V61EwjYsxbZn_f087XxdW-I9Vjf06WfYOmwwSiLjj__lC9_mKnYtWlTSLMxh_w6uE_wfWAZipEUsb2P6_z8oq_bKCF4Yr5yyo/w400-h300/IMG_9940.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s an appropriate terminus. Today - the 31st July 2020 - is contractually my last day as Creative Director with London Bubble. But as we sit there slaking our thirst and resting our aching limbs that slips my mind.</span></p></div>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-67818683912831491192020-09-21T09:17:00.002-07:002020-09-21T09:17:56.519-07:00The Re-Markings, 3 (The North!)<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">8.5 miles. 10 people. 2 dogs.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dan is sitting on the bench outside Waterlow Park cafe. Of course he is. It’s a greyish afternoon at the top of Highgate Hill, rain threatens and it’s a Monday. Monday 27th July 2020. To my surprise and pleasure participant and ex-vicar (I believe) Ken, phoned earlier to let me know he is coming. Apparently Lucy at Bubble HQ has passed on details to some of the group members. Pip, May and I are slightly early but here’s Jimmy, and Guler, and Lianne - I did not know they were coming! Sandy arrives - he wasn’t coming either, but he’s here. Cath, Charter of the Mayflower. And now Michael Breakey - a survivor of the first walk. Then Pip’s brother and loyal audience member Chris with his dog Tobi. Two dogs. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Two dogs is appropriate, for Waterlow is the park where Nick Khan, playing Tweedledee, or was it dum, was attacked by…. I’m a couple of sentences into my explanation when up strides Mr Folorunsho. Charlie F, who himself played Tweedledum - or was it dee? And of course Charlie, has written a poem for the occasion - which he now gives.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A wee little story not long to last</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But in Alice at Waterlow we had the twin scene task </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mr Khan was giving his Tweedledee blast</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When golden Labrador ran fleetingly past</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hated the sword, shield and acting master class</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And barked proper loud for the crowd, lots of laughs!</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ran Dee down as Labbie seemed pretty aghast</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And soon she reached him, bit him straight on the arse..</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Least when the checked him he’d had his Tetanaas!!</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Which he wrote on the tube on the way to the walk, apparently. This is all true and lovely but not quite as I remember it - we drop down the slope to the scene of the crime as it starts to rain gently. My version - there were two labradors. The boys were dressed as boy scouts replete with caps - and apparently dogs don’t like men in hats. Nick fended off the dog with his wheelbarrow. The dog attached itself to his buttock. He did a complete 360 with the dog swinging off the ground securely attached. I’m afraid I was helpless with laughter. Nick was in shock. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A letter we received later from an audience member included three bullet points of feedback - the second reads “Really sorry the dog attacked Mr Tweedle (dum? dee?) - (sic). I hope he’s feeling better. Security needs to be better, they would watch the people not the play. But it was still a shame.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(The third bullet point reads “No sex and violence in the play. Although I guess you did this to make the show accessible to tiny children, you didn’t have to”… and goes on to argue for the inclusion of adult content in kids shows). Well the dog attack was pretty violent.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s appropriate the Chris and Pip are here. Our children played together many times in Waterlow, as Chris lived nearby - and still does. We have memories of the older boys on a toboggan - and then when young Sam got his turn, the unforgettable image of him losing control of the sledge as it gathered momentum down the hill, and him disappearing over the edge and down, what I knew was, an almost vertical drop to the footpath below. - I was helpless with laughter then too. This is the place Pip last saw her Mum in London - she was taken to the Whittington at the bottom of the hill. This is the place I got the phone call my Dad had been taken into hospital - I flew from the rehearsal to his bedside and almost as soon as I arrived he said his goodbye as best he could, closed his eyes, then made a slow, gradual and graceful stop - stillness - death, we call it.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And the place had and has much life - we got big joyful mixed audiences here, all ages. And lots of dogs. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Out the bottom of the park we go and down to Parliament Hill fields. Charlie will only go as far as he can manage - he is walking with a stick but quite determined to participate and I am honoured. Charlie is big man of the theatre - he is known by all and knows everyone. He is passionate about story, performance and the politics surrounding our business. We first worked together back in my second Bubble season. He has done Carpet Tales, Pantomimes and Parks. He has been a board member and officiated at Linda Dobell’s funeral. Oh and now he writes poems it seems.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We are aiming for the original Bubble HQ - or the Roxy as it was known, where the company was first set up in 1972. When we get there it is gone. The site replaced by newly built maisonettes. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Nevertheless there is an air of excitement and Charlie dubs it ‘The Source’.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I read an extract from Tony Rowlands’s history of the first 12 years of Bubble - Castles in Park (available on the company’s website and well worth a read).</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“It is hoped the Itinerant Theatre Company will play for a week or more in each Borough in order to involve the whole community in the company’s activities. A possible programme could consist of: a main musical extravaganza; a late-night play; a children’s play, plus specially arranged workshops and school playground ‘events’; two short revue pieces which would be incorporated into a variety show….and a rehearsed reading of ‘The Cherry Orchard’, ‘The Wild Duck’ or a new play.” </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Which was taken from the Greater London Arts Magazine the year before the company was formed. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFrOxUmkRtaberJJXc91S39Cl_-NDkwQL_ddPaaKHiW2P6EscngUkP1hxmLAJXLYHvqOrUZtqmXLwW4NeG65_Gi0-7BFa7LIG_s1Mv5ZLixTDt9X3uq7xl0B-Ami45W6miPy-pH8m86U/s4032/IMG_2364.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFrOxUmkRtaberJJXc91S39Cl_-NDkwQL_ddPaaKHiW2P6EscngUkP1hxmLAJXLYHvqOrUZtqmXLwW4NeG65_Gi0-7BFa7LIG_s1Mv5ZLixTDt9X3uq7xl0B-Ami45W6miPy-pH8m86U/w400-h300/IMG_2364.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>A team photograph is taken and a suspicious woman comes out to water her plants and see what all the fuss is about.</span><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Charlie (that’s him in the hat at the back) leaves us here after Jimmy lets him in on the secret that a secret bus runs from here, southwards, and across the river back to the land of normality. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The rest of us trudge on, past the Roundhouse (and memories of a time before Bubble) through the hell that is Camden Town today and then, just before we start along the long stretch beside Kings Pancras, we come to Old St Pancras Church - which rings a bell for both Pip and me.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We stop in the churchyard and I impart all I know about the Hardy Tree (which takes all of 15 seconds) and Pip imparts all she knows about Mary Wollstonecraft whose tomb is also here (Pip takes about 30 seconds but I’d argue she speaks slower). </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For those that want to know, Mary Wollstencraft - philosopher, writer, feminist - wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. She died at just 38, 11 days after giving birth to Mary Shelley. As a young architect Hardy had to oversee the moving of graves and their contents to allow the adjacent railway line to be widened. He decided to lay the headstones around an ash tree - see image below.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Erudite and informed we stride on past the aforementioned railway line and Eurostar terminal, then across the Euston Road. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnlCAgVWTRzPBzRGAbmbubhJHVNOrhPhd37upL0q_Q4yxbtmF2eeTZS4O76PReCB58CIfA2Dczs2-fV24XXz-9RCgPuM6usBLhhMbgt-Eo5dmScb60eNFkyOqXgO5gJqCiYDJt0Xj1WRc/s780/Thomas+Hardy+Tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="780" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnlCAgVWTRzPBzRGAbmbubhJHVNOrhPhd37upL0q_Q4yxbtmF2eeTZS4O76PReCB58CIfA2Dczs2-fV24XXz-9RCgPuM6usBLhhMbgt-Eo5dmScb60eNFkyOqXgO5gJqCiYDJt0Xj1WRc/w400-h266/Thomas+Hardy+Tree.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>We are tired and the conversation has turned to which pubs might be open - including one that is normally run by Cath’s friend, but it’s her day off apparently.</span></div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But before the pub we must visit the Cochrane. This is where we did pantomime, and where Breakey worked with Central St Martins. I witter on about the seats - for some reason the auditorium has a slight undulation and the seats were made of different heights so everyone could see. That’s until someone took all the seats out, and then put the rows back in the wrong place so latterly you might find yourself sitting in a low seat at the bottom of the undulation behind a tall seat up the slope in front of you!. Well I find it interesting.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But Breakey has a present for me (the first of two I will receive this evening). He explains something I wasn’t aware of. Apparently he tried to smuggle an image of me into each of the pantos - for morale purposes you understand. And he has a tin of Bubble beans for me. With an image of a younger, svelte looking Peth, adorning the front. This is beautifully made. The ingredients list on the label reads</span></p><ul>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>Methane 10 cubic metres</span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>Farts 160</span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>Runny poos 2.5</span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>Burps 17</span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>Uncomfortable silences 4</span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>Furtive glances 24</span></li></ul><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Panto. When the whole team makes merry.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When we get to the pub there’s just the hardcore left. We have a good drink and Cath gives me a book - ‘This Land is their Land’ - David Silverman’s recently published book about the history of the Wampanoag people and their relationship to the Mayflower. Not only is this a lovely gift with a lovely inscription, it’s thoughtful and pertinent to the project we’re currently developing. The content is spot on, it’s exactly what we need to bring the next project to fruition. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcwsVuSW3cyCn9Xq8LX98UmswsW62g_ccxi3OPTrtsh9wNpenU9ZhJwkEmZ-ntFSQhNfNY36r3PWZGz8552_9b50e8APMLu2JfT7Xgc5Rkc26wdexcihPadeUTeEra846A8Lwvt-ktdLI/s4032/IMG_1089.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcwsVuSW3cyCn9Xq8LX98UmswsW62g_ccxi3OPTrtsh9wNpenU9ZhJwkEmZ-ntFSQhNfNY36r3PWZGz8552_9b50e8APMLu2JfT7Xgc5Rkc26wdexcihPadeUTeEra846A8Lwvt-ktdLI/w300-h400/IMG_1089.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><div><br /></div>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-86530923557276158072020-09-21T08:38:00.015-07:002020-09-25T04:03:18.268-07:00The Re-Markings, 2 (Lovely Lewisham).<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sunday 26th July. 11am. Pip (my partner), May (our dog) and I, descend the slope of Sydenham Wells Park to find Dan enjoying the morning sunshine. Sandy and Fran, who live quite locally, bounce up. Then Ian Mac with his bike - once a ‘participant’ now a jobbing actor. Then friend of the company and local Twitterist Jane and her husband, another ‘participant’ (I prefer non-vocational artist/actor, but that’s a bit of a mouthful) Eammon. Down the slope comes Simon Startin who has written many of the scripts for shows that graced this park. A good group.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I want to re-visit the stream-side site we always used but on arriving we find the largish playing space - where Sirens of Titan bounced on space hoppers and the rattle stealing crow from Alice was simulated by a huge sheet being passed over the audience - from back to front (please enjoy Saul’s rendering of the moment below)</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIp7PaN2USrL3etyQz9neVeEv9-BrsrnitoOl7P48eUSyGr298GitqRId0bqAmR-YK9HDxhhUOmQtKa6nyRMCBy0sVA_f4JHAFCpLVnljm5qDSZBQAC9iQA0XbcNzroQvk4jn2ClQCAg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIp7PaN2USrL3etyQz9neVeEv9-BrsrnitoOl7P48eUSyGr298GitqRId0bqAmR-YK9HDxhhUOmQtKa6nyRMCBy0sVA_f4JHAFCpLVnljm5qDSZBQAC9iQA0XbcNzroQvk4jn2ClQCAg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Xd0d-I8OrBMEn3-JXm9k6vI1B0-psfqqsUWxLmqV0htBfFMV_j9mWhySh3KSzjTLsmBksKdPpnB5vGWlk0CNTd_6jjLhFNfUJje5WzWWJyDTewpcEAi0h-eYRWcet0GpVE3B7SvOqYo/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Xd0d-I8OrBMEn3-JXm9k6vI1B0-psfqqsUWxLmqV0htBfFMV_j9mWhySh3KSzjTLsmBksKdPpnB5vGWlk0CNTd_6jjLhFNfUJje5WzWWJyDTewpcEAi0h-eYRWcet0GpVE3B7SvOqYo/w300-h400/image.png" width="300" /></a></div></div></div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But this largish, useful and lovely playing space now has what looks like a sizeable Christmas tree in the middle of it.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyha8lwqn3yWH2aaNbcisMpXcGyCM92DVpbET90p-HIwelbZoeD6G1M87ExkbfVtg_7VgMdIyQQ8DRFRuPEGpJltbMmXWsxJTjGHtEuJKCgp7FdSfbZmktSoKkwMu2qx4oUUpcYLLENwk/s1024/721C748E-CDD1-466E-A1A7-C3954211F47B_1_105_c.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyha8lwqn3yWH2aaNbcisMpXcGyCM92DVpbET90p-HIwelbZoeD6G1M87ExkbfVtg_7VgMdIyQQ8DRFRuPEGpJltbMmXWsxJTjGHtEuJKCgp7FdSfbZmktSoKkwMu2qx4oUUpcYLLENwk/w400-h300/721C748E-CDD1-466E-A1A7-C3954211F47B_1_105_c.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;">This is quite common in my experience - a number of clearings or greens where scenes were once played have since gained flower beds or saplings - and in my more paranoid moments I do wonder if this is a deliberated action to stamp out outdoor theatre. </span><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Through the stinging nettles of the nature reserve we go - am I the only one sporting shorts? And down to the wonderful weeping willows, just as Jane Nash and Dan (the second), find us - and Amanda scampers across from the playground where her two children whose father she first met at the Bubble Adult Group - are demanding her attention.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These willows spread their branches wide and drop a curtain of leaves around us, as they have actors and audiences before. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Reflecting that last week’s walk might have felt a bit weird to the walkers, I’ve prepared a few words and a few bits of pieces to share along the way. Under the willows I read the following.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A word on the intention behind the Re-Markings</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We’re re-visiting.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">They say you should never go back.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But these walks are a deliberate disobeying of that advice.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The park shows and pantomimes drew an audience of all ages.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the parks and woods the story took them on a journey.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And the walk, the promenade, emphasised that story.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Physicalised, imprinted, (weathered-in) the story.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It was strong.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Silly and seasonal and serious and skilful.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">An egg running away into the distance</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A dog sniffing a Gilgamesh</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mechanicals clogging</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Cup cakes dancing</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Bishops protesting</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">All witnessed by children, elders, babies, dogs, stragglers, sprinters.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Lit trees.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Wrapped trees.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Beautiful trees.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Maybe music.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Children leaning in.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Actors in flow.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">If that theatre is unusual now, we must leave examples and tips, and hope it will be made again.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So this walk - these walks - are partly a tribute, a thank-you, to the writers, actors, designers, technicians, administrators, makers, funders and audience members who made that theatre. Thank you.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">they are also intended to leave a sign</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(In the hope that others might gather the generations)</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To awaken images</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(In the hope that other might play)</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So please help me amplify reverberations.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Help me scratch and scour some markings. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzL_RHvMEzLTPPjprVH70pL0Nzy-HCoFmTeru5dMW0LCAvvZZtCraiiO1n2DwkRUWNKJ_HRJ8ARxaF3ro3GlE56nayZUbBt67XXFza-z7tsIAP2dy7aMjiBjSHdW-8TpqmUSKJWfrELY/s4000/IMG_1736.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzL_RHvMEzLTPPjprVH70pL0Nzy-HCoFmTeru5dMW0LCAvvZZtCraiiO1n2DwkRUWNKJ_HRJ8ARxaF3ro3GlE56nayZUbBt67XXFza-z7tsIAP2dy7aMjiBjSHdW-8TpqmUSKJWfrELY/w400-h300/IMG_1736.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p></div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And on we go. </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is the Lewisham Re-Marking. This is my home borough - the place we live and which has nurtured us and our two sons. The younger one - Sam, now a small child of 26 - arrives now, with partner Lukas. Sam - and his brother, Wilf - grew up with the company. They had the fortune to attend rehearsals, to watch the craft of wonderful actors, to participate and more recently to work with the Bubble as artists in their own right. These walks are for them, and Pip, too. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Bubble is based in neighbouring Southwark but has worked in many Lewisham venues animating at least twelve of the boroughs outdoor spaces. We won’t mark all of them but if we get a wiggle on we can visit at least eight. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Through Sydenham woods we go. Stopping for Fran to tell us about the rare Corky-fruited-water-dropwort - a species she and other volunteers helped to save for Sydenham. Then on to the Horniman Museum Gardens where we are joined by Sophie Russel (aka Richard the third) and her husband Dennis, Charters of the Mayflower Keitha and Jane and people take on coffee and pastries and enormous burgers from the Sunday morning market - there isn’t time for this!</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I take the group to an out of the way patch at the bottom of a quite severe incline and talk about slopes and wheels. Slopes because they allow better vantage points for audiences. Wheels because in promenade getting scenery and kit around the park places a good wheel at a premium. The problem is wheels and slopes don’t always go together happily. </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So stories of near misses - Titania’s bed/bower on wheels running on hyper-active fairy power, only just stopping short of the audience. The Morris van at the end of the Crock of Gold, piloted by Rachel ‘I’ve just passed my driving test’ Essex, would it start? Would it stop? But chiefly images of Mojisola Abebayo’s Oberon mixing a potion on the arched belly of Jan Knightley’s Puck - with a stream of water from his mouth supplied when she twisted his ear. For the Dream is actually the only show we played in Horniman Gardens. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So onwards… to Dulwich Park - where Rachel ‘I passed my driving test over 15 years ago now’ Essex is waiting for us, and we will meet up with Charlotte Medcalfe - actor, musician, gardener, who lives locally and has just received a text that we are walking her manor.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In Dulwich we talk about bushes and I read a show report from Metamorphoses in which Nao Ngai has detailed the destruction wrought by a fox and the disturbance of a lone clapper, defined by Nao as ‘a person who claps when no one is clapping’. Amusing I think. Sophie and Rachel interject and give the actors side - working in costumes that have been wee’d on by a fox is not pleasant, turning your ankle running from scene to scene is not pleasant. The lack of sympathy I had shown when Sophie did this and I joked ‘are we going to have to shoot you’ wasn’t amusing. Like all directors I’d remembering the images, the moments, the impressive bodywork of a show - not the engine under the bonnet, the sweat, the risks taken by actors and crew. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We walk the mile or so to the Ivy House at the top of Peckham Rye. After a couple of cold drinks we set off over the railway tracks and climbing to Hilly Fields - more slopes up at the top of which we find Lucy B and her mum, waiting patiently. They escort us down to Ladywell Fields. People peel off - we’ve been walking in the hot sun for the best part of five hours. But this is good, this is draining some of the past from my stomach and legs, treading the aches and the images into the pavements and paths. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There are just the three of us left. Sandy, Fran and I, who walk more slowly alongside the Ravensbourne River which was released from cement banks back in 2008 and allowed to snake across the park creating a flood plain and access to the water.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When the restoration was completed Bubble were commissioned to celebrate the river and, working with local artists, we created a sort of park-walk-performance-experience. Rivers and People is one of my favourite projects - children at the beginning playing in pyjamas and dressing gowns, elders at the end sitting silently in pyjamas and larger dressing gowns. In between flocks of paper-reading commuters, formation dog walking, film of park users projected on to the railway arches, chandeliers made from discarded plastic bottles twinkling in trees, soundscapes of beetles, a roller-blading dragon, librarians perched in trees dressed as victorian writers, quoits of books and a storyteller sharing the long lost legend of the Ladywell Naiad. </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the start audience members had been invited to jot down a wish, bottle it and launch the bottle into the river. Downstream they spotted the Naiad herself - sitting on the river, reading the wishes made by the audience. Maureen - muttering to herself, reading and throwing away the requests. </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But here I go again, remembering the external image. </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It was only later that Maureen - in her 70’s then - had told me that her feet, dangling in the celebrated river as the September night fell, had virtually frozen. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLP6C63kiub4hnH7FDuvhlXsX7M-ay-lugTAfSItl-dpenijccc-poeGdbMMm_1G9Or5V-NmPs2HjQfXUgTXro8erCMo3S4boZqcdEp4CIXG497YyfI3L5Y3Bbl1KDHkIM46hhGcX2vM/s2100/Naiad.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1400" data-original-width="2100" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLP6C63kiub4hnH7FDuvhlXsX7M-ay-lugTAfSItl-dpenijccc-poeGdbMMm_1G9Or5V-NmPs2HjQfXUgTXro8erCMo3S4boZqcdEp4CIXG497YyfI3L5Y3Bbl1KDHkIM46hhGcX2vM/w400-h266/Naiad.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><br /><br /></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p></div><div><br /></div>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-58383277792025766742020-09-21T07:52:00.006-07:002020-09-21T08:53:43.785-07:00The Re-Markings, 1 (Valentines to Three Mills).<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Sunday morning. A greyish day. July 19th. I’m standing at the top of the steps outside one of the many entrances to Gants Hill Underground Station. This is where we will meet. </span><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrian Jackson arrives first then, in need of refreshment, sets off to find the Bagel shop which I mentioned as an incentive in my invitation but which has inconveniently moved across the roundabout. Dan Copeland arrives and follows Adrian back down and across. Then Sandy and Fran. While I wait for them to bagel up I reflect that at least someone has turned up. So what have we got? - a previous associate director who developed work with Augusto Boal, an actor who illuminated our outdoor work with presence and clarity, a once Chair of the Board and ex theatre writer (Sandy) and someone who worked with London local authorities before devoting her time to looking after green spaces (Fran). That’s a fair representation of the alliances that Bubble relied on when making promenade shows. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A text lands. Eric MacLennan - actor, artist and another good friend - he is waiting just inside Valentines Park. Clutching bagels and coffee we set off to meet him. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">From 1993 to 2007 Valentines was the park where Bubble opened its summer season. From the last tent season in 1993, via the change to promenading in 1994, from community cast shows through to the ACE withdrawal of funding in 2007, the Bubble would be resident in this Ilford green space for at least a week before setting off to circle some of the rest of outer London. We started our season here and we will start the walks here.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eric greets us with his customary warmth and we set off across Valentines to the tree. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Promenade shows mark outdoor spaces like dogs mark lampposts. Watching a scene played out below trees or by water creates a memory that is fusion of nature, story and performance. Or is this just me - it might well be as Adrian doesn’t remember anything about this place despite having directed a show here. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Back on the trail like dogs we catch the scent of previous visits. Baucis and Philemon played in the sandpit there. Mosquitos bit the Lidell family in their boat on that lake there. Pericles’s stage started to tilt as it took to the seas, there. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And we arrive at the tree. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNCefgm-rhb9kcT6vObhMhTeRkfxVSRwYtMe_9LkAWBWP1kwJlHXAREPA8S47kCdGXtaQ0CTex3lw5ZK_tzUZoH3KPgBd4PKq4Bz9TzJS4akxy5qFK4ZNETPvyyiZ84QC-mU5EZc_0Glw/s4032/IMG_3988.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNCefgm-rhb9kcT6vObhMhTeRkfxVSRwYtMe_9LkAWBWP1kwJlHXAREPA8S47kCdGXtaQ0CTex3lw5ZK_tzUZoH3KPgBd4PKq4Bz9TzJS4akxy5qFK4ZNETPvyyiZ84QC-mU5EZc_0Glw/w400-h300/IMG_3988.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p></span><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Trees become the theme of this walk. They provide a backdrop, shelter, focus, lighting grid, making for quick changes - and points of suspension. From this tree we dangled a victorian chaise longue. In it reclined a caterpillar smoking a hookah. Courtest of designer Keith Khan, caterpillar Linda dobell and flying by Tim Anger. The tree - a wonderful mature fir, looked down over many scenes over the years, but for some reason it's Linda as the caterpillar that is caught in my memory. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We stride off, past where base camp sat and on towards Forest Gate. Not only is the conversation good the task of linking up bits of London that you may not know, and certainly didn’t know connected, is strangely satisfying. Eric and Adrian leave us at Wanstead Flats - a vast expanse that the council claims as part of Epping Forest - we were not convinced. Michael Breakey - designer, maker, teacher, performer - joins us at West Ham Park. We’ve done four miles now - have I misjudged the task? Sandy talks to an ice cream man, then to a caterer and then joins one of the four cricket teams who seem to be playing on the same cricket pitch, 8 batsmen and 8 bowlers working alongside each other, but in the field can there really be 38 fielders or are they playing for more than one team?</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH80EMnyntWXneHJVxUI60bVDrHZHgk66DJek4DvFSADpVGqXX2GPhZ2_hH5yPfHC4_qNQo_KGKk6_g_Xq34_GdKQxoLR8FGNBjwXmA9i9XNnngcZzN7n0VzKJwFBA5-_iVHRwMlTaJaw/s4032/IMG_9663.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: arial; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjJD0IxrqLSFYPTxvitXnl8aW0ktzvTp5LdH7PcpBXxOuYVrQnk-LkkkWvw2IrNzKVrJmrfbarcu2sCsWdubjVzPzFDx8UPj70Ag_at1WPB1yBkew0LW2CCzwngDQ57V0B3aKg-MWpmOg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjJD0IxrqLSFYPTxvitXnl8aW0ktzvTp5LdH7PcpBXxOuYVrQnk-LkkkWvw2IrNzKVrJmrfbarcu2sCsWdubjVzPzFDx8UPj70Ag_at1WPB1yBkew0LW2CCzwngDQ57V0B3aKg-MWpmOg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYDwFax4eRfc4gJndNn_b3PZCqAZLC8En5zqgVq_NIZKT6BYwwMaUTfPI6331VXmt4O9jf-PDDdr9_htEyGTLBXRv-f20Q7i6VbHhcgcg2FuU2LyZ2HG_18wzcG1hIt9yag_1-RlTvy2o/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYDwFax4eRfc4gJndNn_b3PZCqAZLC8En5zqgVq_NIZKT6BYwwMaUTfPI6331VXmt4O9jf-PDDdr9_htEyGTLBXRv-f20Q7i6VbHhcgcg2FuU2LyZ2HG_18wzcG1hIt9yag_1-RlTvy2o/w400-h300/image.png" width="400" /></a></div></div><br /><br /><p></p><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Pausing only to stage a photo shoot on the wrong Abbey Road zebra crossing...</span></div><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQF4z0Yn-1TJaav8N7d-l5ZRyuk3Y1j6qs0T5Aim-t5ZcbJySzc8ySSApm8tJLtEZUBdDwPCRbv3umA0jK3XlkCYzoaWpd-i1O3WKUyfLQzRQk8cr2Gn0le48y6ABZ3qAcRQNbROhms-0/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="470" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQF4z0Yn-1TJaav8N7d-l5ZRyuk3Y1j6qs0T5Aim-t5ZcbJySzc8ySSApm8tJLtEZUBdDwPCRbv3umA0jK3XlkCYzoaWpd-i1O3WKUyfLQzRQk8cr2Gn0le48y6ABZ3qAcRQNbROhms-0/w382-h400/image.png" width="382" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYiEVTqlD_G5HxDw1axq6RRgI-rcOZ3rCISRhl_dhFb7QdmiHtuznF0FORpUHDqFEmPbQjKkTJrkaNFtMOkHRE7SAHs0TXt2V7WmGgpq0Zyapc-a9GfKbnZFLavZzTlfj0713HTPKZLE/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYiEVTqlD_G5HxDw1axq6RRgI-rcOZ3rCISRhl_dhFb7QdmiHtuznF0FORpUHDqFEmPbQjKkTJrkaNFtMOkHRE7SAHs0TXt2V7WmGgpq0Zyapc-a9GfKbnZFLavZzTlfj0713HTPKZLE/w400-h300/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">…we find the Greenway - a new path on top of an underground sewer that takes us to our destination, Three Mills Island in Bow. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This was a venue we only played a few times but it represents some of the less lush spaces Bubble animated. Here the trees are in their infancy. The grassed area is flat and perfectly circular. There are no undulations to offer sight lines, no bushes to hide props in, nothing to obscure one scene from another. But the local authority were happy we came and delivered part of their cultural plan - and that was our remit.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We part. I leave Dan at the bus stop and walk on to Mile End station. The streets are quiet - this is late lockdown remember. There’s a Fullers pub open but I resist the call of a pint of Pride and find that the Bow Road seems to be a bit longer than I remember it. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So has the first one worked? For me, yes - something has been shed, perhaps left in the locations we visited. And some emotional connection has been tested, some memory that perhaps I didn’t fully believe has been checked. The tree was still there - perhaps a bit bored now - but it was a witness, and it testified.</span></p><div><br /></div><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW1TubFVXMsKIQjF6eWN5T2gVpg42FSRm-bxyUKu1wJ9_ApUUa1J1Bp-aopfv-nipnwgpbvvqhP4ak8JocEmo6EO0CtN0vR1RCi1_gFfsnmazeUgerqRl2y2Qu2Hgure54s3GkgStMIC4/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="608" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW1TubFVXMsKIQjF6eWN5T2gVpg42FSRm-bxyUKu1wJ9_ApUUa1J1Bp-aopfv-nipnwgpbvvqhP4ak8JocEmo6EO0CtN0vR1RCi1_gFfsnmazeUgerqRl2y2Qu2Hgure54s3GkgStMIC4/w480-h640/image.png" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-39722737320760474342020-09-21T06:44:00.004-07:002020-09-21T07:56:37.978-07:00The Re-Markings. An introduction.<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGXxYhJUrDJOgCKP50jcfXFPh4TKVMSR5aRee72qxdZ80V0YeIbQ3CMhgcLiFkcc_kg8zh8-mscRjVeKmrb1FdTsXWVcTSxdrZZVw_GmdgesIL973IZYAKWVzjmCzkckCTTNDy7c7pw4/s1024/D2D1FD24-A2D7-4D86-976E-38FF6272578F_1_105_c.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGXxYhJUrDJOgCKP50jcfXFPh4TKVMSR5aRee72qxdZ80V0YeIbQ3CMhgcLiFkcc_kg8zh8-mscRjVeKmrb1FdTsXWVcTSxdrZZVw_GmdgesIL973IZYAKWVzjmCzkckCTTNDy7c7pw4/s320/D2D1FD24-A2D7-4D86-976E-38FF6272578F_1_105_c.jpeg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />On July 31st 2020 I stepped away from my role as Creative Director of London Bubble Theatre Company. I was appointed to the role in July 1989. So that’s just over thirty years. Some people think I started the company. This is not true, four Directors preceded me, and the founder, Glen Walford, did two stints.</span><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I was 66 (and still am at the time of writing). I knew I was coming to the end of my tenure so had some time to think about the impact. Should I adopt the brace position or visualise a soft landing?</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I had a memory of interviewing the founder of Welfare State, John Fox just before the last performance of the last piece he made with the company. His departure was not a happy one. I remember vividly his rage and I made a note to myself at the time that I wanted to leave in a more settled state, with my affairs in order and my mind at peace. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But…leaving a theatre company is tricky. Other artists can easily continue their practice - writers, painters, composers, they can continue to create alone. Theatre-makers need people - especially Directors. It’s difficult to continue to create without first assembling a company. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is also personally disturbing. You are leaving friends - the people you have made theatre with are essential to a directors craft but they are not inanimate pens or brushes, they are fellow travellers, artists in their own right - co-creators and critical friends. So the loss is both professional and social.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To an actor this will sound pathetic. Actors make and unmake relationships within ensembles and casts regularly - I stand in awe at their ability to commit emotionally knowing the relationship will end. To a writer or designer, who stand once removed from a company, it will also sound like whining - my partner, Pip Nash, is a designer and I know how brutal the relationship to a show and company can be. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">However some roles in the arts, like Artistic/Creative Directors or Conductors, rely on ongoing relationships that may last for a number of years, and when this emotional labour is no longer required the change process needs thinking about. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the long term I intend to conduct some interviews with long serving directors and reflect on what they say - partly for therapeutic reasons, partly to question the idea that Directors should change roles every 5 years - which has become orthodoxy. (An orthodoxy no-one mentioned to Pina Bausch).</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But in the short term I had to do something for myself - and perhaps for the artist-friends who I had worked with at Bubble. After looking over my artistic record - a list of shows and venues, many of which had slipped into the swamp areas of my mind - I was struck by the geographical spread of the work. Not only 60+ shows, but 60+ different places. From that came the idea to re-visit some of the locations, to weave them into walks and invite artist-friends. Simply to say - we did that, here. And it was good. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I called the walks the Re-Markings. </span></p><div><br /></div>Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-10116253524204735852018-09-14T08:49:00.003-07:002018-09-14T08:51:16.348-07:00Some words on Rose Bruford when accepting an Honorary FellowshipFirst of all can I congratulate the students who have worked so hard, their families who have offered support and the staff who have nurtured them during their time at Rose Bruford. Well done you.<br />
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While I was preparing this I looked up Rose Elisabeth Bruford and was interested to learn that after she graduated, Rose then “followed her parents wishes never to work in the theatre”. I hope that following their graduations the graduates today will be sitting down with their parents ready to heed any similar advice.<br />
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While Rose Bruford sort of followed her parents wishes you might have noticed she didn’t really not go into the theatre. She taught. According to the ever reliable wikipedia she taught at 43 different schools between 1925 and 1949. And for 7 of those years the country was at war. She built a drama course at the Royal Academy of Music. She taught mime at RADA. And principally she taught teachers of drama. That was before she founded the institution we are sitting in today. She was an Evangelist. She preached theatre and spoken word. I can relate to that.<br />
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As we all know theatre can be an expensive, brash and alienating experience. We’ve all got our theatre horror stories - I could ask you to turn to your neighbour and share your theatre scars but I’ve only got three minutes. Actually, when you break it down theatre has healing properties.<br />
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Whether it’s in a ancient tribe or a modern city, a special space is made where people meet. That’s nice. A story is shared. There might be special light or special clothes. The people listen and perhaps laugh or cry or gasp together. They support the story teller. And then they leave. And it’s gone. For theatre is made from the attention given by people. Around the fire, or at the national theatre it’s the same - If the audience turn their backs on the stage there is no theatre. Theatre isn’t an art, it’s an act of giving.<br />
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It asks the best of us. Team work. Creativity. And care... any good team will be a caring and supportive group. And from anyone watching - a run through, or a performance (or indeed a short speech from a nervous man) it asks for attention and presence.<br />
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I believe these values are what drove Rose’s evangelism. And I believe they are much needed in our hectic, screen centred, lives today. And from my work I know these values are appreciated by people of all ages, and from all walks of life.<br />
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I see people thrive in the supportive spaces that theatre offers. Children who have been excruciatingly shy, even selectively mute telling and enacting their story - Because they want to contribute to the fun. Survivors of aerial bombing - both in Hiroshima and London who want to contribute their experiences - Because they want the story never to be forgotten. Audiences leaning in to support an actor as they weave their tale - Because they want it to be magic.<br />
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Theatre builds connections and community. It nurtures us.<br />
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So I hope you thrive in the making of your art. And that through the pressures that come with it you can enjoy, and evangelise about, the ideals it aspires to.<br />
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Thank you.<br />
Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-53047713048136796922017-11-29T12:54:00.004-08:002017-11-29T12:54:55.393-08:00The civic role of artists and arts organisationsI've been reading the report on the inquiry into the civic role of arts organisations (phase 1). It's an interesting and timely provocation with lots of good thinking. They invited responses and this is mine.<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">I have found the inquiry into the civic role of arts organisations a stimulating process which has gathered focus and momentum as it has progressed. Any initiative which helps foreground the useful, but often invisible work that arts organisations do, is to be welcomed and I welcome the chance to comment on the first phase report. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">Firstly three points on the report thus far. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">THE METAPHORS (Arts organisations as Colleges, Town Halls, Parks, Temples and Home)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">The metaphors used to describe organisations are interesting and yes, we can relate them to our practice. However they suggest iconic buildings or physical places. Our (London Bubble’s) distribution model is less centralised. More importantly the work arts organisations do is largely ephemeral.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">(Can I refer you to the Peckham Experiment, an inspirational arts and health initiative conducted between 1926 and 1950. This was a hybrid blending surgery, arts centre, sports centre and college, built on a membership model). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">BEWARE A DEFICIT LENS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">At one point the report suggests “our interest is arts organisations in receipt of public funding working with local communities to co-produce problems these communities identify”. We would question the use of the work ‘problems’. It’s only one word but casts the community as problem, the arts organisation as solution and the work as ‘instrumental’. We would argue that artists and arts organisations should see themselves as part of the community, participants as well as artist-facilitators, with a useful skill set. Sometimes that can be used to solve a problem. Sometimes it can be used to co-create, even celebrate, with no set agenda. The work of Welfare State International comes to mind. Perhaps ‘problems’ could be replaced by ‘opportunities’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">Moving forwards:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">OUR CIVIC ROLE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">Reading that the first civic institutions were a Victorian response to the drunkenness amongst the large number of workers who had flocked to the towns because of industrialisation made me wonder (in equally generalised terms) about the present day - what are the arts responding to now? In our work with children, young adults and elders, we are observing three, possibly related, trends. Increasing numbers of young children who struggle to communicate, increasing numbers of teenagers and young adults managing mental health issues and increasing numbers of older people who live with loneliness. Our response is to base our practice on building a sense of connection through care and creativity. Are we dealing with a sense of disconnection similar to that experienced by the dislocated Victorian worker? Is the present day <u>problem</u><span style="color: #1f497d;"> </span>caused by the new industrial revolution and the impact of digital communication on community? Should this define our ‘civic role’?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">CAPACITY BUILDING<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">Bubble is a small organisation whose work is based on participation and relational practice. The characteristics listed as principles for consultation we aspire to. (And we would argue that larger organisations sometimes adopt these, rather than truly holding them in their heart). </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">Perhaps there is something to be learned from the Dunbar number* here. To truly foster relationships you have to value them for what they are and question any transaction which places material gain before social gain. Smaller organisation who are part of their community are more likely to foster these principles but they are also more likely to have a lower profile and smaller voice. So any initiative that helps us network, develop capacity and build stability we would welcome. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">The report pays a number of compliments to small and medium scale arts organisations and those who work within them - particularly leaders. It suggests the leaders have developed the organisation. But I sometimes wonder if it is also the organisation that makes the leader. Arts organisations are a wonderfully developmental environment which expect leaders be creative, passionate, open and reflective - and to bring these qualities out of staff and participants/audiences. This creative environment and training ground could be cast a civic asset that reaches beyond the creative sector.<span style="color: red;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">Jonathan Petherbridge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">Creative Director,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">London Bubble.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">*The theory of <b>Dunbar's Number</b> posits that 150 is the <b>number</b> of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships. </span></div>
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Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-52296510925295933472017-11-15T15:31:00.001-08:002017-11-15T15:31:49.937-08:00Ten years ago.<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It was exactly ten years ago to the day. In the parlour. The parlour at the Bubble is where ‘confidential’ conversations happen. Appraisals, resignations, announcement of happy events, tears, honesty, brilliant ideas.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">November 15th 2007. Four of our Board members had been up town to meet with officers of the Arts Council. They returned and took the two co-chief executives to the parlour. I was one.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">They had been informed there was to be a recommendation that funding to the London Bubble would be cut…as of March 31st 2008…in four months. This funding plus another linked grant and the box office they generated amounted to 81% of our turnover.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We were numb, in shock. The trustees were faced with closing the company. They were potentially liable for any outstanding debts. All 10 staff would be made redundant. The summer shows and projects would be no more. If I had any emotions they were a mixture of anger, fear and shame. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The letter confirming the recommendation arrived the week before Christmas. By that time our feelings had been channelled into campaigning. In mid January the committee would meet. The festive season turned into a mustering of support.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Alliances were made with other threatened companies. Representations were made by audience members and MP’s. One young girl got into an exchange of letters with the director of the arts council. We tried to remain level headed and to allow our audience to speak for us. As a result we learned.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We didn’t reverse the recommendation. (I think if we’d gone with the idea of having our petition delivered by postmen running down the Thames in Zorb Bubble balls, it would have tipped the balance, but we didn’t). </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Fast forward ten years. Last Saturday I was able to present a position paper to our board and staff at our away day. It explained how we are delivering more theatre now than we were before the cut. How we have 5 legs to our stool rather than the one, how we attract…..</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">But no. That’s for another time. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">For now, let me just raise a small glass to out supporters. To those who funded us to develop our projects. To my great colleagues and the brave trustees who chose not to take the company into administration. And to my predecessors who created the Bubble and its reputation. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Oh… and to luck. </span></div>
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Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-12998956180062802672017-09-18T23:57:00.001-07:002017-09-18T23:59:12.155-07:00A letter to Hofesh Shechter<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">You don’t know me. I’m a fan of yours. I’m also a theatre director. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I think your work is quite wonderful but I want to question your use of lighting. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Last night I attended Grand Finale. The choreography, music and staging I found rich with purpose. The skill of the dancers I find breathtaking. The balance of anger and joy moves me - as it has done in your previous work.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">What I wonder is if the same amount of thought has gone into the decision process surrounding the lighting. The lighting is in a way skilful - quite spare, hardly any colour. It is almost entirely back, top and side light. Hardly any light is thrown from the vantage point of the audience. This means we aren’t allowed to see the dancers faces. There is also much use of black out - not just to change the set or tempo, but to discomfort us (I think).</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The outcome of all of this is twofold. Firstly the audience cannot connect with the dancers as humans. They are shapes, we see no facial expression. Secondly the lighting makes the performance seem beautiful.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I question if this is how you intend your work to land.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Everything else about your work melds rage with skill. It is often emotionally ambiguous. Why then dress the piece so beautifully? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I think you believe in what I might shorthand as ‘community’. On your website you describe your company as a ‘tribe’ of dancers. Why not allow the audience to see how your tribe are working? Why not let the audience see the front of the performers and connect as fellow humans to their rage and grace? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Last night I remembered times when I, as a director had lit shows and made them ‘beautiful’. At that point the process presents a technological opportunity to frame what we have made and we get carried away with what is possible. This morning I watched some footage on your website of the rehearsals of Grand Finale - naturally lit, or lit quite brightly for filming, and I preferred it. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I sat there last night wondering how the piece would have impacted on us if it had been staged in working light. I do wonder if it actually would have been more powerful.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Best wishes, and keep up the good work,</span></div>
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Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-28331309754717279972017-03-22T04:23:00.003-07:002017-03-22T04:24:28.529-07:00PRIMARY 11 - Sensory Interviews<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">By Georgia Clark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The project is at an exciting stage now as
we look to gather more material which will grow into a performance later this
year. With a couple more sessions to go before Easter, after which we will meet
every week until we break for summer, we turned our attention this week to the
process of ‘foraging’, or gathering material through interviews and research. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">To prepare for the session’s main
activity, where we would consider the role of the senses in triggering and
finding out about memories and experiences, we warmed up our eyes by focusing
on things distant and close, we wrinkled our noses and smelt our skin, we
explored the sounds within our bodies when we closed off our ears, we traced
our finger tips over our wrists and clothes, and we rolled our tongues in
mouths and discerned its edges, sensitising ourselves to the delicate
differences in sight, touch, smell, sound and taste.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">On five tables around the room lay
invitations to explore each sense; the table for Taste held bowls of sweets and
snacks, Hearing played waves crashing and a baby bawling, Sight displayed
images such as those of a fire burning and electricity sparking, Smell offered the
scent of disinfectant and ink and Touch invited our hands to explore an feathers
and bark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">In groups of 3 we moved from table to
table and contemplated the objects, images and sounds, sampling sweets and
handling and smelling old books and scented candles. We did this as an
individual exercise, to tune into our own associations and ideas, and then
shared some thoughts in our group, before coming back to the big group.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">It seemed that there were some
commonalities – many people associated the colour yellow with the flying saucer
sweets, and were transported to a library by the musty books or the nurses room
by the disinfectant – and there were also detailed trains of thought and
stories which were particular to individuals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Smells took people to ‘<i>Covent Garden, an unopened drawer, Nan’s
spare room, Chip shop, Garden, kitchen, care home, doctors’</i>, and someone
travelled to Indonesia through the picture of rain on a window pane. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">‘1p sweets
bought from the shop on the walk home from Hummersknott’</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">‘movement of
unsticking it from your teeth’</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">‘ the ding
of the door to the sweetshop’</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">‘candle: old
bathrooms. Toilet roll dolls’</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The exercise was designed to explore our
thinking about harnessing a more sensual approach to the subject, and how we
might use the senses as a way of tapping into deeper and wider memories and
experiences when interviewing. The further away from our memories of Primary
school that we travel in time, perhaps the more they are encoded in places,
smells, patterns and objects. We talked about how smell and memory are close
together in the brain, which is why smell can be such a strong trigger for an
emotion without our full comprehension as to where the smell came from.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Warmed up by this exercise, we
experimented using ‘trigger objects’ – objects chosen specifically because their
sensual quality might trigger a story or memory about Primary school. In pairs
we used these objects –a piece of chalk (which a younger member of the group
commented as being marvellous ‘because it was a whole piece, and whole pieces
never survived long at school’), a marker pen, Dettol, show polish, ‘Refresher’
sweets and a pot of ink – as stimulus for questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">My partner examined a tin of shoe polish
and took in its strong turpentine smell. She talked about her memories of her
primary shoes being polished, usually by her dad, how it marked a routine, and
a conscientiousness around being ‘tidy’ at school. Using the link to school
shoes, I asked her if she liked the shoes that she wore to primary school, and
she replied that she didn’t dislike them but all the same she was never
satisfied with them, they were never quite nice enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">One person recounted how the ink
reminded their partner of “<i>ink pots and
dirty fingers</i>” and “<i>a teacher
criticising your handwriting because you were left-handed and because of
stains. Messy business. You see, the class was not like today. The tables were
in rows gazing at the blackboard</i>.” For another, the ink pot marked a
transition from primary to secondary school, having nice handwriting and a
memory of sitting in a garden to write a story, which was read out in assembly.
We considered whether some of these fragments would have been accessed without
the physical stimuli, and how it felt to handle an object at the same time as
being interviewed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">We moved on to consider a different
object in our pairs and swapped roles; the interviewee became the interviewer.
We were reminded that the project isn’t just about looking back,
retrospectively, at our memories; it’s about imagination and opinion as well as
experience. This time we were asked to create a story in response to the
object, venturing questions to the other such as ‘where are you?’, and
encouraging a story to slowly emerge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">These stories were presented back to the
group as a freeze frame which was ‘switched on’ at a certain moment and the
story teller narrated what was happening; children hiding eating sweets under
their bed; pupils deciding between each other whose house they would go to
after school; a wound being cleaned up in the nurse’s room. We wondered at the
end how much of these stories came from our imagination and how much was related
to or adapted from experience, and whether or not there is a difference.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-85508778694400466852016-12-05T06:17:00.001-08:002017-03-22T03:55:18.129-07:00PRIMARY 10 - Bullying<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">By
Charlotte Hulme<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We started off this evening’s session with a warm
up which involved walking around the room to 'fill the space' and then stopping and completing
actions for certain instructions. For example, when Peth shouted ‘TV’ we’d all
look up to the same point by the ceiling and stand for just a few seconds with
all of our eyes pinpointing the same spot. When Peth shouted the instruction
‘down’ we’d drop down to the ground, again freezing all together in a fixed position.
We then changed these instructions so that they related to primary school routines such as
‘playtime’, ‘assembly’ and so on. This put the focus on ‘primary’ from the
outset and it was a great way to start the session and get our thinking caps
on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">From this, we took time (seeing as we have now had a
fair few workshops), to do a feedback session. Each of us wrote down our
thoughts on a piece of paper, focusing on three questions in particular: </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">1. <b>What we enjoyed</b> </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">2. <b>What we thought worked well</b> </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">3. <b>What we’d like to work more on</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The
feedback ranged in its entirety, but the general consensus was that there
should be more music and song incorporated or a focus on that as part of
primary school. Participants truly enjoyed the activity where we remembered our
classrooms and we then had to re-create them and they also felt that the work
we have done on developing the relationships between student and teacher has
been a great success, amongst many other things. For inspiration we put the mind map that we had worked on in earlier sessions on display on the wall, as well as all of the blog
posts documenting the workshops thus far. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Next we began to address the somewhat poignant yet
interesting topic of bullying; we focused on a time when we felt, at school,
that we were either a bully or had been bullied. In groups we drew on the examples that we had remembered and created freeze frames to animate them.
During the freeze frames the person whose story it was would tell the
rest of us their memory whilst the remainder of the group would illustrate it
with a freeze frame. We worked on transitions too as we wanted the three or
four freeze frames to have fluid transitions between them all, almost as if they told a story; a story that, despite the overarching theme being the same,
contrasted completely with the content. Memories ranged from playground
bullying and academic competitions, to people singling others out or “telling on
you” to the teacher! Again, this evening’s session saw another time where we
drew on memories we thought we’d perhaps forgotten and this helped us to work them through more thoroughly. Additionally, some of us found the memories funny on
reflection which was amusing. It was funny that what we classed as “bullying”
at the time, now seemed so trivial when we looked back on it! </span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">To end the session we had a look at a section of the
transcript of an interview that was carried out with a peer learning support
mentor, which related to what we had been doing regarding bullying during the
workshop. We read the transcript together out loud, each person reading a line at a time. It talked about how this person worked with children who were described as having 'really challenging behaviour', as well as their perspective on how teachers are equipped to respond to challenging behaviour and different learning styles. Reading it out line by line together led us into a small group discussion about this to round the evening off, paving the way for more discussion about the politics of facilitating </span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">different learning styles and the challenges that teachers face in doing so.</span></span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-58853646785243864102016-11-17T07:30:00.001-08:002017-03-22T04:14:06.526-07:00PRIMARY 9 - Classroom Layouts<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">By Charlotte Hulme</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">An energetic warm up game of Stuck in the Mud got us running
around the space as if it were a school playground; one person was ‘it’ and
when they tagged someone their body became frozen in motion. To be released,
another person had to mimic their posture. We were instantly in our bodies and
darting around each other like Primary School children. A new person was chosen
to be ‘it’ and when they caught us our facial expressions froze. Grimaces and
shrieks solidified on our faces until another person mirrored them and released
us to run around again. A final instruction was to freeze and emulate an
emotion through our internal intention as well as body language and facial
expression. This was more complex and subtle to understand in another and copy
and, as well as the addition of another person being ‘it’, the room was soon
filled with statues. The game had come to an end but it left us more tuned into
the space and each other, ready for the session.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We began the session by each individually drawing a layout of our
classroom from either primary or secondary school. This task was surprisingly
challenging; despite some only having been at school less than ten or so years
ago and some of the younger members of group still at school, it was amusing to
note how little we could actually remember!</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The drawings ranged from ‘typical’ classroom layout, desks and a
blackboard for example, to classrooms with play areas and different sections
for contrasting activities! We spoke about our memories of these class rooms and
then extended the exercise further by trying to remember where we sat in that
classroom and who sat around us (for example a best friend, a group of friends,
the position of teacher etc.)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Working from this, we split into three
groups and using eight chairs we had to each re-create our classrooms. We each
took it in turns in our groups; all of the classrooms differed greatly, with
some chairs being placed away from the main area of focus to show
exclusion/someone being left out. I used the chairs to resemble a carpet as
this is where I can remember sitting in primary school!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">From this we began to work with the
transitions; our group had to do the activity but in silence. We’d each create
our classroom and then we’d place the rest of the group, one by one in their
designated spot in the classroom drawn from our memories. It was very effective
because the silence really highlighted the action and thus we could see when
someone was being bullied or when someone had no friends or when someone was
being ignored. For example, one member put four chairs at the front in a line,
two at the back and two in the middle, she then preceded to sit us down in the
chairs and she sat, excluded, in the middle because her recollection of this
particular time of her schooling was that she had no friends. It was a very
poignant moment. We extended the exercise further by all only standing when the
person whose recreated classroom it was stood up to leave and by keeping the
action limited to only the people who were interacting, everyone else froze.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was interesting to watch how each of the
three groups worked differently. Group one for example carried out the same
exercise as our group but they had a running commentary throughout. For example
the person whose classroom it was would explain where they were, their age, the
names of the people surrounding them and a bit of a background story about
their time in this classroom. The other group also spoke during their
improvisation but what was most interesting was that this group in particular
were all of around the same age and in school or had just left school. This, I
felt, emphasised what we were seeing; it was perhaps a lot more truthful an
account and with their ages, it was a lot more realistic. However there’s also
something intriguing about watching adults re-create their school days,
humorous at times yet sad too when, again, we draw on memories that we thought
we’d forgotten and sometimes they aren’t necessarily fond memories of our
school days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">We ended the session by going back to what
we did at the end of the last session and working on this in more detail
whereby </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">each group was given a
typical school-day structure written down from the perspective of a current
school student! We kept the same member as last time reading out the structure
and we made the improvisation very energetic! </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-87879013756793114032016-11-03T10:55:00.001-07:002017-03-22T04:13:25.635-07:00PRIMARY 8 - A School Day<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">By Charlotte Hulme</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We began today’s
session by exploring the contrast between the position of student and the
position of teacher. We created individual freeze frames that we typically
associated with a student and a teacher. For example, a student freeze frame
might be staring vacantly out of a window, or drawing in a book or throwing
something across a classroom. The teacher freeze frame might have been writing
on the board or looking sternly at a student, and so on. From this we developed
the dichotomy between the two by getting into pairs and doing our freeze
frames, slowly transitioning between student and teacher. When one person was
the student, the other would take on the position of teacher and visa versa. We
did this repetitively and very slowly, which, in turn, highlighted our freeze
frames and thus drew attention to what we were trying to illustrate and it
also, I felt, showed a growth between starting off a student and then becoming
a position of authority/an adult.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Today’s session also
proved to be very educational – very fitting to the theme of ‘Primary’; we got
into groups of three, one observer, one teacher and one student. The teacher
had to teach something to the student that they thought they could clearly
demonstrate. In my group, I was the student and my teacher was teaching me how
to count to ten in Chinese… to begin with I was panicking… how was I going to
get my head around this one?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">After a lot of
patience on the teachers’ behalf’s we all watched each group, from quadratic
equations to dance routines, every one had been taught something or other! We
found in our group that singing through one to ten was the best way to learn
as, typically, lyrics tend to be easier to memorise! From the teacher’s point
of view, we deciphered that patience was key!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Next, we split into
two larger groups and each group was given a typical school-day structure
written down from the perspective of a current school student! As one person
from the group read out the timetable, the rest of us had to act out what was
being said, having a different place for each activity, for example assembly
would be in one area and dance class somewhere completely contrasting. It was a
very humorous task that provided us all with lots of laughs; especially, I
think, because when it is read by an adult it almost pokes fun at the school
day! We all truly enjoyed it.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-20892926956754242252016-10-26T09:07:00.001-07:002017-03-22T04:13:01.518-07:00PRIMARY 7 - Stuck in the Mud<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">By Charlotte Hulme</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Tonight’s workshop was a mixture of laughter and
emotion as we revealed some of our memories to the group about our personal
experiences of primary school. Equipped with paper and colouring pens, we set
out to draw or write about an experience we had at primary school whereby we
were told off by a teacher for doing something ‘naughty’!</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was harder for some to think of an example for
this, which was humorous in itself. After some creativity and thought we came
together again and each shared our story. From knocking egg plants off
structures whilst playing chase, to throwing stones over the school fence to
singing too loudly to Christina Aguilera’s ‘Genie in a Bottle’, the memories
being shared differed in their entireties. Despite being humorous, it was clear
for some that these recollections of being told off evoked a plethora of
emotion, with some feeling as though the teacher was unjust in his/her ways of
punishment. I found it particularly interesting that I could draw on a memory
straight away because it was something that I have never forgotten, albeit
minor in the grand scheme of things, it was interesting to see that things that
happen to us a young age remain with us for a long time, into adulthood.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">We then split into three groups and one person laid on
a big piece of paper and we drew around them. This stencil of a body then
represented that of a teacher and we had to label contrasting parts of the body
in order to depict the traits a teacher should have. Ideas included ‘patient’,
‘adaptive’, ‘creative’, ‘fair’, ‘calm’ and more, also writing why we thought
the teacher should have these attributes! Using this as a stimulus, we took
three of our words and made them into freeze frames and the remaining groups
had to guess what we were trying to illustrate. </span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">We then took it a step further and did a short
improvisation, still in our groups, of a situation whereby a teacher uses two
of their attributes in order to resolve a situation or apply their authority.
For example, our group played stuck in the mud, one of us got hurt during this
and so the teacher had to adapt the game so that we could all join in. This
thus illustrated how a teacher should be adaptable and caring.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMpaneTrOP7en90rHiyYyS0To10NcozFm2rdD4iNEGsfeeT4mkAhRv2g1tOUgVNTyETrUMXjfHVZ6LNBmLn6N7BzCQ8Kwkh7_CyQyLE1vgsiVwj7zNFfJuL-WdlPQBB1ZQi_AVavjdeK0/s320/bubble+blog+7.png" width="320" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="margin: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"></span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">To end the session, we got into pairs and whilst one
person spoke about their memory of being told off in primary school, the other
had to act out what the other person was saying. We then swapped roles. I think
this is where the poignancy of the stories came out, especially as I was acting
out my pair’s story. It enabled us to explore the emotions that the other
person must’ve felt at that time.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"></span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Despite it being hard to draw on memories from when we
were so young, the session allowed us to explore and develop ideas about
feelings during primary school and the contrasting emotions we all experience
whilst becoming who we are. It was another productive and fun session. </span></span></span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-54782451089458549742016-10-26T08:51:00.000-07:002017-03-22T03:58:15.251-07:00PRIMARY 6 - Teachers<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">By Charlotte Hulme</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: small;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span><br /></span></u></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">For the purpose of introduction, my name is Charlotte
Hulme and I have just embarked on the challenge that is final year of
university at Brunel in West London. I am doing my degree in English Literature
and Theatre and, consequently, I am doing my theatre placement here at London Bubble!
So, from now I will be writing blog posts after our intergenerational workshops
that run on Thursday evenings, in order to document the work that we do and the
creative process!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">During the workshop this evening we worked in different
ways, using contrasting aspects of school life as the stimuli. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><br /></span>
</span><br />
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</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">First of all, we split into groups of about four or
five and each of the groups had a statistic that they had obtained during the
week and brought to the session and this statistic was relative to primary
school. In my group, we had the statistic that in China, 21 million children
under the age of 10 years old use the web! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">Consequently, we had to develop a way to show our
audience this by incorporating the theme of ‘primary’. We struggled as a group
at first to represent such a vast number without using words! However, we
decided to represent this by all being on our phones, bar one participant, who
did hop scotch in the middle. We then persisted to walk with our phones so
close to our faces that we bumped into her over and over again. The girl doing
the hopscotch then read the statistic aloud in a sombre, dissatisfied voice, as
if to signify that she was in the minority. </span><br />
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">Other statistics incorporated primary school aspects
such as popular names, average heights and more. All of these represented in
contrasting ways made for a comical yet informative start to the session.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">Moving on, we split into groups again. Someone read
aloud a script which described a teacher going to work and what she did in the
classroom. From this, six specific gestures had to be created, to represent the
key parts in the text. These gestures were to represent a teacher who is 1. Upbeat,
2. In control, 3. Make Things Clear, 4. Keeping on top of any challenges, 5.
Bouncy Energy, 6. Stern.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">The reader would then keep re-reading the text and we
had to do our gestures over and over again, each time working on the precision
of them. For example, we would keep repeating the same gesture continuously
until the speaker started to read again; we would do our gestures every time
the reader stopped, and we would freeze in our ending gesture position every
time the reader started to read. This conciseness led to the actions becoming
well rehearsed and fluid, especially after repeating them several times and working
with contrasting speeds; fast, slow and so on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">We then incorporated the journey to school into this
practice. The start of the piece of text described the teacher making his/her
way to school. We had to make our way to school so that people whose name with
‘A’, for example, would arrive faster than those whose names began letters
further down the alphabet. This, in turn, added the believable aspect into the
work, as in everyday life we would all, perhaps, take a different route or
journey in order to arrive at the same location. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px;">It was a great session where we worked together as a
group to explore, more deeply, the ways in which teachers do, themselves,
incorporate gestures and (hopefully) enthusiasm, sometimes quite flamboyantly,
in order to get a message across to their class full of students. The group
consensus was that this practice worked far better without music or verbiage
because it put more of an emphasis on the movements, drawing attention to our
body language.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-70338302115472146072016-09-18T08:49:00.001-07:002016-09-19T14:30:43.031-07:00A day in LeedsIt's 10.30am. I've been travelling for five hours and my body is waiting for my mind to arrive at the conference on Older People's Theatre at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. The person beside me, is questioning whether we mean 'old', or 'older'. Her point is that the word 'older' can only make sense in relationship to something else, so if we want to own our language just say 'old'.<br />
<br />
When I arrived, as I signed in I, like all the other delegates, was asked whether I identified as an older person. I paused. The biro of the inquisitor hovered over optional boxes. I considered whether I was ready to be put into that box. Well, yes I thought, I am older than most of the people I encounter, but no, I thought, I don't identify as an older person. And then, as you do, I got irritated with the options, and sort of expressed my dilemma. And instead of a tick, or a cross, words were written. 'He's not sure/doesn't know/doesn't accept the terminology/wants to remain'. That was the first 5 minutes of the day.<br />
<br />
What I didn't expect was to meet a load of old/older artists. I had envisaged companies, and project leaders. I hadn't expected to run into Mike Kenny, Alan Dix, Gil Graystone and Alan Lyddiard and that was just the first table I came too. Of course it makes sense - these are old/older emerging artists - this is where we're going to wash up. Flotsam. All a bit wave beaten and rounded off - and we sort of laugh at our history, show our scars and honour each other as fellow travellers - which feels a bit smug until the talking and presentations start.<br />
<br />
People cheat at the 10 word intro. If we're serious about doing 10 words - and some of us have been agonising about it all week, then we need a klaxon. People shouldn't be allowed to use 10 words to explain how difficult it is to only use 10 words. And no erring or erming please.
There are presentations and provocations. There are pieces of theatre and discussions. Is not paying performers ethically compromising etc, and Kate Organ brings in the Vaughan Williams v Maynard Keynes bifurcation of the Arts - which is not discussed.<br />
<br />
I'm surprised how orthodox the reference points are - we see plays, there is a script reading, there is hardly any questioning of process. Even Entelechy's Bed project is presented as a 'piece' with images, interspersed with questions and quotes. The process and the ownership of the project remains unexplained (and unchallenged).<br />
<br />
In the afternoon I go to a practical workshop. Alan Lyddiard (Director), Choreographer, Tamara and Composer/Musician, Chris, take us through an accelerated version of their work. We sit in a line on chairs up-stage. We are a exhorted to close our eyes, to breathe, to empty our minds, to connect our energy points from feet to head, then eventually to stand and walk slowly to the front of the stage - thinking 'I am me, I am here, I am fine'. I've got lots of problems with this. First of all I'm experiencing a reflection of myself - older male director, dictating to participants. Secondly, I'm not fine - I am me, I'm just about here, but I'm completely knackered and I don't want to lie. And I don't want this work to be based on a lie.<br />
<br />
Anyway I continue, no... I <u>enjoy</u> the exercise - we walk to the front, we change our minds, we return to the chair, we change our minds, we come back forwards we look at our hand, it rises slowly above our shoulder, we look away from it and it falls. Then Alan says we must say, 'I wish' or 'I remember' - we don't have to complete the sentence, but we do have to be me, to be here and be fine. Alan's script is much practised - like me he has done his exercises many times and has a schtick. But I question the emphasis on how we present ourselves confidently. Why can't we present with doubt? With fatigue? With not being fine?<br />
<br />
Tammy steps in and we start to learn a simple (ish) sequence. Supplication, search, flight, hiding. As I write this I feel these intentions/gestures are a bit tired - universal perhaps but a bit tired. It's a bit Pina Bausch. Anyway we make a nicely flawed chorus - and Alan asks one or two to step out from time to time, to stand alone and say something to the audience. So while the flock continues to turn and flow, one stands separate and speaks directly to the audience of whatever they choose.<br />
<br />
There's a point in the process when it jars with me. Tammy instructs us to be tall, to walk around with pride. I've heard these instructions before - I'm 6, in school, it's music and movement. I hated it then and I hate it now. It's false - don't tell me to motivate my body with an emotional recall I may not want to own/delve into. We are more interesting than that.
The music is beautiful - Jarrett-ish, with Meredith Monk type muttered vocals. It allows everything, salves all. Don't know if it's cheating or therapy.<br />
<br />
All of this is related to the show we will see later - 'Anniversary', which has been made by Alan, Tammy and Chris, using these techniques. But there is time for a chat with Alan beforehand, and accompanied by David Slater and Dominic Campbell we chew the cud over chips. I feed back my opinionated notes to Alan and graciously he takes them. This is rare. It is unusual to be able to talk honestly to someone who is making work with a performers from all walks of life, as I do. There are very few places or spaces where we can challenge and discuss our practice. I recently saw a sharing of work between elders and teenagers which was held up as an example of good practice. The audience admired the 'bravery' of the participants and the endeavour - some even stood to applaud. However I felt what had been presented was poor - unfinished exercises, no unifying artistry and sloppy editing. To me the work let participatory performance down - but where are the spaces to talk about this and where are the spaces for existing practitioners to critique participatory methods?<br />
<br />
So to the show. An audience of 'real' people, a healthy house, multi-aged, not your usual suspects.
The framing of the piece is non existent to start with - only the fact we're in a theatre lends artifice. But from the beginning there's Chris's music, plus a saxophonist, oh now there's percussion - and here come a signing choir. But within it we have people - humans. Some are experienced professionals - they've done their time with Lindsay Kemp Mime or London Contemporary Dance. Some are from the West Yorkshire Playhouse's Heydays company - one this morning explained to us that before doing Anniversary she had called herself a community performer, now she calls herself a performer.
<br />
<br />
The show is light - and very heavy. Downstage are microphones which Wooster Grouplike, are used to address the audience with interpretations of the word anniversary. Some stories are funny, some bittersweet, some raw and painful. Between the stories the company dance/flock/move in patterns/schmooze and grind. We laugh as the oldest lady - a scot in her 90's, picks up and then dumps Namron (ex LCDT). Later this will be reversed - he abandons her - but only after she is lifted and held.<br />
<br />
I am very moved by the piece - the choreography, staging, music and choices I find beautiful. There's a moment five minutes in when two stage hands wander on to balcony above, up-stage they look down at the bare space below and seem to decide it needs something. And they head off to find some set and lighting to give ambience to the party below. Then slowly the theatricality is dripped in - a bank of house lights goes out, some balloons are fed on to the bare stage, then a bit of side-light. Slowly we transition into full theatre - not quite smoke machine stuff, but towards it.<br />
<br />
Is this an eloquent explanation of what a theatre kit, like West Yorkshire Playhouse, can do for this work? What their role can be? Not necessarily starting from making theatre, but from catching life then platforming it, framing it, lifting it up for our attention?<br />
<br />
It was the exploration of this intersection that I found most useful about the conference - considering<br />
it not just through discussion, but through conversations interwoven with examples of work.
But this territory is different to mainstream theatre. It places new demands, offers new rewards and asks for new consideration. First of all whether we are 'old' or 'older', humans are not always 'fine'. The action of presenting autobiographical stories, whatever they may be, requires a compact of trust not only between the audience and performers, but between the community and the artist (or whatever words work for you). When this compact works, as it clearly does in Anniversary, we see new and brilliant work emerging with humanity sitting at the centre of both content and style. Not hidden or flattened out, but celebrated.<br />
<br />
Secondly, this isn't the theatre of pretending or make-believe. This is theatre as a platform - sharing experiences, confirming, celebrating, empathising with humans.
But there is more. The performing of the show consolidates the trust - and in performance the trust that has been fluid in rehearsals sets like a jelly, to be eaten with ice cream at a party.
<br />
<br />
Anyone who wants to broaden the base of theatre-audiences and theatre-makers should note that through this trust strong relationships are established which ripple outwards to friends families and networks. And they should come along to the next conference, be they old or older.<br />
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<img src="webkit-fake-url://a81d5bcb-8e5c-4756-9806-cc412f316eac/imagejpeg" />Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-86609263481172606902016-09-10T11:19:00.001-07:002016-09-10T11:19:41.165-07:00Happy Birthday Theatr ClwydIn September 2016, Theatr Clwyd celebrated a 40th birthday and having spent some time there in the early years I was asked to write a few words for their website. Sorry if it's a bit soppy, but it was a strong formative experience for me...<br />
<br />
Theatr Clwyd gave me chances that I think are quite rare today. In its first few years I worked as a Director and before that as a Stage Manager when both the new theatre and I were trying to find our identity. I had been employed by the touring, Mold based, Grass Roots Theatre company (remember the Quality of Life Experiment anyone?) and was taken on a visit to the unfinished building. I remember the traps under the studio, as yet uncovered, and the fantastic grid system above. A well equipped black box. And that was before we saw the main house.<br />
<br />
Working as a deputy stage manager on the book for George Roman I got to observe a director and actors working at first hand, then got to tour Sean Cavanagh's complex sets to narrower and shallower stage spaces. Encountering the ever interesting politics of the Welsh Arts scene.<br />
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After a couple of years George took me on as an assistant director. With two houses, touring projects and an occasional outreach offer there were plenty of opportunities. And, with a company numbering between 12 and 20 actors, there were also plenty of performers with time on their hands. At the same time I think the concept of 'marketing' was entering theatre (up until then it had been publicity). Roger Tomlinson was pioneering the subscription season, so cross casting was important and......(suddenly my stomach has turned over as I remember George going on holiday leaving me with the task of cross casting pieces of Shakespeare and Shaw).<br />
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Michael Hucks, Martin Harris and I were the beneficiaries of this theatre-making bounty. We had actors, technicians, space, cutting edge technology and time to experiment. Elsewhere Roger Tomlinson has written about Hitch Hikers. What he doesn't mention is it started life as a 3 part show - running over 3 evenings and coming in at 5 hours. Hugh Price, Paul Kondras, Adrian Ord, and many others took on ridiculous challenges for this epic - cutting a Morris minor in half and blowing it apart with an inflatable Bug Blatter Beast of Traal; placing a Vogon space ship above the audience and pumping compressed air and smoke down on to their heads; dangling 3 actors above the stage for a whole scene without damage; streaming a scene apparently live from the car park; commissioning not only a complete score but cartoon animations to be projected onto the front cloth during the ridiculously over-complicated scene changes. And then asking us to tour it UK wide.Douglas Adams was bemused.<br />
<br />
But my fondest memories are of the Mystery Cycle productions (the Nativity and the Passion) - not just for the shows, but for the process. We were inspired by the way the original Guilds had each taken on different scenes, and in a fit of experimentation we decided to do away with specialism and challenge all the departments to take on a different role. As a result the carpenters took on the design, the wardrobe lit the show and I ended up in the band playing a baritone horn for the first and only time in my life. This was my first experiment with promenade theatre, and at the first performance the audience just leant against the wall of the studio and refused to move. We sorted it by the second show, and that was the point - we were afforded the space to try things out, take risks, fail, adjust, learn.<br />
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Arden of Faversham, Absurd Person Singular, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Catch 22, pantomimes featuring The Snurge - it's a long and particular list.<br />
<br />
But while this might sound like a rosy spectacled reminiscence, I think there are a few lessons. The menu offered to the audience was eclectic. The semi-ensemble system not only offered young actors (and directors) an 'apprenticeship', it allowed the local population to get to know the actors over time. It challenged those actors to take on a range of roles and it brought those actors into the community.<br />
<br />
And out of this period came Theatre Camel - Roger Delves Broughton, Andy Whitfield, Roger Blake, Sally Greenwood, Sue Elliot, Jon Strickland, Leader Hawkins, Paul Kondras and I formed the company and started to tour big shows to small theatres around Wales. Gormenghast and Gone With the Wind to name but two. All had met at Theatre Clwyd learned some craft, made mistakes and delivered some good theatre.<br />
I spent ten happy, mad and seminal years at Theatre Clwyd and, as I wipe away something which seems to have got in my eye, I wish and hope that young theatre makers today get the opportunities to think big and learn on the job, as we did.<br />
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Happy Birthday TC and all who sail in her.Pethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05649444494465125006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-11806755217455699362016-08-25T04:40:00.002-07:002017-03-22T04:11:55.330-07:00PRIMARY 5 - Preparing for Interviews<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">By Georgia Clark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Someone had mentioned in one of our earlier workshops exploring
the theme of ‘Primary Schools’ that they remembered ‘drawing a house and a tree
and a sunshine repeatedly’ at primary school. We began this week’s session, the
last of the summer ‘prepping’ workshops, with a group activity exploring this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">‘Was there something that
you drew or wrote often when you were at Primary School?’</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">A3 sheets of drawing paper were lain out on the tables tempting
our childhood doodles; horses, paradise scenes and Thunderbirds 2 were some of
the images that adorned a line of rope strung up to accommodate our remembered
drawings. We listened in as each person explained the story behind their
drawing, rekindling the supportive dynamic of attending to and being curious
about each memory that had been enjoyed in previous sessions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Some of the drawings
revealed stories of activities shared with siblings, begging the question of
whether or not these drawings were actually done at Primary school. To alter
the direction slightly, we talked about specific memories of drawing and creating
done in the classroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Memories of art lessons
echoed around, one where a primary school art teacher asked the children to
copy paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe sticks in my mind, and we wondered aloud
about the intention and purpose of these activities: Why did the teachers ask
us to do this? Some answers were ventured; it’s about finding different ways
for people to express themselves; to develop craft and motor skills. We
collectively mused and considered our memories from new angles, seeing if we
could intuit different meanings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">With a dynamic change in
energy we were all up and working in partners to ‘sculpt’ each other into
different shapes. At first we did this by physically moving the other’s limbs
with our hands, and then we did it without touching the other person but using
the same motion, as if a force field separated your hands and their body but
carried the intention. We stepped back after each round to admire the room’s
diverse statues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">This was a warm up for the
next exercise – ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">strike
a playground pose’</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>- bodies
frozen running, playing, roaming and chatting animated the room. We broke up
into four smaller groups and brought the still shots to life to create a short
sketch. After watching these back in a group we were directed in replaying our
sketches at the same time, so that they overlapped with each other, creating
the first group sketch of the summer. A frisbee was being flung around in one
corner of the room as someone fell over in another and play sword fighting
traversed the space. We performed this several times, the instructions varying;<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘this time, do it as
if your over acting at being a child’, ‘this time, like you’re actually an
adult’, ‘make everything seem as if it’s the most important thing in the world
this time.’</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">It was our first piece of
theatre as a group; a taste of what a performance might look like once all the
elements of our investigation have simmered together, infused with nuances of
how our primary school persists in each of us, as well as how they are
experienced today; the recipe concocted out of the rich ingredients collected
in this ‘foraging’ process.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">A short break was welcome
after our exertions in the playground; we re-joined after five minutes to meet
the next task of offering up ideas and thoughts which would inform some
preliminary interviews and meetings on the subject. We began by considering in
small groups what each of the following would want children to be by the end of
primary school, some of the responses are in italics:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Industry<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">- good production
worker, good with hands, compliant, literate, numerate</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Government<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">- respect for other
people, pass Key Stage 2</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Secondary schools -<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">good behaviour,
confident, well-balanced, inquisitive</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Our children<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">- happy, able to
cope, to be a child and have fun</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">‘Us’<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">- ready for secondary
school, critical thinker, caring for others, have encountered diversity and
difference</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">This would be the final workshop of the summer, they will resume
in September and in the meantime myself and perhaps some others will carry out
some interviews, or ‘meetings’, with people that have worked in primary schools
and with those that went to primary school locally or abroad, to scope out what
these meetings might look like and harness some material to play with in
September. I was grateful that a final task would harvest the groups’ ideas of
what they would like to ask people if they were the interviewers…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Some questions for a teacher, governor, retired teacher, dinner
lady, caretaker or current student:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">How do you deal with
trouble?</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">What made you choose a
career in teaching?</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">What is your favourite
subject and why?</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">How many keys have you got?</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">What food do the children
hate most?</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">What do you think of the
exclusion policy for primary school students?</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">And with that the final
prepping workshop drew to a close.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s been a great
summer - join us next term!</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-63531749695992849172016-08-03T07:18:00.000-07:002017-03-22T04:08:59.997-07:00PRIMARY 4 - No one’s mentioned learning anything!<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">By Georgia Clark</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Apart from some dismissive remarks about not liking maths,
the fact that a significant amount of time at primary school was spent being
taught things had barely been mentioned in the first three workshops exploring how
we remember ‘Primary Schools’. As curious as this was, it was leaving a gap in
information that couldn’t be ignored and Peth wanted us to explore this a bit
today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">‘</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I learnt that
teachers aren’t always right’</span></i></span><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘I remember learning the
times tables’</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘a Cypriot dance that
went something like this, we all learnt it and performed it’</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘I made a Viking hat’</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘igneous rock’</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘if you mix all the
colours together you get brown’</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘I learnt to be
stressed at primary school – I went to primary school in Singapore’</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">There are over 80 pages in the primary school curriculum
about English! And 60 for Maths! Science not far behind with about 40, leaving
a few pages a piece for Art, History, Geography, Languages and the rest… How
does a teacher interpret and animate this dense web of instructions? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">And if it were up to us? In small groups we devised short
performances which had to convey the key learning points for some of the Key Stage
1 subjects. After each performance was
shared, those in the audience tried to pinpoint what these learning points were.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Snippets of history spoken out in well-timed relay - ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Christopher Columbus
sailed to the Americas in 1492’</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>–
conveyed the broad learning points set out in the History syllabus through
specific historical events. A sheet of paper pulled out from someone writing on
it and replaced by a smart phone demonstrated the sweeping changes that
advances in technology have made to national life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A raised platform looking on to the Thames provided an impromptu
stage for Geography to ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inspire in pupils a
curiosity and fascination about the world and its people</i>’. The Physical
Education group also performed outside, inviting, or, more accurately,
instructing, audience members to join in with a P.E. class. Adults were cast
back into eager and quivering school children, darting and racing and
protesting.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Singing and dancing through
the Music Key Stage 1 curriculum.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">This ambiguous and experimental exercise put us in a sense
in the role of teachers, creating a short class plan to perform to (or teach)
the rest of the group. The challenge that this posed made me see teachers in
the light of curators. Is how they interpret the curriculum ‘script’ and aim to
inspire through their delivery a form of performance? It felt a bit of a
scrabble for my group to get our heads around the subject matter and think of
interesting ways to convey it in the time that we had. How did our rushed and sparse
attempts at this tally up with the real constraints in both time and resources
that teachers face?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The whistle stop tour through four of the Key Stage 1
subjects was overwhelming in its data load (what a lot to learn in those first
years!), and left a slightly disjointed and inconclusive feeling as we had
spent much of the session in smaller groups and journeying around the Bubble
building and its surroundings, but it was fantastic to see some of the
interactive and imaginative ways that the learning points were conveyed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span>
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was interested in how Pip, one of the developers of
vernacular theatre, felt about what had come out of the activity, “</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">it’s about seeing how people respond to
things, too early for anything else at the moment. Exploring the subject
matter.” </span></i><span style="font-size: small;">I think this open and exploratory approach is really interesting
in how it elicits a wide range of moments and responses<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">– both
comfortable and uncomfortable – and allows for things to not work,</span> </span>making the process itself human. I’m looking forward to see how
the dynamic of this process manifests in the final show.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">We also created a timeline of playground crazes through the
ages: from marbles and dominos in the 50s and 60s to Pokemon cards and pogs in
the 90s and today’s Pokemon Go and Candy Crush.</span></i></span></span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-86997065619519386702016-07-14T04:14:00.001-07:002017-03-22T04:02:49.956-07:00PRIMARY 3 - Who Knows A Clapping Game?<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">By Georgia Clark</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This was the first question put to us at the third of our
explorations into ‘Primary Schools’. A mixture of tentative and enthusiastic hands
went up, and those that didn’t know a clapping game were soon learning one from
someone in the group that did. It did seem to fit the stereotype at first that
it was predominantly the younger people and females in the group who had a game
to teach, but the games and chants soon proliferated around and before long people
were sharing their newly learnt game with someone else. </span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">A simple exercise, but it brought the intergenerational
value into sight as younger and older shared clapping games from their days in
the playground, intersecting age, background and gender. Conversations I had
with people that evening emphasised the value in the wide variety of people
that take part in these sessions; a returning member said she comes back
because ‘it’s inclusive, being here isn’t dictated by age or anything else’,
another person who enjoyed her first session at Bubble last week, and plans to
come back, shared her first impression of the group - ‘it’s interesting how
many different backgrounds and ages there are here’. </span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">When showing the clapping games back to each other, we pondered
as a group what it is that makes clapping games an enduring phenomenon - are they just something to do to extinguish
playground boredom? Is it about something creative? Or is it about winning? A
mum and daughter showed us back a clapping game that elicits a winner and a
loser, the mum squealing as she made a mistake and lost. It seemed there was pleasure
to be had in racing to go as fast as you could, with a mistake costing you the
game.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Tic-tac-toe</span></i></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Give me a high</span></i></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Give me a low</span></i></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Give me a three in a row</span></i></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Don’t get hit by a UFO </span></i></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Now who can remember making or looking at a ‘nature table’
at primary school? This was next on the evening’s agenda; in small groups we
set about making our own ‘nature table’, the contents of which would be centred
on one topic and could be as wide and as playful as our roaming imaginations.
Groups set off round the Bubble building and surrounding park gathering objects
to illustrate their chosen theme, thinking also about how to arrange and
'present' their table to the rest of the group. It was a rewarding exercise in
thinking laterally about a topic and tuning into environment to spot objects
that would convey an aspect of something, as well as an exercise in teamwork.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Attention and importance was given to the process of
explaining and demonstrating the contents of each nature table; the group
curating ‘water’ demonstrated buckets and bottles and watered some plants in
front of us, the ‘rainbow’ team were inspired by the brightly coloured T shirts
of the group and incorporated themselves into their nature table (the inclusion
of the white/off white/yellow toilet roll caused confusion and discussion as
its colour was debated!). It was interesting how the other themes - pets,
summer, an office - had a similar simplicity and naivety to them. Maybe this
was a reflection of how we were approaching the broader subject matter at the
moment, or perhaps to do with people gently getting to know each other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">We wondered what our ‘nature tables’ of primary school might
look and feel like if we were to curate one about school celebrations or
teachers, or maybe school dinners, or the playground. A group applied this to
'school chants' by asking to be greeted with 'good morning everyone' before
replying in monotonous unison with 'Good morning Mrs. Henderson’. What might
the others be like?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">And what if we did one about teachers? We would need to
include their mannerisms and body language; it was time to get into our bodies
and relive the physicality of being in that environment. To get this started we
mirrored a partner’s movements in pairs, echoing the lines their limbs sketched
out, and then mimicking the particularities of how that person walks across the
room and sits in a chair. Watching these back as a group was entertaining and
brought out people’s different nuances, it was a chance to get to know each
other non-verbally by noticing each other’s movements and relationship to
space. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Translating this into recalling our teachers movements
brought into sharp relief some of the particular movements and body language we
remembered from school. We curated these in small groups to perform back; the
sharp, energetic and demonstrative pointing of one teacher balanced by the
still, moody, expectant stance of another. Theatrical and dynamic sketches were
beginning to emerge…</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1150241953124830323.post-14782886682839324392016-07-07T09:47:00.000-07:002017-03-22T04:02:09.587-07:00PRIMARY 2 - Salutes and Lifts<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">By Georgia
Clark</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span>
</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">At our
second meeting the previous week’s memories of primary school had been strung
back up and welcomed returning and new faces alike. After we had explained to
those joining us for the first time what we had done the previous week, new
faces were invited to add their memories to the collection.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Meanwhile,
returning faces were asked to travel in their mind to a particular room, place
or short journey that was significant in their experience of primary school,
and write about it or draw it in detail. To begin unlocking some of the details
of school buildings and our journeys to them we were asked to think about the
smells, sounds and qualities of that place. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We had
begun the session with an amusing game of creating a ‘salute’ for each other in
partners that were based on our day’s activity. We shared these back to the
group, along with our names, and proceeded to wander around the room in
wonderful chaos communicating with each other through our personalised salutes;
it felt like the awkwardness and hilarity of this had shaken off some initial
shyness at being in the same space, and enabled us to arrive in the room and be
present together in some way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">With this
initiation behind us, and a collection of new memories amassed, we re-joined as
a group to listen to the memories of childhood which had just been harvested. The
terrain was becoming more familiar now to those of us returning, and the
recurrence of themes and images provoked great enjoyment or disgust in turn.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The
exercise of taking a person to our chosen spot felt evocative for me, reminding
me of how space affects our thoughts, feelings and movements, and vice versa. I
took my partner inside the lift at the foot of the stairs in the Bubble
building, which for me represented the phone box in my primary school boarding
house where we'd take turns to slot our pre topped up phone cards in to the
machine to call our parents. The tinny and unsentimental atmosphere of the
lift lent itself well to transporting my partner and I to the place in my
memory. I also listened to my partners chosen place, a section of the library
with beanbags and stacks of books which you could retreat to in the early years
of primary school, a comforting place to travel to which softened the rigidness
of the lift.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Others travelled to their first aid room which ‘smelled of disinfectant but at
the same time, biscuits’, or </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small; mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">classrooms
with ‘the smell of school dinners’ wafting in through the door and ‘loads of
colourful stuff on the walls’, music halls filled with piano notes, ‘a garden
at the end of the playground’, spaces filled with sounds of ‘singing, giggling,
laughter, footsteps and chatting’, a library with wooden shelves and tables, a
dining hall with a cheerful dinner lady and the smell of fish fingers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This felt
like an exercise in tuning our senses in to the material, and preparing to
recognise the sensory elements when ‘foraging’ for more information. The
focused one to one listening about ‘place’ also felt like a precursor to the
interviews ahead which some of us will carry out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In a final
task we considered how we could gather material about some of the different
themes we had established, which generated ideas about things to begin looking
for and bring to the next session; clapping games, school timetables, report
cards, school songs. </span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04983515844873780034noreply@blogger.com0