Confidence and the balloon

When I am asked what's the point of people making theatre I often talk about building confidence. We put it in funding applications and wax lyrical in reports about how people grow. But not only does it sound patronising, the claim can lack evidence and can be misleading.

It can sound like theatre requires people to speak more loudly or stand more upright - and that adds to the common assumption that theatre is acting. Acting a text by a playwright.

Instructing people to 'be confident' is like trying to inflate a balloon by pulling the outside apart. Confidence - surety, congruence, comes from our centre. Confidence is keyed by feelings. When we say something and others agree or approve - we feel affirmed... and we say more.

When making theatre with an intergenerational group, we regularly sit in a circle and listen to what people have to say. We affirm or disagree respectfully. We model good listening. Adults and children are equals. We shape the opinions and ideas into something to be said collectively and artfully to the outside world (and in this case world is the right word).

Yesterday I read through a report on Bubble's Speech Bubbles* project - another example of creative listening and I was struck by a quote from a teacher's report on a child:

Pre project ‘Below AET (Age Expected Target), reluctant to speak in class, poor listening skills, low confidence when speaking to adults ’

Post project ‘AET, more eye contact, engages fully in learning, speaks out in class, questions if unsure’

This mirrors what I see happening to Hikaru, a 7 year old girl who joined our Hiroshima project quite late, and who I wrote about in my last post.

Hikaru now has lines. A few days ago she took on her first text - the words of a girl searching for her family through the radio. Calling, 'I am here' her voice was plaintive and barely audible. Then we created a story told by a chorus, and Hikaru was given more to say 'I needed to run away', and 'close to me was already burning', and 'she groaned'.  She learned the lines by the next rehearsal. (Well nearly... there was the run through when we got to her line and everything had to stop while she crossed the rehearsal room, found her script, found the right page, checked the line, walked back to her place and then said, 'she groaned').

Now Hikaru also has lines in the end section, but this is her own text. This has come from a recent exercise which asked the children their opinion about war - in the discussion Hikaru said 'I think it's ok to fight, but you have to sympathise and listen to people too'. Her opinion has now become her lines. We want the children to interrupt the solemnity of the narrator to deliver these lines directly to the audience  - in Japan children are not expected to speak up, but the current generation are growing up in a country whose Prime Minister is seeking to change the constitution, signed in 1945, which forbade the maintenance of an army. The Hibakusha (survivors) want the children to speak up in a way their generation did not. Many of the Hibakusha vehemently oppose the Prime Minister's suggestion but seeing the children speak out also means that perhaps their messages of peace have been heard.

If we have no opportunity to speak, if others put us down, we are hurt and remain silent, we don't want to feel that hurt again, it is safer to say nothing. Before long, we have no voice. The process of making theatre is built on many strategies for getting people to speak out - to pool information or disagree. Performance outcomes can present a magnification of that voice - and yes at that point people need to stand tall and speak clearly.

But do the behaviours we practice in the rehearsal room/speech bubbles session, transfer to the outside world ?  Do those feelings engendered in the artificial tribe become extinguished by the reality of the classroom or office. I can't prove it. But I do know that Hikaru is enjoying herself hugely - and that she is watching her mother enjoying herself too. And I do so recognise the observations of that teacher.

*Speech Bubbles is delivered to groups of 10 children at a time, once a week for a year, by a drama facilitator and teacher. The children who would benefit most are referred by the class teacher who also helps evaluate the outcome. The core activity is the gathering of stories from individual children. These dictated stories are then acted out by the whole group. For more information go to http://www.londonbubble.org.uk/projectpage/speech-bubbles/