Community Project

SETTING UP THE PROJECT - TERM TWO

In the penultimate week of the term, we were arranged into sub divided groups within the year and launched with our community audience who we would be working with for the next 6 weeks. 

Our group consists of: myself,  Zach, Ruby, Nastassja, Zafra, Alice, Sean, Stella, Saffron, Sofianne, Shifa, Tyrell, Sophia and Luke and we were made aware that we would be working with two groups of primary school children from The Crescent Primary School, just next door to our school, and our project would be coordinated by Susanna. 

Our skills from the term so far will hopefully come to fruition, since we've learnt about different devices to captivate an audience from a community and create some sort of change.  As in Year 12 I completed with the Unit 12 unit on children's theatre, my first impressions are quite positive. I'd got experience working with children and creating work targeted towards their audience before, so I feel that as a group we can utilise the skills that we'd learnt from that unit and develop them with this project. What differs from Unit 12 to this project working with children is that Unit 12 consisted of us devising a show for children on an educational topic - this would culminate in few performances to many young primary school children as well as a facilitated workshop. We were completely independent over many weeks without interaction with the children, and had to conduct a lot of research into children's theatre in order to make it successful. However, with this project, we will be working directly with the children as more of a collaborative process. They will come first - their reactions to exercises we do and the stimulus we give them will ultimately contribute towards an eventual performance that we do with the individual groups. The essence of the project is putting the children first: allowing them to get an insight into drama and acting, something they might not have had access to previously. 

The two groups we'll be working with our Year One children (5-7 year olds) and Year Three children (7-9year olds). We will be working alongside the basis of what they are learning about at school, and planning weekly sessions that aim to push the potential of the children. Year One's are looking at dinosaurs and the book 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen. The Year Two's are looking at their local area Croydon and street art. As such, our targets for each group are going to be slightly different. With the year ones, the children will be much younger. The likelihood that they have been exposed to drama is much smaller. They are probably going to be in the midst of developing their primary social skills, as well as learning how to properly read and write (which is probably why they're studying books like We're Going on a Bear Hunt). As such, we need to ensure that we have a more simple basis of plans  that don't over-stretch the attention spans of the children, and aim to allow them to have fun and enjoy the sessions, loving drama. They should be highly educational and interesting, using the dinosaurs to tie in knowledge and using the story of the book as a narrative to help the sessions flow. Contrastingly, as the Year 3 children are slightly older and they are studying their local area, with the essence of community theatre, like with the Year 1 children we should be putting them entirely first over our personal needs and should be aiming to empower them not only through drama but encourage them to love Croydon and feel fascinated by it. 

A challenge that we will face inevitably is that we are expecting to work with quite a lot of children, nonetheless because we are in a large group of 15 people, I think that we will be able to manage the children with more ease. We will just have to be tactile and strategic in how we plan sessions. 

In the session we had before the half term, we evaluated the skills that we have so far and what we want to achieve with the sessions. 

• Nourishing the child's imagination

Children are so much more imaginative than we are - their minds are much more freer and less weighed down in comparison to us as young adults. As such, they are incredibly smart and shouldn't be patronised or undermined. In the sessions, we had a general consensus that as facilitators of the workshops we don't want to end up patronising the children. We want the exercises that we do to be fun and enjoyable, and things that are educational while putting emphasis on the imagination of the child.

• Putting the children first and building their confidence

When I was a child, I was incredibly shy and not massively confident. Doing school plays and having exposure to acting and the arts was something that was incredibly beneficial to me in stretching my horizons and being more confident. I think that giving the children the access to the arts is so important and therefore with every session we should ensure that we are constantly putting the children first and understanding their needs as facilitators over being selfish. If we treat the children with respect and commit to the sessions, then perhaps their early exposure to drama could benefit them for the better, and it might be something that really sticks with them from an early age. Understanding the importance that this has for children in the midst of their school routine is something we should all acknowledge. In the sessions, we should notice the quieter children as well as the more outspoken children and cater specifically to each child, noticing each and every one. 

• Engaging the children with a constant element of fun 

We spoke a lot about different warm up games and exercises we could do that corresponded with the units the children are studying at school. As these children are quite young, we need to be adaptable and aware of their attention spans, being able to engage them from the minute the session begins to the end. Having a bag of different icebreakers, games and exercises we could do that will stimulate their imaginations and keep their attention will be important towards having successful sessions. The sessions should be broken up with funner warm up games, having more concentration focused thought provoking exercises, imagination fuelled drama exercises and reflections. After all, children concentrate more when they are actively having fun - so injecting fun into everything we do will help the sessions be successful.

• Making the sessions flow

In order to make the sessions flow and have a sense of organisation with such a large group of us, we negotiated that we will all at some point have to take a leading stance within the workshops, being able to run things and direct the children. Having broken the sessions up, working in groups with the children may be an efficient way to run things during tasks that require more concentration, however during a warm up or something that is more fun should involve the whole group. When we plan the sessions, we should be mindful and adaptable to the children, evaluating what will suit them best.

• Communication and evaluation 

As each week progresses, we should be aware that the process is also a devising process and we are working towards a final show. As such, we should be recording our observations of how the children are responding to the sessions, and even actively having reflection or feedback at the end of sessions or throughout in order to gain a sense of how they are reacting to things. This will make each session more concentrated towards getting the best out of each child, and helping us better ourselves as theatre facilitators over the weeks. 

Creating Our Own Forum Theatre Piece

CREATING OUR OWN FORUM THEATRE

We were each asked to bring in an article from a newspaper depicting something that we believe to be an act of oppression and social injustice and something that we feel passionate about. For me, this didn't seem hard considering that I feel surrounded by acts of social injustice in today's modern society. But the thing that first popped into my head was what happened at Grenfell Tower last year in June 2017. I remember the morning after it happened my mum walked into my room and told me about it, and this was the day I was sitting my GCSE Chemistry exam. I remember I was absolutely horrified and confused and it's something that has never left my mind since. When I got on the tube that morning, I remember seeing an array of commuters with the Metro clasped in their head, and saw an emblazened Grenfell tower across all of them with the massive headline 'HELL ON EARTH'. Everything about the event honestly shook me horrendously, especially because it took place in one of the richest areas in the city. It's crazy to me that in today's world seeing a council flat on fire across newspaper articles and headlines is something normal that you see on the tube, and this particular newspaper has stuck in my head to this day. 

In the last year since Grenfell, there has been voices from the Grenfell Community that have stood up to declare how the government and council failed them in giving them suitable and safe conditions to live, and I have been following the case with conviction and passion almost think it happened. It's the demonisation of the working class and an absolute ignorance of the government to admit the failings and push the blame onto other menial issues. This case echoes class issues as well as the growing housing crisis, and the failure of the government to cater for certain communities within society, and accept when things go wrong. I also feel particularly enraged by this issue since as this tragedy occured in Chelsea, an area of one of the greatest wealth disparities in the entire country, it feels as though the government has clearly failed to acknowledge the lower classes and instead has only accelerated gentrification and austerity. It's an issue that I feel is so pivotal in London and therefore demands to be addressed in theatre. As well as this, the Grenfell Community has been an extremely strong community in the last year since Grenfell, and hence it feels as though making a piece of community theatre that draws on the oppression at the heart of this issue is right. 

In order to create a 5 minute piece of forum theatre, I had to formulate in a group with Sofianne, Ruby, Zachary, Catherine and Tallulah. Our forum theatre idea evolved very much from us sharing our experiences with eachother about council housing. Since I don't have direct experience of council housing, I learnt a lot and was so shocked. I felt myself getting so riled up and more passionate about it the further we talked about it. The experiences and anecdotes of a couple of members in our group went directly into the creation of a script by Sofianne, where we decided that we wanted it to be revolved around a single parent who is trying to get the council to understand her.

A challenge we faced was trying to make the piece depict an experience which could easily be improvised by an audience member. While we were quite early on set on the idea of having a number of phone calls take place, which eventually formed the basis of our actual piece, we needed to have a physical encounter between the oppressor and the protagonist in order to make it palpable. 

As well as this, we also had to have an understanding of the different roles in the piece in order to make an effective piece of forum theatre, for example: 

• A PROTAGONIST - played by Sofianne. This is the person being oppressed.
• The OPPRESSORS - played by myself, Tallulah, Catherine and Zach. These are most of the characters in the piece who make the protagonist's life harder by oppressing them. It's the audience's job to take the form of the protagonist to counter act the oppressors and find a solution.
• THE JOKER - Ruby.

The Joker is a person who breaks the fourth wall between the actors and the audience. The Joker is on hand at all times to guide and support anyone who is nervous. The joker liaises with the audience about solutions they could take in the improvisations and essentially facilitates the whole piece. The Joker as to be as objective as possible, through; not having a personal decision over the matter, through avoiding 'magic solutions' made by the audience and by not manipulating or influencing the audience. The joker is also known as the 'midwife', assisting birth of all ideas and actions.

• THE SPECTACTOR - the second time the piece is performed, the audience members are actively involved in the piece and can say 'Stop!' at any time to improvise as the Protagonist and find a solution to the problem. 

Having an understanding of the different roles meant that we were obeying Boal's formulation for effective forum theatre and meant we were thinking of the end product we wanted to create throughout.  Here is the script we wrote for the piece:

I found that having a script made the coordination of this piece easier, since it gave us a foundation to work off of. I feel like if we tried to stage the piece purely based off improvisation it would have resulted in flimsy one dimensional characters with no clear purpose, and it may have also slowed down the efficiency of the rehearsal process (in which we had under a week).  Having a script was also a strength of the rehearsal process because we were able to have a clear understanding of our characters all on one page, and it gave us a basis to create a character profile for the Protagonist in particular and build three dimensional characters.

"One moment while we redirect your call" Rehearsing lines during rehearsal.

As shown in the script, most of the piece is comprised of a number of phone calls where we see the Protagonist trying to get through to someone, and is usually faced with a number of indifferent and middling Operators. We wanted to use symbolism largely throughout the piece to represent the oppression, for example through the contrast of the optimistic heightened phone hold music with the monotony of phone calls with the operators. The number of encounters are built up throughout the piece to ensure that by the end the Protagonist is clearly extremely indignant towards the problems. 

The script encouraged a discussion among us that all of the 'oppressors' in the piece are not the DIRECT oppressors: they are merely just under a large and complex structure run by the system, and are products of all the cuts and measures the government take to organise the council system. It became apparent that no character in the story is inherently mean or inconsiderate, but instead everyone is trying to do their jobs and get by for another day. I tried to use this to build into my character development and it was helpful during the actual piece when I had to improvise in accordance with the audience member's changes. This led to our piece being called 'COG IN A MACHINE'.

We tried to represent the status-like structure of the council symbolically through staging all of the council workers and operators in a corner on chairs. Throughout the piece, as oppressors we might change position on our chairs, or switch chairs, but ultimately we are confined to one space where we can't physically directly help the Protagonist even if we do care.  Consequently, in the final scene, when this structure breaks and all the council workers/operators/oppressors step into the periphery of the home of the Protagonist, it enhances the idea of futility around the council being able to directly prevent oppresion on a case-to-case basis due to their lack of power under the system. They might be showing more sympathy and connection with the Protagonist, but ultimately they're still powerless and the Protagonist is left still oppressed by the end. 

STAGING: The Council Workers in a confined square

A lot of this symbolism takes place experimentally, through symbolic movements/slight physical theatre, and while we were aware that this wasn't exactly feasible under the premise of 'improvisational forum theatre', we wanted to make the piece interesting through movement so that the topic of social injustice was clear. I thought this was successful, and set us apart from other groups who mostly took on naturalism, but in the same way posed a disadvantage because there were less opportunities for audience members to get up and create a solution except in the naturalist aspects. This meant that less audience members actually participated by improvising, however this could also be down to other factors, such as the fact that the audience had just been involved in another forum theatre piece, or alternatively maybe the Joker could have done more initially to make the audience comfortably. Understandably, our piece was quite complex in the sense that ultimately only short term solutions could be found to fight the oppression, so as an audience member I would have probably found it harder to combat the oppression and participate. 

Nevertheless, that's not to say that during the piece, the audience members didn't have a good discussion and find some good solutions. For example, Amy contributed the fact her dad worked in the council and the fact that legally a signal has to be sent out the day of complaint for someone to fix the problem. This is an example of the success of our piece in provoking discussion and bringing solutions such as that, which when improvised worked out and sorted out the Protagonist's issue. I thought that Ruby did an excellent job of sustaining this atmosphere, especially through encouraging audience members to participate if they contributed in the discussion and creating a safe space.  Equally, Ruby also did really well at ensuring that everyone in the audience understood the piece, explaining where she could but still maintaining an objective stance.

Rehearsals

I also believe the piece was successful since I felt I did a good job of sustaining my character during my scene in which Luke improvised as the Protagonist and I had to improvise on the spot based on the solutions and suggestions he was posing. I don't think this would have been achieved if I didn't understand my character, and I felt I had to be really strict based on my knowledge of the council system when he was offering solutions - e.g asking if he could get a note to show work his absence, which I denied. Although I wasn't particularly lenient in allowing him to reach a solution, I feel as though I played it truthfully in the moment, especially because Luke's approach wasn't to necessarily tackle the problem directly but moreso work with his options.  I took iniative in allowing Luke to speak to my manager, playing off the 'cog in a machine' vibe, but I felt I could have been more confident during the improvisation in order to give the audience more options to find solutions.

Similarly, the other scene that was improvised by the audience was Zachary's scene and I think he did a really good job. My observations of this scene, as I wasn't actively involved, was that many audience members that got involved got angry at Zachary's character and this was ineffective. The conclusion was that being patient and civilised was what created the solution, so when Amy brought up the 'Tenants Agreements', Zach allowed the solution to be found. I feel that this shows that he was playing the scene truthfully, as he didn't respond to aggression and anger.

Overall, I think that our forum theatre piece was successful. It provoked discussion and debate about the conditions in council housing,  and solutions were eventually found after deliberation. This was coordinated really well by our Joker, Ruby. However, in comparison with other groups, I think an overall weakness of our piece was that it could have had more material to offer the audience chances to step in as spectactors: other groups based their pieces off naturalism, and this meant the spectactor had more free reign to step in at any point they wanted - it seemed our piece wasn't as varied. As well as this, in the rehearsal process, I would in hindsight have practiced more with random audience members as the Operator having to improvise. While we did this once, I feel like doing this a few times would have made us much more confident as as group in being able to improvise quickly and confidently, and perhaps this would have made the piece more successful. Moreover, something I really liked about other pieces was that they implemented exercises that introduced the themes of their piece, for example Divon's group introduced us to an exercise where we had to explore what it was like to be the oppressor and feel oppressed. I think we could have easily put together an exercise that did something similar - playing with the idea of not being listened to and how that feeds into oppression. It may have perhaps made the audience more passionate and engaged.  Nevertheless, I think our piece was still largely effective and unique in its experimentation of symbolism. This was achieved through consistent efficient rehearsals and everyone in our group being equally on board and passionate about the issue, since it made us all commit to the prospect of putting the oppression to justice in our piece.

Having the experience to make my own forum theatre piece has made me aware of how amazing it is as a device to create change, particularly in disadvantaged communities. While the audience we had were a model audience, if it were a group of people who are involved in the council or live in council housing, it could potentially lead to some really positive innovations in changing the way we deal with systems. It was incredibly empowering for me as someone who feels really passionate about the topic to actually stage it and discuss it with an audience, as it felt really proactive!  I will not underestimate the power of Boal's ideas after this experience.

What Is Forum Theatre?

AUGUSTO BOAL'S 'FORUM THEATRE' 

Forum Theatre was developed by Augusto Boal in Latin America as a means of tackling social issues. Working with groups of peasants and workers in literacy campaigns, Boal took inspiration from Paulo Freire's theories to create a form in which 'the oppressed become the artists' (Theatre of the Oppressed).

Forum theatre commences in showing a play or scene which shows some kind of oppression twice. During the second time, any member of the audience, branded by Boal as the 'spect-actor' is allowed to shout 'Stop!', step forward and take the place of one of the oppressed characters, showing how they could change the situations to enable a solution for the issue. Different solutions might be attempted by various spect-actors. The other actors have to remain in character, improvising their responses. Furthermore, a facilitator (joker) is necessary to enable communication between the players and the audiences. 

What is great about forum theatre is that it breaks down the fourth wall and barrier between performers and audiences and puts them on an equal footing. It enables participants to experiment action that might occur in their everyday lives. Boal used this as a political tool for change in Brazil, and this technique has soared across the world since. 

AN EXAMPLE OF FORUM THEATRE:

WORKING TITLES: FORUM THEATRE IN ACTION:

CARDBOARD CITIZENS' USE FORUM THEATRE IN HOMELESS HOSTELS:

For the last twenty five years, Cardboard Citizen's, which works around tackling the issue of homelessness has been running 'The Forum Theatre Tour' which has offered the opportunity for excluded audiences to access theatre. Their shows are performed by actors who have experienced homelessness and the shows work to inform the themes of homelessness, family relationships, employment and health which affect people who are marginalised. The Forum Theatre Tour attracts many new members, supporters and creates relationships through; working in prisons, enabling excluded people to develop their skills and confidence through workshops; supporting participants' practical and financial needs and including actors who have experienced homelessness. Overall, Cardboard Citizens is one of the UK's leading practitioners of forum theatre.

Facilitating A Workshop

THE IDEAL FACILITATOR 

In today's session, we were looking at what makes a good workshop leader. We carried out a number of fake workshop scenarios, where members of the group had to take on roles with specific traits, and as a group we'd then unpick the scenarios and suggest what leaders were better than others. This was a really effective way of depicting various problems that may occur, for example if you're trying to handle a difficult rowdy group or if some people don't want to contribute. I feel like it has given me more of an insight into how to organise workshops and deal with tough situations for the future when we have to run workshops as a year.

Within this session, we eventually came to some sort of consensus about what makes a perfect leader.  My initial stance on one of the most important traits every facilitator should have is empathy, since this ensures they are attentive to the room and sensitive to the needs of the group, whether that is listening to them, giving them a break if they seem tired or letting someone sit out who might not be comfortable in the exercise. Here are some of the thoughts I collated regarding an ideal workshop facilitator after the number of exercises that we did:

• SOMEONE THAT LISTENS which allows you to build a connection with the people you are facilitating the workshop with, and help them to feel part of something where they are listened to and understood. It also builds mutual respect.  
• SOMEONE THAT KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING, having a clear plan and being able to hold authority is important since if a leader is confident about what they are doing, they will build mutual trust with the group. They should also be able to adapt the plans based on the needs of the group. 
• IS ENTHUSIASTIC AND PASSIONATE ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING from the moment they walk into the room, even if that day they are not feeling it. In a sense, it's the idea of putting the needs of the group before you.  
• OFFERING PRAISE OVER CRITICISM - a leader that builds you up instead of shutting you off, letting all ideas be good ideas and making everyone in the room feel valued.  This is empowering for the group and helps them have confidence to build off their core strengths and move forward. 
• SOMEONE THAT DEMONSTRATES, if playing a game/exercise the leader should ensure that everyone understands, particularly by demonstrating or getting someone else in the group to explain to the rest of the group. 
• A DECISIVE LEADER WHO THINKS ON THEIR FEET, being able to adapt based on the room and problem solve quickly while holding authority is important particularly for unexpected situations. Every workshop will be different so the leader should be prepared for anything to happen. 
• SOMEONE THAT CREATES A SAFE SPACE - this partly comes from listening more and valueing everyone in the room, but it also just comes from perhaps setting out some ground rules that ensure everyone is on the same page. 
• A LEADER WHO CAN LEARN FROM EACH WORKSHOP - when we are running on workshops, we will have to reflect on every workshop afterwards and discuss what worked well and what didn't, what the group seemed to respond to and when they might have switched off. This is good because it allows you to improve yourself and ensure that every week you are dedicating yourself to helping the pursuit of the group.