His Story Repeats

Recently, I have been working on the final performance project for our second year students. They have been rehearsing a show with the HND students: The Theatre Workshop's brilliant satire on the futility of conflict, 'Oh What A Lovely War'

At first they didn't quite get what the whole thing was about. The Music Hall style, the historical references, and their own lack of knowledge about the First World War were significant barriers to their enjoyment of and engagement with the material. This concerned me to begin with but then I came to understand some of the reasons behind what, at first, seemed like ignorance.

Without wishing to come over all Gove here - my regular reader will know that I have little or no sympathy with his particular (lack of) educational vision - it does seem to stem from the students' experience of history and, more specifically, how it is taught.

History is a continuum of events that we should, ideally, learn from and that can, sadly, be manipulated to serve any number of political or other nefarious means. It is complex and confusing.

A lot like the everyday life that we lead.
One of the frustrations that I have with the way in which (most) young people engage with the world is that they have been distracted from what really matters by the promise of a shiny, advanced and, above all, easy future - just as long as they leave all the messy decisions to somebody else. That is, I am aware, a huge sweeping generalisation and there are thousands of young people across the world,
right now, fighting, literally in many cases, for a better future. But in my small corner of the globe, the apathy and disengagement is worrying.

Being the performing arts, our courses attract more female students than male ones. I have written before about how we need to build the sense of self and self-worth in all our young people, especially girls. In one rehearsal we reached the scene in Oh What A Lovely War that features a brief appearance by the character of Mrs Pankhurst. In the scene, she is heckled by a crowd of onlookers as she attempts to spread her message of pacifism. This led to a discussion about attitudes to pacifism, conscientious objection, and the role of women in peace movements and politics. The young lady playing Mrs Pankhurst in the scene had heard of the Suffragette movement and knew it had something to do with the King's horse but beyond that, her knowledge was sketchy. After a further, brief discussion about the place of women in Edwardian society, we ran the scene again and the difference in the performance was a marked one: the young actress delivered her lines with conviction and a level of passion that she had, hitherto, not displayed. The 'crowd' reacted in kind and the scene took on a new intensity.
When I asked her what had caused the difference, the actress said, "It meant something...I just had to make them listen!" - she had connected with the material.
The rest of the rehearsal buzzed along nicely, feeding off the energy of that initial scene. As the session drew to a close I mentioned that there were a couple of programmes on TV that week that were about the Suffragette movement. Clare Balding's documentary about Emily Davidson and her fatal protest at The Derby, and a new comedy by Jessica Hynes, called 'Up The Women'.

At the next rehearsal, having watched the programmes, the young actress came in full of indignation at the fact that no-one at school had told her about the Suffragette movement in any detail. She felt that there was so much else to find out and know about - I was smiling by this point, knowing that a fire had been lit - and how "doing this play" had opened her eyes to how history shapes our lives. "It was never like that at school, even when we did do stuff about the First World War, it was always battles and generals and I found it boring. I learned more about attitudes to women in a half an hour comedy programme than I did in all my GCSE history classes."

We went on to discuss how theatre and literature can bring out the lessons and messages from historical events, and how playwrights use historical periods as allegories for their own times. We talked about 'The Crucible' and how that was really about American politics of the 1950s. We discussed Brian Friel's play, 'Making History' which is all about how history is written by the victors, and how facts can be manipulated to suit a particular agenda. We talked about how so much of history is written from a man's perspective. This brought us back to the use of propaganda in the First World War and how people at home were lied to about what was happening on the battlefields of Europe.
The discussion ended with us getting back onto the stage and blocking some of the scenes we had yet to stage. As we were about to start, the young actress said, "This is why I like doing theatre...it makes me think about things...and it makes me feel about them, too. Do you know what I mean?"

And I do.

The Mill - City of Dreams

The following post is a slightly revised version of a piece that was originally submitted to The Culture Vulture website.

Drummonds Mill Yard

The huge, iron, gate clanks shut behind me as I walk into the cobbled yard outside the Mill. It is eerily still and quiet here now, sheltered in a patch of spring sunshine. My guide and I walk round the corner of the vast building, the chimney towering above us. Soon we step into the cool dark of the building itself and there is a scale model of the local area, cleverly constructed from record cards and archive boxes that had been discarded in the mill when it closed.

The Model Made of Record Cards

Through a red metal sliding door and we are in one of the huge loom sheds that once thundered with the sound of machinery, so loud that the workers had to learn to lip-read. Today, though, the silence settles like the dust and our footsteps echo as we walk between the pillars; woollen threads linking some of them, almost like a web.

The Loom Shed

Another metal door, this time green, leads us into a much smaller space about the size of a shipping container. Cardboard boxes and pallets line one wall and the plastic hood of a long-gone telephone booth hangs on the other. ‘I’m a Daily Star’ says the faded sticker next to it, yet more detritus left behind. Out again into a larger room, this time divided by industrial plastic curtains, and we find lengths of material draped from the roof beams, reminiscent of the weaving looms that are now conspicuous by their absence. A voice echoes from somewhere on another floor above and we turn at the sound. A set of metal lockers, a chair, a radio, a pair of polished shoes placed in the space suddenly bring a very human touch to this industrial landscape. Not only was this someone’s workplace, it was their life.

The Human Touch

We pass a bicycle chained to the wall as we weave through narrow corridors flanked by empty offices. Only, like the rest of the mill, they are not quite empty. Reminders of the previous occupants and remnants of their routines remain; a flyblown calendar, a single office chair, a filing cabinet with one drawer left open a fraction. Quietly at first I can hear them at work, on the telephone, discussing orders, negotiating delivery times. Soon my imagination is filled with the clacking of typewriters tapping out the hi-hat rhythm above the mill’s bass drum thud of the looms. The corridors and stairwells whisper the secrets of office girls. Outside a shire horse stamps its iron-shod hooves on the cobbles and impatiently snorts in the dawn.

“It is this way, up the stairs, to The Ship”, says my guide, pulling me back into the here and now. I don’t have time to ask why there is a part of a textile mill called The Ship before I can see for myself. Stretching out for almost the full length of the mill building is a huge room. Curved beams like the timbers of a ship hold up the roof. More threads hang from the ceiling attached to big wooden bobbins and reels. Threads stretching back through time, linking us to the past, the past of this great building in this once great city.

The Ship

A faded map of the world, the size of one wall hangs at the far end. It is out of date and some of the place names have been changed in recent times but many remain familiar. India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Latvia, Poland, The Ukraine, Kashmir, Bangladesh. From all of these places people came to work in the mill. They brought their skills in spinning, weaving, dyeing, burling and mending. They brought their hopes and ambitions too; adding their own particular threads to be woven with all the others to make up the fabric of the city of dreams.

Freedom Studios have brought together an exciting and innovative creative team to work on this project. Directors Madani Younis and OmarElerian have worked with a small company of actors to research, recreate and retell some of the hundreds of stories collected in interviews with ex-millworkers. Award winning sound artist Janek Schaefer has created an evocative soundscape pieced together from the noises of machinery, electronics and the ambience of the building itself. He has even built a music-box that plays a melody created by the punched cards that once programmed the looms. Leeds-based light artists Lumen have constructed installations and projections and the production has been designed by Roma Patel.




Bobbins



Local people themselves are involved as a community cast of thirty actors will help to populate the vast open spaces of Drummonds Mill, and a crew of volunteers will help to guide the audience around the building during the performances.

Faith and Community

On BBC Radio 4 this morning there was a comment from Dr Tom Wright, the retiring Bishop of Durham, that we live in an "increasingly religious age". The producers of the programme asked for comment from the listeners on this statement and many responded. Both sides of the argument were represented with a fairly even spread between those who agreed and those who did not.

The debate got me thinking about the term 'religious' and how it is applied to life in the 21st Century. Highly emotive words are often attached to it - religious fanatics or religious extremism appear often enough but so too do phrases such as 'he follows Arsenal religiously'. It would seem that 'religious' is another word that has lost its real meaning. Religion, Politics and Sex were once the subjects most likely not to be discussed in polite company; it was bad form to ask a chap about his politics or his religion and we British have never been comfortable talking about...well...you know...

But now Western society knows no fear and we are happy to discuss our politics and our sex lives candidly(sometimes with accompanying video footage) and yet to mention the 'R' word can still trip us up. The supporters of Dr Wright's statement offered examples of warm welcomes at local parish churches or how they were offering prayers for the plight of the Pakistani flood victims whilst the detractors were claiming that  modern society was essentially godless and didn't need religion. After all, religion has caused more wars than anything else is the familiar saw. But are we talking about Organised Religion or the more personal, lower case kind?

Many people I speak to describe themselves as being 'spiritual' rather than religious, and this is an example of how the term has become almost perjorative. To be Religious is to be pious or intolerant or evangelical but to be Spiritual is to have an understanding that there is something bigger than we are. To be spiritual fits nicely with being 'green' or 'liberal' in the list of things that make us 'good people'.

What I think we mean by 'religious' is that we recognise that we cannot exist apart from everyone and everything else. To feel the interconnectedness of things. To have faith in ourselves and one another to be there for others. We may give our 'gods' different names and follow different traditions and rituals in celebrating them but we all need to feel part of something, to have a relationship with something other than ourselves.

The materialistic and selfish lifestyle promoted in the 19th and 20th centuries has failed us. Society is cracking and we have very little time in which to heal it. This is recognised but not always acknowledged by people who deny that they are religious but who seek the community of others. We reach out to others in many ways and technology can play a part. This is seen in the continued growth of social networks such as twitter and Facebook. One of the earliest social networks was 'Friends Reunited' and it is no coincidence that this has a more human and sharing name than the self-centered 'MySpace' which is losing users to other, more social sites. Twitter was given the name in recognition of the way birds communicate to one another by tweeting little pieces of information that contribute to the survival of the whole flock. Online communities may not be a replacement for the real-life, flesh and blood kind but they can have enormous benefits (think of the money raised to help the victims of the Haitian and Pakistani disasters via twitter) and they do provide the opportunity to be part of something; to be an individual within a larger society.

The play we took to Edinburgh, 2020Vision, discusses this very theme and places the discussion in an extreme set of circumstances to heighten the message. Another, much gentler, production in the same venue dealt with the topic on a more intimate level. 'Of People and Not Things' by Andrew J Hungerford concerns the breakdown of a relationship that has far-reaching consequences for the rest of the World. Two very different approaches but very similar messages. A coincidence? Maybe...

As we reach out to one another so we begin to understand that we can only continue to evolve as a species if we work together, care for each other and truly communicate. God is a name we give the thing that is bigger than us, that guides us, that we all know is there but do not always acknowledge. Call it coincidence or fate or chance or chaos, even call it religion, but understand that it is part of us and we are part of it. Recognise the individuality and worth of the people around you and you will be rewarded with the same; turn against them and you will be truly alone.

2020Vision

The new show is a week away from going public in Edinburgh. We've been working on it since the initial discussions back in January and now, some seven months on, we have a show. The premise is quite simple; how do people who rely on technology to communicate cope when it fails?
We have carried out a fair bit of research into current developments in science and technology. We have looked at astrophysics, nanotechnology and gaming technology to find the latest ideas and theories. Not much of this actual research has found its way into the final script, but rather has helped us to create the world that the characters inhabit. The play is a realistic look ten years into the future, hence the title '2020Vision'.
It is set in a call-centre of a major multi-national company called Dawn Technologies who are currently developing a new, renewable energy resource. This 'solar-reconstruction' will remove the world's dependency on oil and fossil fuels, and will pave the way for a better, brighter, more efficient future. At least that is what the corporate brochure says...
Working on this project has made all of us think about the future - our own and the planet's. Can we sustain the rate of growth and the speed of development in technology? What happens when all our major decisions are taken by computers? Or when our emotions, feelings and desires can be stimulated and satisfied virtually? What happens to the human soul; the ghost in the machine? These are some of the questions that we have debated during and after rehearsals for this show, and we have attempted to create characters who retain or re-discover their soul when faced with extreme circumstances.
It hasn't been an easy journey (we totally reworked the show two weeks ago) and I'm not sure how the Edinburgh audiences will react, but I am pleased that, as a Company, we have taken a risk in developing an idea rather than reaching for an established text. The next couple of days will see some fine tuning based on the comments made by the invited audience to whom we previewed the show last week. The comments were positive, on the whole, but there was enough criticism to keep us on our mettle. We have made mistakes along the way but sometimes that can be the best way to learn.

Back into Room 101

Once again, time has charged ahead and I'm left wondering where it all went. We are into a new decade and the World is once again in the throes of a disaster. The terrible events in Haiti are an awesome reminder of the destructive power of nature. Echoes of the Asian Tsunami resound. There must be something about this time of year when the Earth (literally) shakes us up and puts us in our place.

All this makes my posting about a theatrical event seem pathetic and irrelevant and yet, often, it is the communion of actor and audience that can make sense of terrible events. All of the major tragedies from the Greeks onwards deal with such big events as war, famine, disaster and death. They allow a personal perspective on the Machinations of Governments and Business, Tyrants and Warriors. Catharsis is offered and gratefully accepted. Lucy Prebble's play "Enron" deals with high level corruption in the murky world of business. We are all still feeling the effects of the financial crisis precipitated by such acts of greed. Indeed, imagine the amount of aid that could be sent to Haiti if we used the money properly and didn't give it to the boss of RBS as a bonus.


So, back to our production of 1984. After a very successful couple of performances at The National Media Museum in Bradford back in June 2009, we are again taking the play on tour. Thanks in no small way to the contribution of John Hurt, we have managed to get half a dozen or so venues interested in taking the production. So far, Sale in Cheshire, Wakefield, and Derby have confirmed. We are back in rehearsal with three new cast members and have been revisiting Orwell's original novel, Michael Radford's chilling film version, and, of course, Alan Lydiard's great script to get us back in the world of Oceania.


So much of the novel resonates today that I hardly need to mention it here. It is sobering though to think how close we have come to Orwell's vision. If the book was intended as a warning; we have failed to heed it. If you don't believe me, just count the CCTV cameras on your journey home.

Passion

Last week, my wife visited Clarence House in London to meet with Prince Charles. She went as part of a group representing an organisation called Hope 2008. She was there to talk about a project that she (and our company) had been involved in. My wife had directed the play, working with several groups of amateur and professional actors. On Easter Saturday we performed in a Passion Play - depicting the last days of Christ's life - in an outdoor production. The event attracted a crowd of approximately 1,000 people of all faiths and races (despite very changeable weather) and received widespread media coverage.

At the meeting, the notion of passion was discussed; not in it's common, romantic or erotic sense, but in the terms of an intensely felt emotion or strong entusiasm.

It was felt that there is a distinct lack of passion in the world today; especially in the lives of young people. They have become so disengaged, so distanced from their surroundings that they feel all too little. Emotions are difficult enough to deal with, particularly during adolescence, that to feel anything 'passionately' can make one feel vulnerable. We are desensitised to so much through our exposure to horror, violence and sex in the media that it is easy to see everything as at a remove; on a screen, on a printed page, in a podcast. We do not like to feel anything which we cannot control.

To be passionate about life is a prerequisite for being an actor (discuss!). Indeed it must surely be a prerequisite for any creative/artistic endeavour. We have to reawaken that childlike curiosity about the world, to find again the sense of wonder we once had. To ask questions, seek answers, and to be passionate. Working with young people, it can be disheartening to find that they know so little about what does not concern them immediately; they have little or no understanding of history, of the wider culture, of geography, of art. We face a generation who only learn things they know they are going to be tested on (and then immediately forget it again!). It is no wonder they lack passion - thay have had it drained from them.

One of the pleasures and priveleges of working with young people is being in a position to rekindle that curiosity. As educators we have the potential to give them exciting. challenging and inspiring learning experiences; ones that have a real-world value and a true learning outcome. That is as long as we are not slaves to testing and league tables; reducing the real people involved to a series of numbers on a spreadsheet. If we are allowed to give them a love of learning for learning's sake, then we have a chance of making 'lifelong learning' a reality not just a Government catchphrase.

Theatre and performance work can provide so many opportunities to learn through experience, to develop empathy, teamwork, problem-solving, communication skills and self-confidence. It requires constructive criticism, reflection and evaluation. Being onstage, as part of a company, is an experience that mixes joy and terror in equal measures. You are vulnerable out there; you are being judged (you, not some artefact) you are giving of your very self. It can be scary. Most audiences understand this and recognise the challenge you are going through, and they will you to succeed. You are going through a rite of passage for them in order to communicate, comment or contextualise human exisitence. They reward you with their appreciation and applause. The buzz from performing can last for days. When you have given of yourself in this way, you cannot help but begin to feel passionate.

The end of the academic year is fast approaching and my final year students are preparing to leave. Some will progress to Higher Education, some are seeking employment, but they will all leave knowing a lot more about themselves and the world around them. Hopefully, they will carry their passion with them and infect someone else with it. If they are passionate about what they do, they might become passionate about all aspects of their life and the World might just improve.

It's a full-time job!

Holding down a full-time job in the education sector is challenging enough. Constant change in Government policy, ever present targets and the increased marketisation of education keeps us all on our toes. Throw into the mix a growing family and the desire to spend quality time with them, and it's easy to find your days fuller still. So why then do I also work as part of a small-scale theatre company? Well, because I believe that the soul needs nurturing; my soul, the soul of the city we work from, and the souls of the people who take the time to come and see what we do. I also think that there is something very powerful in the shared experience of live theatre. We aim to take our work out to people who might not necessarily see theatre-going as something they do. We are in the business of generating a future audience and future performers. This is where my twin roles (taking the fatherhood out of the equation for a minute) coexist. The company was formed by graduates and staff of an evening acting class. We maintain strong links with our College roots, and we aim to give young (and not so young) people their first professional experience of theatre making. I think that's a fairly noble ambition - and that's why I don't mind having several full-time jobs.