CREATIVITY & CHANGE Masterclass Toolkit: theatre: from the personal to the public
Creativity & Change Creativity & Change is based in CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, in the Department of Arts in Health and Community Practice and is supported by Irish Aid. Our programmes target change-makers, educators, activists, artists, community workers, adult educators, youth workers, volunteers and anyone who is interested in how creative engagement can nurture global citizenship and empathic action around local and global justice themes. In the Creativity & Change programme, we believe that creative engagement can support transformative learning experiences that connect the head, hand and heart and nurture the competences of global citizens that are important for the sustainable future of our world. Competences such as empathy, resilience, critical thinking, problem solving, ability to take action and compassion are developed during our trainings through hands on, peer-led approaches and stimulating learning environments. Our training opportunities bring creative methodologies and energy to Global Citizenship/Development Education. We deliver a part-time, level9 award, as well as an annual international training course for youth workers, a ‘Creative Fair’ interactive roadshow and a rich, varied masterclass programme. Creativity and Change masterclasses provide an opportunity for inspirational, intensive and in-depth engagement with focused creative learning methods in two day intensive workshops. Delivered by facilitators with specific expertise and experience, the programme is designed around identified gaps and expressed interest and needs of practitioners. Masterclasses look at specific topics connected to change-making, global citizenship and justice themes and specific methods, for example: Design Thinking in creating learning environments for global citizenship education. Creative Tools to facilitate meaningful dialogue for change-making. Stop-motion, a tool for global justice awareness raising. Urban/ Street art. Bringing global justice messages to the street. Theatre tools for transformative learning and empowering expression of global citizens through creative writing.
Theatre: From the Personal to the Public with
y e s s u H r e t Pe “Kildare Youth Theatre creates adventures with young people. We take risks and lay down challenges. We seek to rise above our [play]stations in every way possible. It is free. It has more boys than girls. It has no religion. It is open to all regardless of ability. It runs all year round. It is for the deeply shy and for the proudly extrovert, the odd, the gorgeous, the brave and the weird.� Peter Hussey
Peter Hussey Peter Hussey is Artistic Director of Crooked House and Kildare Youth Theatre. He works extensively with young people, exploring how collaborative theatre can foster resilience and global citizenship. ‘From the Personal to the Public’ explored how we can shape our personal stories and reflections into commentaries on local and global issues of power and justice. In the workshop, participants explored how our moments of public awkwardness and vulnerability can act as starting points for larger stories about how power is taken from us and others. The theme of power and interconnection was explored from personal perspectives, as well as how power works within larger social and global systems. Participants used juxtaposition as a tool to forge together apparently unconnected images, dialogue, text and spoken word to make a short performance about power. Having participated in the workshop participants could expect to have gained: a deeper insight into elements of power, colonisation and oppression and resistance. ability to connect the personal to the local and global. skills to engage others with creative and transformative theatre exercises. the chance to have fun creating material that is thought provoking and engaging.
masterclass OVERVIEW
Graphic harvest by Splattervan. Hover over images to play stop-motion video.
why theatre? Our education system encourages us to focus on personal results. It tends to remove risk-taking and devalue creative thinking. These individualistic values, instilled in people from a young age, often transfer to adulthood, the workplace and society in general. In an increasingly uncertain future, it is becoming more and more important to challenge the attitudes of generations invested in self-serving ideals and nurture values of kinship and community. When working with theatre, we learn to let go of our learnt attitudes and naturally become concerned with collective success. We are focused on the achievements of the group and the wellbeing of each individual within it. We learn to work as a team, returning to our intrinsic, childish ways of learning - tapping into our innate curiosity in a collaborative, non-judgmental, supportive environment. The results of working together in such a way are powerful, memorable, learning experiences, community thinking and active citizenship, particularly in young people.
how can our stories effect change? Through understanding characters, we come to understand big issues. When we think of ordinary people thorughout history whose stories have created major change, the power of the personal story becomes apparent. Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Alabama in 1955 gave way to the civil rights movement. Malala Yousafzai speaking out against the Taliban in Pakistan and surviving being shot by them on her way home from school in 2012 led to her becoming a prominent advocate for the education of women and children worldwide. Savitta Halappanavar dying as a result of a miscarriage in Ireland in 2012 sparked a movement that led to the abolition of the country’s unsafe laws on abortion. Our stories need not be so extreme, however. It is through hearing tales we can relate to that we develop empathy and a desire to take action against the unjust.
moving towards performance Over the course of the workshop, participants took part in activities designed to encourage creative thinking, freedom of movement, trusting one’s intuition and confidence. They learned about the benefits of being able to function under pressure and explored activities that enabled them to do so. They also began to learn how to be looked at and how this is a useful tool in gaining positive personal power and bringing about effective change. They then moved towards creating a performance. Working in groups of three or more, they identified a social justice issue that they wanted to address. They began by creating still-frames that expressed this issue, having the others guess what their still frames were trying to say. From here, they built upon their stills - creating characters and adding drama, embellishing their scenes. The scenes were allowed to be set before or after the still-frame had taken place. Participants were encouraged to trust the process and know that the theme of their performance would naturally emerge. They concluded by performing for one anther and unpacking the experience, exploring how these processes could be transferred to use in the work that they do with other groups, in formal and non-formal settings.
exercise toolkit THE GLASS COBRA From Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors
Aim To get people used to using their bodies and their different senses, ie. touch and hearing. To start to build trust among the group. To allow the group to feel vulnerable in a safe environment. To introduce the idea of “trusting the process”.
Participants 6-30 Directions All participants stand in a circle (or in two or more lines if the group is very large), with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. With their eyes closed, they use their hands to investigate the back of the head, the neck and the shoulders of the person in front. This is the glass cobra in one piece. Then, on an instruction from the facilitator, the cobra is broken into pieces and each person sets off around the room, still with their eyes closed. In the legend of the Chilean Araucanos Indians, this ‘glass cobra’ shattered
into a thousand pieces when their nation was invaded by the Spanish - but one day the pieces will find each other again and these small fragments, while harmless on their own, will become dangerous the moment they are reunited, because then they will become the steel cobra and will expel the invaders. The cobra in the legend is the people. In the game it is the participants, who, after a few minutes of blind movement around the space, on a signal from the facilitator must find their way back to the person who was in front of them before the cobra broke up. They must reconstitute the cobra(s). As in the legend, this may take time.
Safety It is important that blind games are safe, so care needs to be exercised; dangerous obstacles need removal and with a large group it can be useful to have one or more people apart from the facilitator to keep a lookout and head off accidents. If people are moving around ‘blind’, it is worth reminding people to move slowly, and not to extend their hands in front of them in the classic caricature of the blind person – in this position, it is easy for someone to get jabbed in the eye. A good position for blind movement is arms slightly crossed, with the hands covering the elbows. In all the games which feature a ‘blind’ person and a guide, it is best if one can do the game a second time, swapping the blind/guide roles.
Reflections Ask Participants how it felt to be without the use of their eyes. Ask them if they felt safe. What did this exercise bring up for them?
EXERCISES IN CLARITY Aims Challenging our brain. Introducing working with your body to convey a message or feeling. Allowing yourself to experiment and play. Learning to allow ourselves to be wrong. Learning to allow ourselves to be looked at.
Participants Two or more small groups of 3 or 4 people. More than one group is needed so that participants can “perform� for each other.
Directions Start simply: In your small groups in 30 seconds arrange yourselves to represent the following: A square, three triangles, two rectangles, a cat, an elephant. Make it a little more challenging: In one minute: make an image you would find in a kitchen, ie., a teapot. Can the other group guess what you are? Now try something that is in a kitchen but is something that people would normally not noticed or looked past, ie., a skirting board. Have the other groups try to guess what you are representing.
Develop into asking group to express a concept. Finally, tell a story using four still frames.
Reflections How did it feel to be under time pressure? What was it like conveying a message with your body? How does it feel to be looked at by an “audience�?
THE Great game of power§ From Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors
Aim The Great Game of Power helps participants to explore representations of power through the construction of a visual image made of everyday objects. The group examine the relationship between observation and interpretation, making meaning through the use of ‘DAR’ - Describe, Analyze, Relate.
Participants 3+ materials 5 chairs, 1 table. Directions Place a set of five identical (if possible) chairs and a table in a row in front of the group. Ask for a volunteer to step forward and silently arrange the objects in such a way that, in their opinion, one chair has more power than all the others. Explain that the objects be moved in any direction or placed on top of one another, but none can be removed from the space. Join the audience and silently wait for a participant to begin to arrange the chairs. Once the chairs have been arranged ask that volunteer to return to their seat and not to let their thinking behind the arrangement known to the other. Next, ask the group to interpret the image made by the chairs. Describe What do participants see? Describe the way the chairs are positioned in a literal sense. Analyze What do particpants see the position of the chairs representing? Why do they think so? Which chair has the most power? Why? Are there other interpretations of this position? Relate Encourage the group to make connections to the way there chairs are positioned. Could this image represent a moment in history/an image from a book/an interaction in their lives?
Encourage participants to move the chairs to express a number of different interpretations. Have another volunteer repeat the activity.
additions To add to the exercise, invite a participant to place and pose a body (their own or someone else’s) in the image in an effort to take power away from the chair. The body becomes part of the image. Using bodies and chairs, invite the group to make a specific image of power in response to a prompt. Build on these prompts to encourage participants to work together and use critical thinking, eg., Make a scene that shows somebody being disempowered. How do you show oppression? How do you show abuse of power? Now show liberation. This exercise can be used to discuss systems of government, character relationships or representations of power within stories from history.
reflection What are some of the different ways we saw power represented in this activity? What makes someone or something powerful? Who or what is powerful in our world now/was powerful then? Why?
resources and reading Augusto Boal Theatre of the Oppressed http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/theater-of-the-oppressed/ Games for Actors and Non-actors http://www.deepfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Games-for-actors-and-non-actors...Augusto-Boal.pdf
Carl Rogers Freedom to Learn http://www.napraviuchilishte.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Carl-R.pdf
Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed http://commons.princeton.edu/inclusivepedagogy/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2016/07/freire_pedagogy_of_the_ oppresed_ch2-3.pdf
Ken Robinson http://sirkenrobinson.com/
Caryl Churchill https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/sep/02/caryl-churchill-at-80-theatre-great-disruptor