PURE JOY, MISCHIEF AND A SEA OF SMILES – ANNE O’GORMAN INTERVIEWS ADAM MCGUIGAN FROM BAREFEET ZAMBIA – UNLOCKING DEMAND – YOUTH THEATRE AND THE FUTURE OF YOUTH ARTS POLICY IN IRELAND – FÍONA NÍ CHINNÉIDE – PRODUCTION TOOLKIT – NAYD NEWS, REVIEWS, WORKSHOPS AND MORE…
a publication of the national association for youth drama
issn 1393-7677
issue 16 2014
YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
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YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
Cover image: Kildare Youth Theatre, Hearts, Photo: Peter Hussey. This page: Leitrim Youth Theatre Company, Tell Me a Story, Photos: Brian Farrell.
Youth Drama Ireland is a publication of the National Association for Youth Drama. Youth Drama Ireland aims to promote standards of good practice in youth drama/theatre in Ireland through: • the dissemination of information which impacts on youth drama/theatre in Ireland, including NAYD’s position on policy matters • the encouragement of debate and discussion on youth drama/theatre in a national and international context • the publication of practical and theoretical analysis of youth drama/theatre in a national and international context • the promotion of writing on the topic of youth drama/theatre, which also promotes the interests of youth drama/theatre in national and international fora.
The editor and editorial panel of Youth Drama Ireland are interested in receiving feedback on any of the articles or viewpoints expressed in the magazine or any news or information which may be of interest to its readership. Editor: Ciarda Tobin Copy Editor: Joanne Ryan Editorial Panel: Madeline Boughton, Michelle Carew, Jen Coppinger, Ella Daly, Loughlin Deegan, Rhona Dunnett, Emelie FitzGibbon, Sarah Fitzgibbon, Alan King, Fíona Ní Chinnéide, Jody O’Neill. A big thank you to Katie Martin for her tireless support in creating this edition of the magazine. Design: HEXHIBIT National Association for Youth Drama 7 North Great George’s Street, Dublin 1 Telephone: Fax: Email: Web:
00 353 1 8781301 00 353 1 8749816 info@nayd.ie www.nayd.ie
The National Association for Youth Drama reserves the right to edit copy and use photographs at its discretion and whilst no liability can be accepted for any errors, all reasonable care is taken with contributions. Views and opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the editor or of the National Association for Youth Drama.
CONTENTS
YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
Introduction
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By Michelle Carew, Director, NAYD
NEWS AND THEATRE ROUND-UP A Year in the Life of NAYD
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A catalogue of NAYD’s programme in 2014 Youth Theatre Round-Up 2014
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A listing of youth theatre activities in 2014
FEATURES Unlocking Demand
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Fíona Ní Chinnéide on youth theatre and the future of youth arts policy in Ireland Time to Shine
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A Youth Arts Voice Scotland (YAVS) member reflects on Scotland’s Youth Arts Strategy and what it means to them Resonant Texts: Classic texts and youth theatre
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Activate, Waterford, Kilkenny, Kildare and Roscommon youth theatres share their experiences of Romeo and Juliet and The Crucible In the Studio Two youth theatres present theatre techniques and their application in the studio
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Movement, Theatre and Je ne sais quoi by Jean-Marie Perinetti of Sligo Youth Theatre Verbatim Theatre Devising with Youth Theatre by Fiona Kelly of Customs House Youth Theatre, UK Made in Limerick
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Ann Blake and Marie Boylan write about Limerick Youth Theatre and Ireland’s first National City of Culture
INTERVIEW Pure Joy, Mischief and a Sea of Smiles
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Anne O’Gorman in conversation with Adam McGuigan, founder of Barefeet Theatre, Zambia
REVIEWS New Writing Reviews
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A look at new published drama Talking Texts
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Reviews of books relevant to youth drama
RESOURCES Production Toolkit
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The fifth installment in a series of articles that take a look at non-performance elements of theatre making This toolkit introduces video for theatre
WORKSHOPS The Quest Workshop
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Geraldine O’Neill from Activate and Physically Phishy shares her workshop for younger members Puppetry: Illusion and the thing that you can’t fake
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Dan Colley shares his workshop on an introduction to puppetry from the National Festival of Youth Theatres Stapler, Paper, Imagination
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Liam Doona shares his workshop on performance design from the NYT Lab
ABOUT US NAYD Angels
44
National Association for Youth Drama
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INTRODUCTION 2015 is upon us now, a new year bursting with potential. Across the country, youth theatres are coming back together after the Christmas break full of excitement and perhaps some relief. Relief to be back together again. Back in the bosom of creativity, fun and friendship that punctuates the weekly routine for the thousands of youth theatre members who participate. For the practitioners, committees and supporters who make youth theatre happen, a new year may be a time of urgency, with workshop programmes to be finalised, summer programmes to plan, plays to be produced and precious funds to be sourced. It is a time when new ideas and energy are needed and perhaps a little encouragement too. To the rescue then comes Youth Drama Ireland. This year’s edition is squarely focused on sharing practice, with contributions from seven youth theatres appearing throughout the features, workshops and reviews in the pages ahead. NAYD also welcomes a 2015 that is brimming with potential. This year we embark on a five-year plan guided by our newly articulated vision. That vision is for an Ireland where all young people can choose to participate in the best quality youth drama experiences possible. In Unlocking Demand, a timely article documenting the burgeoning policy agenda and what opportunities it might hold for youth theatre, Fíona Ní Chinnéide suggests that a national youth arts strategy may be the best hope of achieving this goal. Indeed, across the pond in Scotland, the implementation of their dedicated youth
Above: Sligo Youth Theatre, Arabian Nights, Photo: Jean Marie Perinetti.
arts strategy, Time to Shine, is already resulting in tangible investment in youth arts infrastructure there. Any youth arts strategy must involve young people in its development and implementation if it is to be relevant and while Scotland’s strategy should be taken as an inspiration rather than a blueprint, the inclusion of Youth Arts Voice Scotland (YAVS), a panel of young advisors tasked with guiding the delivery of the strategy, is certainly an approach worth replicating. Lauren Neilly, a member of YAVS, presents an insight into Time to Shine and the work of YAVS for the readers of YDI.
is paramount, and there are plenty of examples of that quality in evidence in this edition of Youth Drama Ireland. In the Studio is a new feature that invites readers to take a peek behind the doors of the workshop room and includes a look at Jean-Marie Perinetti’s application of Jacques Lecoq’s technique at Sligo Youth Theatre. Resonant Texts reveals the endless allure of classic texts for young ensembles, with a focus on Miller’s The Crucible, and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. For practitioners seeking fresh workshop ideas for 2015, plans for workshops in storytelling, puppetry and design provide plenty of inspiration.
Ensuring that all young people can choose to participate in quality youth drama experiences not only requires that the opportunity exists, but also that young people are enabled to participate. While the social, cultural and economic barriers to participation are considerably less challenging in Ireland than they are for the children living on the streets in Zambia, Irish practitioners had a great deal to learn from Zambia’s Barefeet Theatre Company when they shared their practice as guests of the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) in summer 2014. In Pure Joy, Mischief and a Sea of Smiles, Anne O’Gorman interviews the Irish-born artistic director of Barefeet, Adam McGuigan, for an insight into the remarkable story of how play, creativity and empowerment can give vulnerable young people a chance at a better life.
Other articles include an examination of the impact of Limerick Youth Theatre on the success of Limerick’s year as National City of Culture; a Production Toolkit in video design for theatre; plus book and play reviews, including the NT Connections 2014 Plays for Young People, jointly reviewed by the members of Kildare Youth Theatre.
The other key ingredient of our vision for youth theatre in Ireland is the emphasis on ‘quality’ youth drama experiences. The quality of the artistic experience in particular
Michelle Carew, Director, NAYD
For readers of Youth Drama Ireland, I hope this edition will be a cause for reflection as well as a spur forward. NAYD will continue to pursue our vision of an Ireland where all young people can choose to participate in the best quality youth drama experiences possible, and every youth theatre has their part to play. The seeds have been sown and there is much to build on. After all, a new year is upon us, a new year bursting with potential.
YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF NAYD
– A CATALOGUE OF NAYD’S PROGRAMME IN 2014
LOOKING BACK AT 2014 2014 was a year full of activity and new initiatives. The programme for this year included the National Festival of Youth Theatres, the Young Critics Programme, the National Youth Theatre Lab, Leading On… 10th Anniversary, ArtsTrain, seminars and much more. Leading On… 10th Anniversary with Chris Johnston Leading On... is an annual highlight of the NAYD calendar. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, NAYD offered an extra-special opportunity to learn from Chris Johnston, a prolific, socially engaged and influential theatre arts practitioner. Chris is author of House of Games: Making Theatre from Everyday Life and Drama Games for Those Who Like to Say No. From 7th–9th August he facilitated Leading On…, NAYD’s annual residential course for youth drama leaders, and shared his acclaimed practice with NAYD member youth theatre leaders and drama facilitators. During his trip to Dublin he was interviewed by Veronica Coburn at a public event in the Peacock Theatre.
Above: National Youth Theatre 2011, It Only Ever Happens in the Left, Above, Right: Leading On… with Chris Johnston, Photos: Alan King.
Young Critics Programme 2014 On 25th-27th April, sixteen Young Critics from across the country convened and began working with Dr. Karen Fricker and Alan King on theatre criticism. The programme kicked off with a visit to see An Ideal Husband at The Gate Theatre and Quietly at the Peacock Theatre. On 5th October the Young Critics Panel reconvened in Project Cube as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF). There they discussed and reviewed three productions staged as part of DTF including Frequency 783 by Brokentalkers, Pan Pan’s The Seagull and Other Birds, and Ganesh Versus The Third Reich from Back to Back Theatre, Australia. Below: Young Critics, Photo: Allen Kiely.
The Young Critics has been a vital element of NAYD’s annual programme for many years. This year, Youth Theatre Officer, Alan King, travelled to the Theatre Critics of Wales Awards. Guy O’Donnell is the Arts Development Officer for Bridgend Council in South Wales and runs a Young Critics Scheme there. Based on his ideas, NAYD piloted some new ventures for the Young Critics Programme. Over the course of the Dublin Theatre Festival, NAYD engaged Dublin-based youth theatres and youth groups in the Watching Theatre: Dublin Programme. Leaders took part in workshops and attended performances. The programme culminated with over eighty young people attending the matinee of Dublin Youth Theatre’s production of Spring Awakening at Axis:Ballymun. Participating groups included Cabinteely Youth Theatre, Tallaght Youth Theatre, St. Andrew’s Resource Centre, Youth Theatre – Draiocht, Complex Youth Theatre and Dublin Youth Theatre. The participants watched the show and took part in a post-show discussion with members of the Young Critics Programme, the director and the cast of the show. New Affiliated Youth Theatres In 2014, NAYD welcomed Glengarriff Youth Theatre and Donegal Youth Theatre into membership.
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An Irish-Language Youth Drama Residential Ár dTeanga Féin - Speaking Our Language: Bhí ceardlanna drámaíochta i nGaeilge le linn briseadh mean-téarma i mí Deireadh Fomhair. Cuirteadh an tréimshe chónaithe ‘Ár dTeanga Féin’ ar siúil mar thoradh páirtnéireacht nua idir an NAYD agus Axis:Baile Munna chun dráma Gaeilge d’ensembles óga a choimisiúnú. A residential programme of drama workshops through Irish took place during the October mid-term break. The Speaking Our Language residential was offered as part of a new partnership between NAYD and Axis:Ballymun to commission a play for young ensembles in the Irish language. Fourteen young people from NAYD-affiliated youth theatres worked through the Irish language with writer and facilitator Ciaran Gray. His co-facilitator was ArtsTrain graduate, Roxanna Nic Liam. This project was made possible through funding from Foras na Gaeilge
NATIONAL FESTIVAL OF YOUTH THEATRES 2014 This year’s National Festival of Youth Theatres took place in Kilkenny College from 8th–13th July. The facilitators were Dan Colley, Philip Connaughton, Valerie Coyne, Veronica Dyas and Karl Wallace. 104 youth theatre participants and twenty-six youth theatre leaders from thirteen youth theatres took part. The youth theatres were: Activate Youth Theatre (Cork), Clondalkin Youth Theatre (Dublin), County Limerick Youth Theatre, County Wexford Youth Theatre, Footlights Youth Theatre (Blarney, Cork), Kildare Youth Theatre, Kilkenny Youth Theatre, M.A.D. Youth Theatre (Dundalk, Co. Louth), Monaghan Youth Theatre, Roscommon County Youth Theatre, Sligo Youth Theatre, Waterford Youth Arts and Wexford Artists Community Theatre (WACT) Youth Theatre. Above: Droichead Youth Theatre, Gulliver’s Travels, Photo: Christina Matthews.
NYT Lab The first ever NYT Lab took place from 18th–22nd August. NAYD is partnering with the Abbey Theatre on the commissioning of a play for young ensembles that will be premiered by the National Youth Theatre in 2015. Twenty young people from youth theatres all over Ireland worked with the commissioned writer, Carmel Winters, NAYD’s Dave Kelly and theatre designer Liam Doona. The NYT Lab was the ‘jumping-off point’ for developing the next National Youth Theatre production with plenty of inspiration emerging from the youth drama ‘laboratory’. The sharing of work on the final day reflected a great week’s creative exploration and learning. ArtsTrain, the only youth drama facilitation training programme in Ireland, was completed by fifteen participants in 2014. The aim of the course is to provide training in drama facilitation and youth arts and to develop an understanding of good youth theatre practice. As part of the programme, participants undertook a range of modules including engaging and creating drama, drama facilitation theory and practice and improvisation. This training was delivered at QQI level 6 with successful trainees achieving a QQI Major Award in Drama. Community Drama Training Programme The Community Drama Training programme delivered training for youth workers in Meath and Limerick this year. Other Training In May, the focus was on promoting and marketing youth theatre with a one-day seminar taking place in Dublin. Topics covered on the day included: The Basics of Marketing (Sinead McPhillips) and Improving Your Online Presence (Roseanne Smith). One-day training sessions in child protection were organised in Cork and Dublin. NAYD partnered with the Arts Council and the Junior Cycle for Teachers to deliver workshops to English teachers on using drama in the classroom.
Left and Facing Page: NYT Lab 2014, Photos: Alan King.
YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
JOIN IN: Inclusive Recruitment Mentorship NAYD began the process of engaging with two youth theatres in 2014 to support them in developing and putting into practice more socially inclusive recruitment strategies. This mentorship programme evolved from NAYD’s Community Drama Training Programme (2011–2014) and its engagement with local youth work services. The 2014 New Stage Project was launched in Axis:Ballymun. Droichead Youth Theatre, M.A.D. Youth Theatre and Roscommon County Youth Theatre performed extracts from the New Stage plays. The plays – Animal by Vanessa Keogh, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, adapted by Conall Morrison and Midnight in the Theatre of Blood by Ken Armstrong – are available to NAYD-affiliated youth theatres. Perform YT, a new strand of the Youth Theatre Support Scheme to support youth theatres with the costs of performance rights for Playshare plays, was launched in December. Ten youth theatres received awards under the Youth Theatre Support Scheme. The scheme provides small amounts of financial assistance to member youth theatres to help them deliver their programme.
Above: Leading On, Photo: Alan King.
Integration through the Arts Seminar – NAYD was a partner with Friars’ Gate Theatre, LCETB and the Lime Tree Theatre in organising a seminar exploring the use of drama to promote cultural integration amongst children and young people. There was a range of presentations, practical workshops and discussion and group activities exploring drama as a methodology in integration work. The seminar took place on 2nd December at the Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick. Youth Theatre Development/Support/Advice During the year the NAYD team supported thirty four individuals and groups in developing youth theatre in their localities. They also worked closely with twenty currently affiliated youth theatres in developing their structures, welfare/child protection policies and strategic plans/reviews. This year the development work was shaped by the survey we sent to youth theatres in January to assess their support needs. New resources were developed on the Charities Act, the National Vetting Bureau Act and promoting your youth theatre. International In February, NAYD sent representatives from Droichead Youth Theatre and Co. Limerick Youth Theatre to participate in the EVS Connect Seminar in Austria.
This Image: Sligo Youth Theatre, Arabian Nights, Photo: Jean-Marie Perinetti.
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JANUARY 5th Droichead Youth Theatre hosted a directing workshop with Marc Atkinson of Sugarglass Theatre. 18th Droichead Youth Theatre hosted a producing workshop with Matt Smyth, freelance producer. 24th–1st Backstage Youth Theatre’s Happily Ever After, written and performed by the members and directed by Paul Higgins, was staged at the Backstage Theatre, Longford.
31st–1st Cinderella, written by Paul Reakes and directed by Leish Burke, was staged by Griese Youth Theatre at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge. Carlow Youth Theatre started their workshops. Droichead Youth Theatre performed an improvised piece at the launch of Boomerang Youth Café, Drogheda.
30th–31st Roscommon Youth Theatre performed RISK by John Retallack and directed by Catherine Sheridan at Roscommon Arts Centre.
Above: M.A.D.Youth Theatre, Connor.
Above: Galway Community Circus, Ensemble.
Youth Theatre Round-Up: 2014
Above: Activate Youth Theatre, Oedipus/Antigone, Photo: Ger Fitzgibbon.
FEBRUARY
MARCH
Boolabus Youth Theatre hosted an open workshop led by Jed Murray.
2nd Dublin Youth Theatre produced their 24 Hour Plays Dublin, which featured six new pieces by many of Ireland’s leading actors, playwrights and directors and was performed at the Abbey Theatre.
31st Jan –2nd Sligo Youth Theatre members performed Made of Glass. The short play, written by Milo Cummins and Oisin Sheerin and directed by Milo Cummins, was performed at the Youth Theatre Space. 9th M.A.D. Youth Theatre was the first Irish youth theatre to participate in The Class in Action International Youth Theatre Festival in Prague for which they devised and performed Connor, a new award-winning piece.
2nd Shine A Dark was directed by Neil Flynn and performed by Free Radicals Youth Theatre at Siamsa Tire, Kerry. 3rd–4th Limerick Youth Theatre’s Transition Year Theatre performed an adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel, Tortilla Flat, directed by Maeve Stone at 69 O’Connell St. Limerick. 1st–8th Droichead Youth Theatre hosted a playwriting workshop with Ellen Flynn, freelance playwright. 9th Clare Youth Theatre took part in the Ennis Book Club Festival with their show O to The Hours, adapted and directed by Theo Hynan-Ratcliffe and performed at Temple Gate Hotel. 11th–12th Kildare Youth Theatre presented a double-bill of comedies, Same by Deborah Bruce and Hearts by Luke Norris, at The Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge. 15th Droichead Youth Theatre hosted a stage management workshop with Christina Matthews of Sugarglass Theatre. 17th Droichead Youth Theatre participated in the Street Performance as part of St. Patrick’s Day. 21st–22nd Galway Community Circus presented a double-bill, Circopolis and Circopolin Children, created and performed by 150 young Galway Community Circus members and directed by Aerial Dance Theatre, Fidget Feet, at the Black Box Theatre, Galway. 24th–25th Limerick Youth Theatre and the Daughters of Charity performed A Night in the Library, written and directed by Myles Breen, at the Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick.
Above: Sligo Youth Theatre, Made of Glass. Left top image: Kildare Youth Theatre, Same/Hearts, Photo: Peter Hussey. Left bottom image: Kildare Youth Theatre, Romeo and Juliet.
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APRIL 3rd–5th Leitrim Youth Theatre Company’s new play, Tell Me a Story, written and directed by Catherine Sheridan, was staged at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon. 6th Droichead Youth Theatre hosted a design workshop with Colm McNally of Sugarglass Theatre. 10th–12th Activate Youth Theatre presented Promise by Meg Barker at The Graffiti Theatre, Cork. 11th Leitrim Youth Theatre Carrigallen (LYTC) presented two pieces, Neighbourhood Watch written and directed by Mary Blake and The Wind and The Sun directed by Yvonne Heijeman, at the Corn Mill Theatre and Arts Centre, Leitrim. 11th–13th Blessington Youth Theatre’s production of Annie was staged at The Tramway Theatre, Blessington, Wicklow. 12th Chatroom by Enda Walsh was performed by Stradbally Youth Theatre at Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise.
15th–26th Dublin Youth Theatre’s newest members presented the First Year One-Act Festival (FYOAF) at DYT House. The festival was divided into two different weeks of performances with two one-act plays being staged each week as a double-bill. Week One: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, directed by Alice Coughlan, and Game Over, written and directed by Michelle Read. Week Two: Two devised pieces, directed by Kevin Murphy and Dan Colley. 17th Carlow Youth Theatre performed Works in Progress, a selection of new and devised pieces, in The Town Hall Theatre, Carlow. 17th–19th Sligo Youth Theatre performed Arabian Nights, written by Stella Carroll and Jean-Marie Perinetti, directed by Jean-Marie Perinetti at the Hawks Well Theatre, Sligo. 23rd–24th Droichead Youth Theatre devised and performed Spilled Ink with Christina Matthews and mentors at Droichead Arts Centre, Louth.
12th The Musicians by Portlaoise Youth Theatre was staged at Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise.
24th–26th County Wexford Youth Theatre presented The Elephant In The Room, dramaturged by Hannah McNiven and devised by members at Jerome Hynes Theatre, Wexford Opera House, Wexford.
13th Droichead Youth Theatre produced a film with Darren Thornton of Calipo Theatre and Picture Company.
25th Free Radicals presented Florence Descends Into Hell For A Pint Of Milk written and directed by Neil Flynn at Siamsa Tire, Kerry.
13th Offaly Youth Theatre presented its annual showcase, Spotlight, at Birr Theatre and Arts Centre. 15th–16th Manorhamilton Youth Theatre, Leitrim presented The Open Razor, an adaptation of Buchner’s Woyzeck, directed by Declan Drohan at Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, Leitrim.
In April An Grianán Theatre’s Children’s Drama Group, the Teen Betweens, presented A Street Performance in the Yard directed by Nora Kavanagh. Dublin Youth Theatre and Brú Youth Service Crumlin Drama Club presented their one-act piece in Dublin Youth Theatre House.
MAY 1st–3rd Kilkenny Senior Youth Theatre performed Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet under the direction of Anna Galligan at The Barn, Church Lane, Kilkenny.
29th–31st M.A.D. Youth Theatre presented NAYD’s New Stage play, Midnight in the Theatre of Blood by Ken Armstrong, directed by Kwasie Boyce at The Space, An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk Co. Louth.
2nd Clondalkin Youth Theatre, presented Bassett by James Graham at Áras Chrónáin Irish Cultural Centre, Dublin.
In May, Mayo Youth Theatre followed their trip to see War Horse with workshops with Diarmuid de Faoite.
3rd–5th West Cork Arts Centre Youth Theatre premiered their production of Fragments based on ten poems by Paula Meehan.
Physically Phishy performed their devised play, Trapped by Geraldine O’Neill, at Graffiti Theatre Company, Blackpool, Cork.
7th–9th Kildare Youth Theatre presented Romeo and Juliet, directed by Peter Hussey at The Moat Theatre.
Stagecraft Youth Theatre produced Bury Your Brother in the Pavement by Jack Thorne, LOL by Lee Mattinson, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and Magic Words by Hannah Burke.
7th–9th CIT Cork School of Music Youth Theatre staged 11 September 2001, written by Michel Vinaver and directed by Peadar Donohoe, at the Stack Theatre, Cork School of Music. This production was performed in English and French. 15th–18th Monaghan Youth Theatre performed The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge at The Garage Theatre. 24th Droichead Youth Theatre performed Around the World in 80 Days, adapted by Philip Brennan and Stephen Colpher and directed by Christina Matthews, at the Droichead Arts Centre, Louth. 25th Kilkenny’s Junior Youth Theatre produced Schools Out, a collection of three one-act plays, at The Barn, Church Lane, Kilkenny. 28th–29th Backstage Youth Theatre staged An Evening with BYT which was performed in the Canal Studio at Backstage Theatre. It consisted of six mini plays and videos written and performed by group members.
Above: Activate, Promise, Photo: Geraldine O’Neill.
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JUNE 7th Louth Youth Theatre Day was hosted by Droichead Youth Theatre in the Droichead Arts Centre. The event involved forty members from Dundalk, M.A.D. and Droichead Youth Theatres coming together for a day of mixing and master classes facilitated by Barry Morgan and Evelyn Purcell. Each group also brought a selection of their favourite games/warm-ups to share with the other groups. 6th–8th Co. Limerick Youth Theatre staged Brendan Behan’s, The Hostage, at the HoneyFitz Theatre, Lough Gur, Co. Limerick. 14th Complex Youth Theatre performed their devised show, Benny’s War, in The Complex, Dublin.
Cloud Bursting by Helen Blakeman and Midnight in the Theatre of Blood by Ken Armstrong were in the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge. 27th–29th Happily F Rafter was written and directed by Zita McLaughlin and Davin McGowan and performed by Sligo Youth Theatre at the Youth Theatre Space. In June, An Grianán Theatre’s Childrens Drama Group, the Teen Betweens, performed Teen Angel in The Yard, Falcarragh. The piece was devised and written by the members and directed by Nora Kavanagh. Members of Backstage Youth Theatre wrote two panto scripts, one of which is due to be performed in 2015.
15th Galway Community Circus hosted their Circus in the Park, a family fun day in Millennium Park. 16th Carlow Youth Theatre hosted an Open Workshop for friends and family in VISUAL Carlow. 16th–19th Footsteps Youth Theatre hosted a Drama Camp for 13 to 18 year-olds. Facilitated by Fiona Quinn, it explored stagecraft, voice, improvisation and non-naturalistic theatre techniques. 18th Footsteps Youth Theatre ran a Youth Film Festival taking place at Friar’s Gate Theatre, Kilmallock, Co. Limerick. The festival featured the premieres of Footsteps’ first thriller and a new short, The Myth of Us, made by Co. Limerick Youth Theatre. 20th Droichead Youth Theatre took part in the Fusion Fashion Show at the City North Hotel. 20th–21st County Limerick Youth Theatre’s DynaLyt’s staged their first production titled the Acme Thunderer by Liz Coughlan at the HoneyFitz Theatre as part of the Lough Gur Summer Solstice Festival.
This image: Backstage Youth Theatre, preparing for St Patricks day parade, Photo: Paul Higgins.
JULY In the second week of July, Galway Community Circus sent ten youth circus members to take part in the London International Circus Festival, LIYCF. Galway Community Circus also took part in the Caravan Circus Network Youth Exchange in Brussels with a group of four young people aged 12 to 14. 14th–18th Galway Community Circus hosted its Summer Camps in performance and circus. 14th–26th As part of Galway International Arts Festival, Galway Youth Theatre performed Midsummer (A play with songs) by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre. The play was directed by Andrew Flynn at Nuns Island Galway.
24th Letterkenny Youth Theatre presented Is he here yet? at An Grianán Theatre, Letterkenny. Devised and written by youth theatre members and directed by Eoghan Mc Bride and Aoife Connor, it weaved genres, drama games and techniques to create a farcical piece. 23rd–26th Galway Community Circus ran Summer Circus Master Classes with Ken Fanning from Tumble Circus (IRL/UK) and Bianca Mackail from 3 is a Crowd (AUSTRALIA). 27th–29th Greise Youth Theatre celebrated their 15th anniversary in June. To explore and re-interpret its creative history, the youth theatre re-engaged with theatre practitioners involved in the past fifteen years as part of a programme of workshops, master classes and performances. A Vampire Story by Moira Buffini,
Above image: Footsteps Youth Theatre, Film Festival June 2014. Centre image: Co. Limerick Youth Theatre, The Hostage, Photo: Fiona Quinn. Right image: Physically Phishy, Trapped, Photo: Geraldine O’Neill.
Top row left image: Letterkenny Youth Theatre, Outdoor rehearsal, Is he here Yet?, Photo: Eoghan Mc Bride. Top row right image: Carlow Youth Theatre, members meet Jim Nolan at the Crucible performance, Photo: Sile Penkert.
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Below: Waterford Youth Arts, The Crucible, Photo: Keith Currams. Top right image: CIT, Cork School of Music Youth Theatre, 11 September 2011. Bottom right image: Letterkenny Youth Theatre, Workshop, Photo: Declan Doherty.
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
13th–16th
Boolabus Youth Theatre, Cabinteely Youth Theatre, Carlow Youth Theatre, Clare Youth Theatre, Dublin Youth Theatre, Griese Youth Theatre, Leitrim Youth Theatre Carrigallen (LYTC), Letterkenny Youth Theatre, M.A.D. Youth Theatre, Mayo Youth Theatre and WACT (Wexford Artists Community Theatre) Youth Theatre all hosted open nights to attract new members.
Like a Mammy at a Feis by Sligo Youth Theatre, written by Stella Carroll and Jean-Marie Perinetti and directed by JeanMarie Perinetti, was staged at the Youth Theatre Space as part of Fleadh Cheoil.
18th–20th Letterkenny Youth Theatre hosted a 3-day summer workshop at An Grianán Theatre for teenagers and young adults. Devised and facilitated by Eoghan Mc Bride, the workshop covered improvisation, movement, characterisation and creativity with the objective of developing performance and language skills, fostering creativity, improving listening and observation skills, building social skills and building self-confidence. 19th–22nd County Limerick Youth Theatre ran a Drama Summer Camp at the HoneyFitz Theatre, Lough Gur. 19th–23rd Dublin Youth Theatre’s Members One-Act Festival (MOAF) took place at the DYT house and featured a collection of plays including On Behalf of my Friend written by Aloisia King and directed by Joyce Dignam, I Am Not What I Am written and directed by Mark Ball and Cathal Duignan and Holding On written by Ross Watchom and directed by Austin Sheedy. 20th–22nd Limerick Youth Theatre performed Time Travel and The Leaving Cert by Dermott Petty at 69, O’Connell St., Limerick. 23rd–30th Waterford Youth Arts presented Miller’s The Crucible, directed by Jim Nolan at Garter Lane Arts Centre.
Leitrim Youth Theatre Carrigallen celebrated its 10th Anniversary. 19th Towns and cities all over Ireland were alive with performances and events for Culture Night. Sligo Youth Theatre’s Culture Vultures was a performance of three sharp, witty creations devised and directed by Jean-Marie Perinetti and performed by members of the youth theatre. M.A.D. Youth Theatre restaged their play, Connor. Limerick Youth Theatre screened their film Under Pressure in Dance Limerick. Clare Youth Theatre performed excerpts from Waiting for Godot at DeValera Public Library. 23rd–25th Dublin Youth Theatre hosted nine workshop/auditions facilitated by Debbie Murphy and Veronica Dyas in the Dublin Youth Theatre House, Dublin. September – December Letterkenny Youth Theatre hosted workshops by Iarla Mc Gowan focused on The Crucible by Arthur Miller with the senior members aiming at an in-house production in December.
28th–29th Kilcullen Youth Theatre (Kildare) presented two Playshare plays, The Essay by Ronan Carr and A Family Affair by Lisa Sherin at Kilcullen Town Hall Theatre, Kildare. 28th–1st Sligo Youth Theatre took part in a European Youth Exchange in Zilina, Slovakia. The festival, celebrating creativity among people with and without disabilities, had participants from seven countries.
Above Left: Sligo Youth Theatre, Culture Vultures, Photo: Dickon Whitehead. Above Right: Mayo Youth Theatre, Excel workshop with Max Hafler.
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OCTOBER Many youth theatres around the country recruited new members. 4th
Limerick Youth Theatre held its open day for new members at LYT, The Basement. 4th Roscommon County Youth Theatre, who are in their 14th year, opened for new members. 8th–11th As part of Dublin Theatre Festival, Dublin Youth Theatre presented Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, directed by Gyuri Vidovszky at Axis Ballymun.
Galligan, Rónán Mac Raois and Inma Pavon and a performance of a new piece by Raymond Scannell. Participating youth theatres were Physically Phishy Youth Theatre, Footlights Youth Theatre (Blarney) and Glengarriff Youth Theatre. 28th–29th Griese Youth Theatre (GYT)’s October Festival, Seeking the Puca took place at the Meeting House, Ballitore. The Festival included two days of theatre workshops with Jed Murray and Dee Burke, exploring our relationship with ancient Irish superstition.
11th Free Radicals hosted a workshop by Fiona Doyle, winner of Listowel Writers Prize for full length play and 2014 Papatago Prize for her play Deluge. 11th Complex Youth Theatre hosted their new members workshop auditions. 18th The Abbey Theatre gave a workshop to Free Radicals on Sive, exploring the characters, motivations and themes of the play prior to the members attending the play. 25th–26th Lightbulb Youth Theatre (Mallow) hosted the Cork Festival of Youth Theatres. The festival, celebrating Cork Youth: Past and Present, included workshops facilitated by Anna
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Blessington Youth Theatre performed Tall Tales and Mayhem at the Tramway Theatre, Blessington, Wicklow.
7th Free Radicals Youth Theatre presented Headbangers by Neil Flynn at the Siamsa Tire Theatre, Kerry.
17th Droichead Youth Theatre performed an adaptation of Spilled Ink as part of the NYCI Conference at Dublin Castle. The piece was devised by the cast and directed by Christina Matthews.
13th–14th Clare Youth Theatre hosted a pop-up poetry session in Clare museum and participated in an intergenerational Christmas celebration in St. Joseph’s Hospital, Ennis.
20th–22nd Mayo Youth Theatre presented a newly-devised show, Once Upon a Time, at Ballina Arts Centre.
15th–17th Waterford Youth Arts presented The Christmas Wish, a new play by Martina Collender at The Arch, Barrack Street.
21st Cabinteely Youth Theatre hosted the Gathering Festival of devised performance at Ceoltóirí Éireann, Monkstown. There were performances of devised pieces by seven groups including Griese Youth Theatre.
19th Limerick Youth Theatre premiered two micro documentaries as part of Limerick City of Culture/Fresh Film, The Big City Portrait Gala, at 69 O’Connell St. Limerick.
In November Dublin Youth Theatre established a group for young people interested in writing though Irish.
The G Factor, a work in progress between An Grianán Theatre’s Childrens Drama Group, the Teen Betweens, and Letterkenny Youth Theatre was performed in An Grianán Theatre. Letterkenny Youth Theatre produced an in-house version of Arthur Millers, The Crucible, in An Grianán Theatre.
Top image: Wateford Youth Arts, Written in Stone, Photo: Keith Currams. Top right image: Letterkenny Youth Theatre, Photo: Eoghan Mc Bride. Bottom right image: Offaly Youth Theatre. This image: Dublin Youth Theatre, Spring Awakening, Photo: John Taite.
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This image: Droichead Youth Theatre Workshops 2014, Photo: Christina Matthews.
UNLOCKING DEMAND Youth theatre and the future of youth arts policy in Ireland
by Fíona Ní Chinnéide In November 2013, Creative Scotland, the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland, launched Time to Shine: Scotland’s Youth Arts Strategy For Ages 0-25. Time to Shine is an enviable statement of commitment and intent, grounded in a clear recognition of the role and value of the arts and creativity in young people’s lives. Could we aspire to a similar policy statement in Ireland? In this article, Fíona Ní Chinnéide assesses whether recent policy developments present the foundations of a campaign for a national youth arts strategy in Ireland. Strategic Shift In policy terms, there has probably never been a better time to be a child in Ireland. In the decades since Eilis Mullan and Paddy O’Dwyer first set about making their youth drama dream a reality, there has been a seismic shift in terms of how Ireland facilitates, hears and responds to the voice of the child, with the best interests of the child now considered paramount – in policies, if not yet in universal implementation. Since 2011, Ireland has had a dedicated Minister for Children and Youth Affairs with a full seat at the cabinet table. In November 2012, the passing of the Children’s Referendum (if not as strongly worded as hoped) has seen the voice and the best interests of the child enshrined in the constitution. There is now a National Director for the Integration of the Arts in Education within the Department of Education and Skills, and a Head of Young People, Children and Education within the Arts Council. Significant policy developments in 2013 and 2014 have included the Arts in Education Charter (Jan 2013), the overarching BETTER OUTCOMES, BRIGHTER FUTURES: The national policy framework for children & young people 2014 – 2020 (April 2014) and, most recently, the Inspiring Prospects: Arts Council Strategic Review 2014 (July 2014). ‘Charter’, ‘framework’, ‘strategic review’ – it can be hard for the under-resourced and over-stretched youth theatre leader to see
the relevance of such lofty policy statements to the everyday realities of securing funds to heat rehearsal spaces. However, taken together, these recent developments suggest an emerging policy environment that presents opportunity for youth theatres; an opportunity to show exactly how this movement, built up over more than thirty-five years, can and does fulfil many of the objectives contained in each of these strategies. This opportunity isn’t a passive one; there is work to be done. It won’t require any change in what is already happening within the youth theatre space, but it may take a shift in thinking around how youth theatres frame what they do in their communications. It might also require a strategic shift in thinking, from asking “what they can do for us”, to articulating “what we can do for them.” Arts in Education Charter The Arts in Education Charter (launched January 2013) acknowledges that creativity is key, and commits to better provision and supports for both arts education and arts-in-education. While the Charter extends to non-formal education in its scope, it is focused on formal education in its content and there is disappointingly limited mention of performance arts beyond primary school. However, if the commitments in the Charter are met, and the quality of engagement with the arts-within-school settings is sustained
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at high levels, then the demand for arts among young people in non-formal and informal settings will increase – and this will increase the demand for youth theatre. Two practical opportunities for youth theatres contained in the Charter are: the commitment to making school spaces available to groups outside of school hours; and the commitment to build, support and develop Local Arts Education Partnerships. There is no reason why a youth theatre cannot assume the role of ‘artist’ within these partnerships, working collaboratively within the structure to bring high quality work – created by, for and with young people – into schools. Nothing can be more powerful than a work of excellence performed by peers. Apart from meeting all the stated arts engagement objectives, it also expresses to young people in the strongest way possible: “you too can do this.” BETTER OUTCOMES, BRIGHTER FUTURES The national policy framework for children & young people 2014 – 2020 (April 2014) is a comprehensive “whole-of-government” policy statement of how Ireland will achieve its vision of a country where the rights of children and young people are respected, protected and fulfilled; where their voices are heard; and where “they are supported to realise their maximum potential now and in the future.” The Framework is all-encompassing, detailed, sometimes repetitive but marked by strong ambition, and its commitment to cross-departmental and cross-agency collaboration is notable for assigning specific responsibilities to different departments and agencies. On the other hand, it is perhaps indicative of a narrow frame of thinking that the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the Arts Council are attributed responsibility in just one (1.14) of ninety-seven commitments towards outcomes (and no mention at all in the sixty-nine commitments towards meeting top-level goals). This is despite the acknowledgment in the Framework of the importance of “play, recreation and the arts”. This presents an opportunity for youth theatre to articulate its capacity to help Ireland meet its goals for children and young people. Youth arts, and particularly youth theatre, strongly support the five identified national outcomes for children and young people; from contributing to positive physical and mental wellbeing, and enabling young people achieve their full potential, to broadening life opportunities and facilitating young people’s connection, respect and contribution to their world. Specifically, using the terms employed in the Framework: • Youth theatre empowers young people to use their voice and be active decision-makers; • Youth theatre promotes positive physical and mental health; • Youth theatre provides a safe and supportive environment for building life skills and exploring those issues which may impact on young people’s social and emotional well-being; • Youth theatre strengthens self-esteem and provides the supportive social networks and communities crucial to the development of resilience in young people; • Youth theatre promotes independent thinking, problem-solving skills, collaborative working and effective communication; • Youth theatre promotes social inclusion and reduces inequalities, bullying and prejudice; • Youth theatre nurtures civic and community engagement and participation; and • Youth theatre best-practice policies, led by NAYD, ensure safety and protection from harm. The Framework has six transformational goals, of which ‘Strengthening Transitions’ – specifically the transition from childhood to adulthood – presents a particular role for youth theatre. Ireland is only at the very early stages of recognising in law and services that when a young person turns eighteen, she or he is not magically transformed overnight into an adult. By virtue of youth theatre’s membership cohort, which ranges from early teens to twenties, and which is uncoupled from educational attainment, youth theatre can provide the continuity, stability,
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and the strong social networks needed to support young people in what the Framework identifies as a potentially difficult period of transition into adulthood. In terms of a specific commitment that youth theatre can build on, the Framework identifies young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and early school-leavers in particular, as a priority in terms of policy and provision around play, recreation, sport, arts and culture, and commits to facilitating greater access and collaboration. Inspiring Prospects: Arts Council Strategic Review 2014 The Inspiring Prospects strategic review of the work of the Arts Council (July 2014) casts a clear and critical eye over whether the arts agency has been meeting its statutory remit. The findings of the Review represent, if not a revolution in the agency’s thinking, certainly a significant commitment to refocus outward, and to reposition the Arts Council as “a development agency for the arts focussed on the public good.” The Review finds that current Arts Council strategy as it funds and defines the arts does not reach significant cohorts of the population (meaning those of lower socio-economic and educational advantage) and identifies a risk of “disconnect” between the arts as funded by the Arts Council and the wider public. It finds there has been too much emphasis on creating supply rather than nurturing demand. This chimes very much with Paul Roberts’ call on youth theatre in Youth Drama Ireland 2012-13 to “unlock demand,” and also finds resonances within the objectives of the Charter. The Review recommends that engagement and participation are to be valued more in future Arts Council policy.
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Joined-Up Thinking Far from being destined to gather dust on departmental shelves, what the Charter, Framework and Review have in common – apart from the all-important shared commitment to children and young people – is a commitment to implementation, along with an interdepartmental, inter-agency approach. This signals a ‘joined-up thinking’ approach that has been lacking in the Irish policy landscape. The inclusion of detailed implementation plans is also significant, and something to which policy-makers can be held to account. This shift from thinking in silos to cross-departmental plans of action, presents a key opportunity for youth theatre in Ireland. Now might be the time for a coordinated push for a national youth arts strategy, which would draw together all of the relevant strands in the Charter, Framework and Review in one clear policy statement; capitalise on the emerging trend of inter-agency, cross-departmental collaboration and commitment; and make the best argument possible for adequate resourcing of youth theatre across every county in Ireland. Closing the Gap In Youth Drama Ireland 2012-13, Paul Roberts OBE, laid out a set of challenges for advocates of youth theatre in Ireland, including a call to: situate our advocacy in the broader context of an entitlement to cultural and creative learning; prioritise the imperative to make an entitlement for all – to close the gap Both the Charter and the Review affirm the young person’s entitlement to cultural and creative learning, while the Framework identifies the need to close the gap.
Above: Workshops 2014, Photo: Christina Matthews. Right top: NAYD Young Critics, Photo: Alan King. Second right: Boomerang launch, January 2014, Photo: Christina Matthews. Third right: Letterkenny Youth Theatre, outdoor rehearsal – Is he here yet?, Photo: Eoghan Mc Bride. Bottom right: Droichead Youth Theatre Workshops 2014, Photo: Christina Matthews.
Significantly, the Review finds that “current investment by the Arts Council in provision for children and young people in out-ofschool settings […] is low” and recommends that provision for children and young people should be a “primary strategic priority” in the longer-term. Its justifications for increased investment in the younger cohort could be usefully adopted by any youth theatre. These are: the size of this population (the Framework reports that one-third of the population is under the age of twenty-five), its developmental significance, its lack of economic independence, and, interestingly, “the stated public preference for spending on [children and young people].” In its core values of quality, equality, representation, and participation, youth theatre is already addressing many of the concerns and objectives set out in the Review – and not limited to those expressly connected with young people: • Youth theatre actively seeks to include marginalised voices and groups of young people; • Youth theatre ensures universal access through its commitment to inexpensive provision to young people; • Youth theatre transcends barriers related to educational attainment; • Youth theatre cultivates a critical appreciation of the arts; and • Youth theatre promotes the artistic development of young people, and excellence in artistic experience. In fact, youth theatre has been supporting many of the objectives contained in Inspiring Prospects for more than thirtyfive years now, and can therefore provide for the Arts Council a best-practice model to draw on as the agency embraces its new direction of better integration with wider public policy.
Nevertheless, in times of austerity, entitlements are all too easily placed in conflict with other, more urgent entitlements, such as ‘health’ or ‘education’ or even ‘shelter’. Rather than approaching youth theatre advocacy from a sense of entitlement, a more constructive approach might be to demonstrate clearly how a young person’s engagement with quality cultural/artistic experience supports all the more commonly held values and hopes for children and young people: good health, education, life skills, life opportunity and wellbeing. It is through articulating the myriad ways that youth theatre and youth arts support all of the objectives laid out in the Charter, the Framework and the Review that we can unlock the demand of policy-makers, and make the best case for a national youth arts policy in Ireland. Realising the Vision NAYD’s vision is of an Ireland where all young people can choose to participate in the best quality youth drama experiences possible. This translates into every young person in Ireland having access to a quality youth theatre within relatively easy reach of home. It is a simple goal and, I believe, achievable. The creation of a national youth arts strategy would embed youth theatre within wider public policy in Ireland, and form an interim step towards realising NAYD’s vision. Progressive policy, led by strong vision, grounded in evidence, and backed up with commitments to implementation, represents a world of opportunity for youth theatre. Let’s grasp it. Fíona Ní Chinnéide worked with NAYD as Communications Officer from 2002-2004, and as editor of Youth Drama Ireland until 2008. She was Reviews Editor with Irish Theatre Magazine from 2007-2014, and has edited publications for Graffiti Theatre Company, TYA Ireland, and Dublin Theatre Festival/Oberon, among others. In her other life, she is Deputy Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust and is currently undertaking an MA in Political Communication at Dublin City University. .
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Pure joy, mischief and a sea of smiles
This image: Barefeet Zambian Parade, Photo: Marc O’Sullivan.
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Anne O’Gorman, Senior Project Officer for Youth Arts at the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI), interviews Adam McGuigan, Artistic Director of Barefeet Theatre, Zambia, about his journey to create a life-changing theatre company for children and young people. Since its foundation in 2006, Barefeet Theatre has used play, creativity, and empowerment to give vulnerable children a chance at a better life. Founded by former street children in response to the plight of young people living on Äôs streets, the company harnesses the power of performance, educational workshops and more to help vulnerable young people become healthy and socially competent. Barefeet is about change, achieving transformation through mischief. It is hard work, but always involves smiles and laughter. Their theatre workshops work with two thousand children in forty communities in Zambia and on the national stage at the annual Barefeet Youth Arts Festival.
AO’G Adam, with a surname like McGuigan I suspect you weren’t always based in Zambia! How did you find yourself in Zambia and how did Barefeet start? AMcG I’m from a little town called Ballymoney in County Antrim, which is as far from Zambia as possible. I have been in Zambia for almost nine years now. Initially, I was working as a freelance theatre director in the UK. In 2005, combining a desire to both travel and experiment with performance style and cultural interpretation, I put together a one-man touring show and set out to tour the world. My grand ideas came to a halt after about six months when I lost my money and some belongings in Zimbabwe and had to go to the nearest Irish Embassy which was in Zambia and I have been in Zambia ever since. By chance I met with a group of local artists who used to live on the streets. I was fascinated by their performance style and, if I’m honest, I was envious of their effortless charm and lack of restrictive self-awareness. Most of all, I was captivated by the pure joy conjured in the energy of their performance. I was hungry to collaborate. We started to work with children living on the streets offering creative workshops to encourage them to put their energies into something constructive. Once in a safer environment the children were much more open to talk about their challenges and seek assistance with their basics needs. We were young, idealistic artists with grand designs to change the world and even from the beginning we could see the potential. The response from the children was incredible and we felt there was something here that needed to be nurtured. I was struck by the fact that, on the streets, the children were’t pleading for money or games or computers; instead they used to ask me for shoes. Having shoes meant dignity. Yet whilst we danced and sang, performed and rehearsed we did so on our bare feet. We loved the mixture of strength and vulnerability in the name, and after much discussion we became ‘Barefeet’. AO’G What you do is literally life-changing for some of the children and young people involved, and yet it is uncompromising in its artistic standards. Regardless of the narrative which underpins the work, the performers are simply excellent by any measure. Why do you think Barefeet is able to hold those two important pieces – the development piece and the art piece – equally, and how do you go about doing it?
AMcG Thanks for saying that. I think that one thing the company aspires to have in our performances is integrity. I believe audiences respond to authenticity and integrity. We would be the first to admit that we are a mishmash motley crew of artists with various skills, but I love the truth the guys show in their performance and I believe this is what audiences relate to. The team also works hard. We have tasted success and failure at home and abroad and we know what we want to achieve. There is a strong work ethic in the group which applies to all members. I think that practically we approach our work with determination and professionalism, and therefore demand a lot from members. Perhaps in the process the art comes first, rather than dwelling on where the artist has come from. But treating the artist professionally and having high expectations, means the company and the members are working towards a shared goal, and then the positive effects and development agenda follow naturally. AO’G Barefeet’s methodology is Participatory Process Performance. What does this mean in practice? AMcG We have built our methodology from scratch over the years. Largely inspired by Alex Mavrocordatos’ exploration of participatory methodology, Barefeet have developed Participatory Process Performance (PPP). As the name suggests, the emphasis is on three areas. The initial stage focuses on the Participation of the group or individual. Through engaging the group on issues or topics that are explored communally and through the tools of external character and situation, participants are provided with a space to process discoveries, outcomes or personal developments in a non-intrusive environment. By learning from peer participation and sharing, we believe that this Process period allows for a more lasting and effective engagement. PPP draws together a range of Theatre for Development and Participatory Research methods. It is process and product. Community artists/participants tell their own story, highlight their own concerns and develop their own strategies amongst themselves, with their neighbours or with those who have influence over their lives (policy makers). We have honed our techniques and learned from our mistakes. Barefeet uses storytelling as an integral device throughout all of our interventions.
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Above and opposite page: Barefeet Zambian Parade, Photo: Marc O’Sullivan.
With emphasis on the third phase, Performance, PPP casts – and trains – participants in the role of facilitators/ teachers. In this way, participation of the community/ group as partners is prioritised and integrated at all levels in a process that works towards cultural action or enhanced psychosocial support of the group and a performance by the community/group as artists. At the same time, PPP still allows for the outside facilitator/artists to weave their research into their own performance that can in turn be used to generate a recurrent and parallel cycle of PPP activities. We are blessed at Barefeet to have a continual stream of projects and practitioners who help us grow and evolve our methodology in our context. AO’G In your experience, what is it about spectacle, street theatre and acrobatics that work so well for the young people you work with? What makes it unique and work better than, say, soccer? AMcG I think young people can see improvements very quickly in these areas and I think that all are fun! Digging a bit deeper about why our activities are effective with young people I would suggest that whilst children’s centres and institutions of care do an admirable job in providing the basic physical needs of a child – shelter, food, clothing, health – considerably less consideration is given to their psychological needs. Once integrated into a children’s centre, few mechanisms are in place to deal with the transition from the street. Children are energetic and curious human beings, and if their energy is not properly channeled and nursed they can easily be misunderstood. I think that well-structured, creative stimulation is very important for healthy intellectual development. Additionally, by engaging a child’s spirit you are contributing to their holistic development. Activities such as drama offer an escape from whatever trauma was inherent in street life, while also offering a safe domain in which to process it. This is what is unique about the Barefeet initiatives and contrasts to some existing government initiatives, like bringing children into the army, which can have limited success. I don’t think that art alone can address all the challenges our young people face, but we aspire to work to promote a more joined-up services approach when working with the children. Finally, for me the power with drama is that it’s all about people. It’s about characters and it’s about life. By reflection and participation in characters’ journeys there is personal investment in the problem and resolution and, in my opinion, a more lasting engagement.
AO’G You’ve said before about the young people that you work with that Barefeet ‘allows them to be children’. Can you talk about that a little? AMcG I feel that the kids we work with on the streets are forced into adulthood at an early age. Being in survival mode when fighting for your next meal. Where you stay, how you manage your money, your health, your safety. Navigating sexual advances, navigating the authorities whilst also dealing with the usual adolescent challenges. I find that when our children participate in Barefeet activities it’s an opportunity for them to play. Again, I relate back to authenticity and truth. I believe that all humans enjoy an aspect of play in their lives, especially children. If we can facilitate children being given the opportunity to be children (even for a short period) and combine this with options for making positive life choices guided by trusted facilitators who have a shared history with the children, then I believe we can have a big impact. It’s fun to play and therapeutic to laugh, it reminds us that we are human and we are connected. When children feel abandoned and isolated, the feeling of connecting with people is critical. AO’G Can you tell us about the cycle that you’ve said is key to all your work: Performance, reflection, growth/sustainability and evaluation? AMcG Well, let me talk about the work with children still living on the streets. The primary element is to get them familiar with Barefeet’s activities, its people and its vibe. This can take place at our festival, the annual Christmas show or at any of the interventions throughout the year. Once the children are familiar with us, the outreach officers will then engage the children on the streets, listen to them and inform them about our activities in our partner centres. If a child agrees to come to our programmes in the drop-in centre, they are welcome. Once enrolled in one of the drama workshop activities, the children are able to access other services at the drop-in centre. We use external characters as a tool to talk about challenges that the children can relate to, this is part of the process element of the programme. All of our programmes build towards a public performance, so as we get closer to the performance day, it may become hard for a child to sleep on the streets and still stay on top of rehearsals. Thus, frequently the children are so focused on the rehearsals that they also want to stay off the streets to make sure they are well-rested. Once the performance takes place, and the children experience the nerves, adrenalin and praise, we find that they are then completely connected
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and eager to be involved in the next performance. That is our job; to allow a process of reflection and then a space for the children to move into one of our more stable partner centres where the process can start again. AO’G There seems to be a huge amount of administrative work always happening in the background for you and your team. Even the descriptions of applying for visas and the cost implications sounds exhausting and frustrating. How do you balance making the artistic work against all of the administrative and funding effort necessary to keep the show on the road. I think this would resonate with many small voluntary youth theatre leaders who are surprised by how much administration is necessary to make the space for the creative work they want to do. AMcG When there is an artistic project happening that is always my primary instinct. There is a huge amount of pressure to maintain the two. Without the artistic content I am an office worker, and without my office hours there is no money for artistic work. This is before we start to talk about health and safety, child protection and monitoring. I think if you are passionate about the art then you will find energy for the admin. In the nine years I have worked with Barefeet, I have never once felt on top of my admin. I suppose the barometer I have used is that when I am dead and gone will anyone remember the beautiful report I wrote, or the piece of art that resonated? I suppose with all small voluntary youth theatre leaders, we do the best we can with the resources available to us and the time we have. AO’G Lastly, what is the value of international exchange? What do you think your young people gained from their trip to Ireland, what do you think audiences gained from meeting them, and what might the value of connecting with Irish youth theatre members be? AMcG There is huge value in connecting young people from different places. The trip was intense and full of responsibility for our young people. They really had to cope with diverse audiences, expectations and experiences. Within six weeks I saw their capabilities and confidence rocket. I saw their world view expand, their curiosity stretch and their ambition jump. Since they have returned they have approached working with our children in a more dynamic and energised fashion. The trip has provided a real sense of hope to those still living in vulnerable situations. There is a sense that if these guys can travel then why can’t we? Making the impossible possible, hope.
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For audiences, our feedback has shown that the young people we interacted with gained a direct opportunity to learn about the history and background of a country very far away. The children were motivated and engaged through the workshops. As well as acquiring new skills, the children became more aware about development issues in a different country. I also feel the audiences got a slice of life from far away, they were informed and energised by a group of people with a beautiful story to tell. I would hope the Barefeet guys provided an injection of inspiration and, at the very least, spread a sea of smiles across people in Ireland. Barefeet have long been part of the NYCI youth worker exchange and have benefitted immensely from the collaboration and sharing which is facilitated through well-organised interactions. Connecting with Irish youth theatre members was something that we were very keen to do. Different geographies have different opportunities and challenges. One thing the team couldn’t get their heads around was that the young people in Ireland were reticent to get on the floor and dance. Theatre is about people, and you produce work based on the experiences and relationships you have in the world that you are aware of. I can’t help but be inspired seeing seeds being spread helping to connect the world and spread the important influence art can have in human transformation. Any opportunity to interact with other youth theatre practitioners can only enhance this process.
Anne O’Gorman is originally a drama practitioner, youth theatre leader and theatre director. She is Senior Project Officer for Youth Arts with the National Youth Council of Ireland and Course Coordinator of NUI Certificate in Youth Arts. Anne was previously Children’s Arts Officer at Draíocht and an outreach officer at the Abbey Theatre. Anne has been a board member of KidsOwn Publishing, a member of the selection committee for the inaugural Laureate na nÓg and has represented the National Association for Youth Drama as Irish Animateur at the European Drama Encounter. She has written for the Irish Journal of Youth Work Studies, Inis Magazine and practice.ie.
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NYCI Development Education and Working with Barefeet Theatre Group Above image: Barefeet Zambian Parade, Photo: Marc O’Sullivan.
Development education (DE) in youth work aims to support young people to increase their awareness and understanding of the interdependent and unequal world in which we live through a process of interactive learning, debate, action and reflection. DE challenges perceptions of the world and encourages young people to act for a more just and equal society at a local, national and international level. For NYCI, quality development education is key and quality development education shares many of the same principles as good youth work. These include starting with and valuing young people’s views; learning through participation; and promoting equality, responsibility and mutual respect.
Working with Barefeet Theatre Group, we felt that we could raise the profile of development education in Ireland. The use of drama is a perfect fit in terms of it being an interactive methodology which places emphasis on participative, learner-centred education that has the ability to build critical thinking, generates capacity and motivates people to take action. Drama facilitates the exploration of the economic, environmental, cultural, political and technological aspects of an issue or activity from a personal, local, national, and global perspective. It can help us consider the food we eat, clothes we wear, air we breathe, gadgets we use, political systems in which we live, and other key issues we should all be aware of.
NYCI promotes a model of DE that encourages young people to explore the local and global contexts of justice issues. We do this through exploring development and human rights issues from a series of viewpoints using methodologies that best suit the situation and group, making connections between how we live in Ireland and how this impacts on the lives of people in the developing world. Through our DE work, the youth sector/participants are supported to:
Drama is used to explore justice and development issues to support the enhanced critical thinking skills of those with whom we work. Drama suits the informal environment in which youth work and development education takes place. These approaches are flexible, participative and learner-centred.
• critically examine their own values and attitudes • appreciate the similarities and differences between people, locally, nationally and globally • accept and value diversity • understand the global context of their local lives and present different viewpoints • develop the skills that will enable them to combat injustice, prejudice and discrimination
Valerie Duffy Development Education Programme Coordinator National Youth Council of Ireland
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TIME TO SHINE Scotland’s youth arts strategy is a potential source of inspiration for advocates of youth arts in Ireland. Lauren Neilly, a member of Youth Arts Voices Scotland (YAVS), writes about the benefits of a focused and unified investment in youth arts.
What I find most striking about the world in which we live are the assumptions and opinions that we form on a daily basis. We are quick to judge without any true understanding and take little time to appreciate life’s small pleasures. Our passions lie in a variety of achievements and experiences, some more recognised than others. They offer us new skills, new ways of thinking, and most importantly, they develop us in ways we can never truly see. In my experience, this passion, and the benefits it has brought me, have stemmed from my engagement in the arts. In 2009, recognition of these benefits, for both individuals and the wider Scottish society, encouraged the development of a new strategy. This strategy would involve the youth arts sector who wanted to see greater appreciation of excellence across the arts, and would allow for a national strategic focus on the development of youth arts to take shape in order to promote wider access and participation.
This image: Photo: #FreshCreations – West Dunbartonshire Youth Arts Hub.
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The Scottish Government turned to Creative Scotland (the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries) to lead on the drafting of this strategy which would create a framework for collaborative working and development of the arts for children and young people across all artistic forms. In accordance with this, Scotland’s first National Youth Arts Strategy, Time to Shine, was published in November 2013. Its key vision was to support and enable Scotland’s children and young people to flourish and achieve in, and through, the arts and creativity. The Time to Shine implementation programme commenced in April 2014 with a budget of £5 million provided by the Scottish Government. This has allowed the strategy to begin planning the next two years, initiating twenty-three strategic objectives, each designed to target the three key themes in Time to Shine: creating and sustaining engagement; nurturing potential and talent; and developing infrastructure and support. The first initiative saw the launch of the £3.5 million Hub Development Fund designed to support partnerships between national and regional youth arts and youth service providers, to deliver youth arts provision across a range of art forms. As a result of this initiative, nine new Youth Arts Hubs have emerged across Scotland, and are set to engage over 40,000 children and young people in new arts activity. This funding is also supporting targeted project work and a developed outreach capacity for Scotland’s four National Youth Performing Arts Companies (Scottish Youth Theatre, the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland, the National Youth Choir of Scotland and Scottish Youth Dance).
This image: Photo: #FreshCreations – West Dunbartonshire Youth Arts Hub.
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The most significant implementation of this strategy is the development of a national youth arts advisory group – Youth Arts Voice Scotland (YAVS). The group currently consists of thirteen young people, aged 14-21, from all over the country. Our role is simple. We speak and act on behalf of the young people of Scotland, changing strategies which are already in place throughout the sector, and doing what can be done to encourage others to get involved. By placing the young people of YAVS at the heart of Time to Shine we can voice what it is that others like us want from the Scottish Government, what they want from Creative Scotland and what they feel is the most beneficial way to implement change. Already we have helped in the formation of the Nurturing Talent – Time to Shine Fund, which allows young people individually, or as a group, to gain necessary funding to help develop their artistic skills. It basically does what it says on the tin. The hope for the fund is that it will provide financial aid to nurture those with a passion, whether they wish to put on an exhibition to showcase their work or record music. We want everyone to feel they have the chance to have their art matter. In a previous piece of writing, I compared the work of YAVS to that of Sherlock Holmes. After the piece was published, I found that it spoke more highly than I had first thought. The quote I had in mind, from Holmes’ creator, the Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, appeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles: “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”
The work of YAVS is not for our own personal benefit, but for the benefit of young people like us, and for those who have yet to discover the arts. We are ambassadors for the young people of Scotland, wanting to stimulate and enhance the accessibility, availability, awareness and enjoyment of the arts. We want to bring light and life to an industry, so that young people already involved in this sector can grow, be nurtured and find greater possibilities. Once we achieve this, then we can look to bringing the arts to more young people throughout the country who have been side-stepped or have misinterpreted what the arts and creativity can be. After the two-year inception and development phase of the strategy, we will culminate in a National Children and Young People’s Art Conference in 2016, examining what has been achieved so far and what the next steps might be. Scotland is a country with so much to offer, and I hope that not only the young people of Scotland, but everyone, can come to appreciate and discover a more cultural and innovative society. The arts can change a society, and they can change individuals, and I hope that we can rekindle the creative minds of Scotland and the young people in it. Lauren Neilly Youth Arts Voice Scotland Member Aged 20, from Stirling, Scotland More information on Time To Shine: http://www.creativescotland.com/time-to-shine Follow Time To Shine on Twitter @TTSYoutharts
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Resonant Texts:
An exploration of youth theatre’s response to classic texts
From devising to adaptation to new writing, a glance at
were caught in the crossfire. The play, ‘where civil blood
Youth Drama Ireland’s annual round-up is a reminder
makes civil hands unclean,’ was an obvious fit to a city
of the abundant creativity and resourcefulness of the
in crisis. In this instance, a play written four centuries
youth theatre sector in Ireland. In the midst of the new
earlier presented a fitting artistic response to the social
work, groups consistently tackle the wider theatre cannon
chaos. While its themes were current, its language and
and frequently take on texts from ancient Greek
historical setting kept it at a safe distance from the
tragedies to modern American classics. In any given year
young people performing in it. The play allowed the
Euripides and Shakespeare, Brecht and Miller feature on
members to represent and express their frustrations at
the list of authors whose works are produced by young
the ever-present urban violence and at the same time
people around the country.
the text made significant performance demands on the
Over the last twelve months there
young actors.
have been three productions of Romeo and Juliet from
Theatre can be dangerous and exciting. It
Kildare Youth Theatre, Kilkenny Youth Theatre and
ignites the imagination, refreshes our perspective and
Dublin Youth Theatre (as part of FYOAF) and two
challenges the status quo. In their productions of Romeo
productions of The Crucible from Waterford Youth Arts
and Juliet and The Crucible, Activate, Roscommon Youth
and Letterkenny Youth Theatre. The frequent recurrence
Theatre, Kildare Youth Theatre, Waterford Youth Arts
of these texts in youth theatre programmes prompted
and Kilkenny Youth Theatre made very different aesthetic
the questions; why do youth theatres return to classic
choices. True to the spirit of invention inherent in youth
plays again and again and what is it about these texts
theatre practice, each group found its own solution to
that resonate with youth theatres?
the challenge of reimaging and presenting these classic
It is true that many classic plays have
texts with and for young people in the twenty-first century.
cast sizes that make them ideal for youth theatre.
Here, the directors behind each of these
Notwithstanding the attraction of large cast sizes, there
exciting productions of Romeo and Juliet and The Crucible
is much more to the enduring popularity of these texts
reflect on their experiences.
for youth theatres. Limerick Youth Theatre produced Romeo and Juliet in 2003. At the time the city was in the grip of opposing gangs and many young people
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ACTIVATE YOUTH THEATRE The Crucible, 2003 & Juliets and Romeos, 2004 by Geraldine O’Neill This image: Activate Youth Theatre, The Crucible, Photo: Martin O’Donoghue.
Location, Location, Location. These are the words that ring in my ears when I recall why I chose to produce these plays. I directed The Crucible in 2003 and Juliets & Romeos the following year (2004). At the time, Graffiti Theatre Company was based in the Weighmaster’s House in the heart of Shandon and as anyone who knows this area will agree, it would be hard to find a more dramatic location for a play. St. Anne’s Church dates from 1771 and this was to be the site for our Crucible. Shandon’s cobbled streets, the entrance to the Butter Exchange and the walled gardens and old graveyards became the venue for our promenade performance of Juliets & Romeos. In 2003 the peace talks in Northern Ireland were reaching a critical point, the body of Jean McConville was recovered and the country held its breath as we tried to believe that Bush, Ahern and Blair were men of their word. And being a person who is true to their word lies at the heart of The Crucible. These facts might have been politics schmolitics to the members of Activate, but a play in which the young people of a community challenge its elders greatly appealed to them. The subversion and reversal of power seems to hold an ageless and timeless appeal for audiences. The decision not to use American accents was important as it was only when the dense text was spoken in their own voices that the actors began to engage with the plot in a meaningful way. It was my task to make every word of Miller’s text count for both actor and audience. Our chorus, sitting in the choir stalls facing the audience, quietly sewing and reacting to the unfolding Salem Witch Trials, connected the actors on the stage to the audience. In essence, they all became witnesses to the unfolding plot. After 21 years as Artistic Director of Activate Youth Theatre the memories of our production of The Crucible make me proud of how members rose to the challenges of this marvellous play. Juliets & Romeos – Shakespeare & Chaos in Shandon! In 2004, still basking in the afterglow of The Crucible and having also directed a successful version of After Juliet by Sharman McDonald, it seemed an easy decision to produce Romeo & Juliet. An easy decision which in this particular case did not mean an easy journey. When the Activators returned we had six boys and fourteen girls committed to the play all wishing to play the lead role. In situations like this the only way is to bow under
the weight of their pleas. Yes, they could all play Romeo and yes, they could all play Juliet; both the boys and the girls would play both male and female roles. As we knew we were going to be playing in the street and we could not afford amplification, this decision meant that three Juliets or Romeos spoke the text together and increased the vocal volume threefold. Having turned gender on its head it was decided to turn the play’s narrative on its head also. The play commenced with the bodies of Romeo and Juliet being placed on the steps of the Butter Market to the Prince’s speech “A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The Sun for sorrow will not show his head” and then the players told the story in reverse, bringing our audience from where the bodies were found back through the story of Romeo and Juliet. One thing we now know for sure, Shandon was not ready for us and although we had dropped flyers and given invitations to neighbours in the vicinity, one particular neighbour made it his business to sabotage the production. Our local dealer was not happy and placed his music system, including large speakers, onto his window ledge and pressed play just as our play commenced each night. Audience pleas were ignored or caused him to turn up the volume of his reggae music but our young people simply played on, drawing our nightly audience ever closer to the action of the play. On our final night all was silent, there was no sign of the music system. But as we began the first scene smoke came pouring from his window and we then heard the sound of sirens. He had passed out and set fire to his flat. We tried not to cheer as he was placed in the ambulance. It’s a difficult thing to play Shakespeare and it’s a difficult thing to play in the streets. This text and its location were a real challenge to our young people, but even today when I meet up with members of that particular cast they all say it was the highlight of their time in Activate. Activate Youth Theatre was established twenty-one years ago in Cork city. They perform in local theatres and in site-specific locations such as Cobh Harbour, Cloyne Graveyard, Savoy Nightclub, St. Anne’s Church and the streets of Shandon. All members are involved in a weekly programme of drama workshops and participate in at least one major production and several minor ones annually. Members are also involved in street theatre, script writing, devising and film-making.
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Below: Roscommon County Youth Theatre, The Crucible, Photo: Catherine Simon.
ROSCOMMON COUNTY YOUTH THEATRE The Crucible, 2007 by Catherine Sheridan
Roscommon County Youth Theatre produced The Crucible by Arthur Miller in January 2007. Since our foundation in 2000, this was the first classical text that we had decided to produce. We felt that this was the perfect time to stage such a rich play as we had a few years’ experience under our belt and our reputation for producing high-quality productions was growing. Our ethos is to actively learn by doing so that our members discover more about themselves and others while forming strong bonds that encourage peer learning. We believe in challenging members by expanding their exposure to various styles of theatre. The Crucible, a play ostensibly about the Salem witch trials in seventeenth century Massachusetts, provided enormous scope for exploring these notions and provided members with great opportunity to come out of their safe zone. In preparing for the production they submerged themselves in all things Salem from writing style, language and speech to period costume, setting and music. The play explores superstition, paranoia and jealously and shows how gossip can fuel hysteria and gather momentum in a short period. Although the play is based in Massachusetts in 1692, it resonates just as well in today’s society with young people and adults alike. I think it is a good way of showing young people how actions have implications. Producing plays such as this provides avenues for young people to explore situations in which they might find themselves and provides dialogue for ways to tackle issues that arise in their adolescence.
By coincidence the play was also on the syllabus for the Leaving Cert so it was a good platform to showcase the youth theatre and expose our work to young people and educators who may not have otherwise known about us! Performed by a cast of twenty to sell out houses for the run, the show captivated the audiences and left them dwelling on themes of hierarchy, intolerance, humanity, redemption, good and evil, and the dignity of the common man. Themes which are as prevalent in today’s society as they were in the seventeenth century. Roscommon County Youth Theatre was established in 2000 by Roscommon Arts Office and is based in Roscommon Arts Centre. It runs weekly workshops covering all aspects of theatre training along with other events throughout the year.
YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
Below: Kildare Youth Theatre, Romeo and Juliet, Photo: Anthony Moss.
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KILDARE YOUTH THEATRE Romeo and Juliet, 2014 by Peter Hussey
Kildare Youth Theatre aims to stage one classic verse play each year. Previous productions include Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet and we are rehearsing Othello for performance in May 2015. The draw to Shakespeare is immensely powerful. Aside from all of the practical advantages – a large cast with roles for everyone; opportunity to deepen understanding of Junior and Leaving Cert texts for those performing in them and studying them; the plays can be performed anywhere and don’t need lights, sound or a set to work – staging a Shakespearean play opens a world of challenge and risk that appeals to ambitious young people with quick minds and open hearts. While the characters and situations engage their empathy and help them understand overwhelming emotional impulses, the demands of speaking the iambic verse also introduces them to a tool-box of techniques that are absent from any other educational activity in which they are involved. It is not difficult to perform engaging dialogue in iambic form, but it requires a lot of detailed work. This sense of being able to apply novel resources to solve a complex problem builds confidence and contributes to a sense of positive achievement in a young performer. In addition to the development of technical skills, staging a Shakespeare play offers us a lens though which we can appraise the world around us. Working on Romeo and Juliet allows young people to study the condition of being in love. Everyone loves learning about themselves and there is no better lens than Shakespeare through which to analyse your own self. The great critic Harold Bloom maintains that Shakespeare ‘invented’ the human: in that Shakespeare presented us with the first collection of psychologically complex characters that pretty much charts all human experiences, motivations and conditions. If this is so, then we can find ourselves in Shakespeare. When we interview the young people who’ve staged Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet they say the same thing; “Juliet taught me things”, or “Romeo lived with me and changed me”. These responses show a deep critical awareness of how a work of art can profoundly affect and change us.
Staging a classic offers young people the chance to develop their research skills into the period, theme and context of the text. Studying Shakespeare’s language requires them to unravel meaning, develop vocabulary and appreciate the uses and types of rhetoric. Plays like Romeo and Juliet provide great space for stage combat. Our young people used their knowledge of how people move in games, hero and epic films and horseplay to create the fight scenes. Performing Shakespeare involves commitment to getting it wrong: embracing the likelihood that many moments will be misinterpreted, that the pace may drag in places, and that the thought will not be clear in several speeches. This is why it demands time. We rehearse at least twice a week and from October to May. We try to remember that while the learning for the cast is immense, the return for the audience must be worthwhile. Nobody wants their production to be celebrated merely because ‘they were brilliant for remembering so many lines’. This of course is true for any drama, but it is often easy to lose sight of it when the project challenges the artistic team as much as it does the performers. Performing Shakespeare requires that we, as creative theatre makers, embark on our own immeasurable learning journeys, take risks, build confidence and support our ambition with technique. What’s not to like about that? Kildare Youth Theatre is part of Kildare Young People’s Arts Programme. It is a voluntary, not-for-profit project established by Crooked House Theatre Company in Newbridge in 1996. It creates adventures with young people by taking risks and laying down challenges. It seeks to rise above [play]stations in every way possible and has equal numbers of boys and girls. It is open to all regardless of ability. Peter Hussey is Artistic Director of Crooked House Theatre Company and Kildare Youth Theatre. Crooked House produces new work, often in collaboration with international partners. Peter is a writer, director and drama facilitator. He lectures in Applied Theatre for NUI Maynooth. He is an arts consultant, and a trainer in education and youth arts and has worked in Ireland and abroad for over twenty years.
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WATERFORD YOUTH ARTS
KILKENNY YOUTH THEATRE
The Crucible, 2014
Romeo and Juliet, 2014
by Jim Nolan
by Anna Galligan
This image: Waterford Youth Arts, The Crucible, Photo: Keith Currams.
This image: Kilkenny Youth Theatre present Romeo and Juliet, Photo: amanwithacamera.com.
When I chose to produce The Crucible for Waterford Youth Arts in August 2014 I had mixed feelings and some anxiety. In 1995, before any of the WYA cast were born, I had directed the play for Red Kettle Theatre Company. Returning to the text almost twenty years later, it took some time to exorcise the ghosts of that production and some more time to assure myself of the conviction that a cast of young actors could enter into the world of the play in a way that would be meaningful for both them and the audience.
Kilkenny Senior Youth Theatre performed Romeo and Juliet in May 2014. It was chosen because we wanted to tackle Shakespeare and the group also loved the story. What’s not to love? It has universal themes of woe, of joy, of love and hate, youth and age, life and death. It is worth mentioning too that the majority of the members had studied or were going to study it as a text for Junior Cert. We wanted to make the play text come to life on stage and to make Shakespeare accessible to our young audiences.
Any lingering doubts in this regard were banished when, a week or so into rehearsals, Leah Marshall, the actress playing Sarah Good, posted the following on the production’s Facebook page: “One of the main reasons this play is different from the others I’ve been a part of is because it is based on a real life event, the Salem witch trials, and I am actually playing a real character, Sarah Good. This has led to a lot of nights staring at the small light glowing from my computer screen in absolute awe and curiosity of this human being and her life that I am lucky enough to embody, if only for a scene and a few lines. Sarah Good is only a minor character in the play and at first I found limitations on how I could play such a seemingly small character with any depth and feeling. But then I realised that it was not only untruthful to call her character small but offensive to a woman who lived forty years on this earth only to have her whole life ruined by these trials. A life that may not have been full of riches and social status but a life with children, family, lovers, friends, good times and bad and a life that I should be honoured to play.” Leah’s powerful words are a reminder that, regardless of age, talent or experience, theatre making is, at heart, an act of the imagination. With compassion, intuition and imagination, she confronted the fundamental challenge of all acting; embodying with integrity the life of her character. And where Leah went, the rest of us followed. Waterford Youth Arts was established in 1985 as Waterford Youth Drama. Waterford Youth Arts (WYA) is a youth and community arts resource which enables young people to participate in creative activity as a means of self-expression and development in a safe, professional and enjoyable environment. Every week over four hundred young people take part in its activities. WYA provides a comprehensive quality response to the creative aspirations and developmental needs of young people in the southeast.
It was a challenging process; there were very apparent fears and barriers regarding the language. Following some difficult sessions reading the play, the group were not certain that we had made the right choice. Having heard them read, I concluded that the language was not the real barrier, the problem was in the layout of the script. In making productions our aim is to ensure that the performers are comfortable on stage, engaged whole-heartedly in the world of the play and ready to give performances that are true to themselves. This aim is no less relevant to classic texts so we retyped the script in sentences rather than in iambic pentameter and this helped to release the richness of the characters and story. We also focused on the young characters so we cut some of the longer speeches by the Nurse and Friar Lawrence. During initial rehearsals we used beats to mark full stops, commas and other punctuation and to explore the rhythm of the language. We discussed the clues that Shakespeare gave us for delivery. We asked, why a long sentence here? Why the use of exclamations here? We became experts of punctuation! By the time the young people came to the last phase of rehearsals, you would think they spoke Shakespeare as their own vernacular. When the fear of reading and speaking the text was eased, we were free to concentrate on the interesting aspects of a play text – character, story, relationships – and this was a joy. In Ireland, Shakespeare is introduced through the education system as a script to study not to perform. This distances young people from Shakespeare the playwright. Our young group fell in love with the play in a different and more meaningful way than when they studied it at school. Those yet to formally study it are now armed with quotes and a deeper understanding of the play. Many audience members, young and old, were dreading coming to ‘A Shakespeare’ and expected to be bored or confused but they left with the impression that Shakespeare is accessible and this was down to the young cast owning the play like they were born to it. Kilkenny Youth Theatre (KYT) was part of Barnstorm Theatre Company when it was founded in 1991. Currently there are forty two members evenly split between two groups, Junior and Senior. KYT runs an on-going workshop programme. The SYT produce one full-scale theatre production a year. The JYT devise and write one showcase performance a year. KYT is currently facilitated by Anna Galligan and is based at The Barn, Kilkenny where it focuses on providing ‘theatre for young people, by young people’.
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IN THE STUDIO
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Any youth theatre leader will know about the magic that happens in their workshop space and the practice that is rarely seen beyond their studio walls. These In the Studio reports offer a peek behind the studio door to take a look at two such practices, one in Ireland and one in the United Kingdom. Jean Marie Perinetti from Sligo Youth Theatre shares techniques from his work influenced by Jacques Lecoq’s (Paris) physical theatre, and Fiona Kelly introduces verbatim theatre as it is practised by Customs House Youth Theatre in South Shields, Newcastle.
This image: Sligo Youth Theatre, Arabian Nights, Photo: Jean Marie Perinetti.
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IN THE STUDIO
Movement, Theatre Applying Jacques Lecoq’s and Je ne sais quoi
approach to youth drama
By Jean-Marie Perinetti
I have been the artistic Director of Sligo Youth Theatre for a number of years now. Saturdays are my favourite day of the week, as three workshops with the energetic, enthusiastic and happy members are on my plate. I usually start the workshops with what Jacques Lecoq calls “Les six niveaux de tension” (The six states of tension). This exercise illustrates how drama is primarily a manifestation of tension in the body.
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The first state of tension is, paradoxically, “The absence of tension”. The actors walk with the least amount of energy possible struggling with gravity, and they quickly realise that performing is impossible. The second level, “Being on holidays,” requires the actors to be as relaxed as possible like tourists wandering around a beautiful city. Some acting (in soap operas etc.) might be possible at this level, but theatre performance demands so much more commitment from the performer than this state allows. The third state is “Neutral” or “Impersonal” and it is actually the first to allow for drama. In this state the actor strives to move in a perfect manner, like the waiters of a threestar Michelin restaurant. What is fascinating is that the more you try to be impersonal, the more you unknowingly reveal some characteristics which tell a story. The fourth is “Being alert”. The actors react to claps around them and as soon as they locate the sound, they must walk towards it with curiosity. Instead of leading the movement, they release control and are provoked by what surrounds them. This inquisitive state of tension is ideal for clowning. The fifth state of tension is “Being determined” and this is achieved by suggesting that the actors have thirty seconds to find their passport while a taxi is waiting outside. State five builds up a sense of urgency and willpower which is very useful in farcical plays. Finally, the sixth state, “Extreme tension”, makes movement barely possible. A good way to explore this state is to ask the actors to start and escalate an argument in couples until they are shouting at each other. Suddenly, I ask them to become silent and hold the moment. It is so tense in the room that we could cut the air with a knife. Japanese Noh is a good example of a form that relies on this state of tension. Following these warm-up exercises the group is warm, open and ready for the unique journey of drama. .
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This image: Sligo Youth Theatre, Arabian Nights, Photo: Bea Benikovska.
No matter how well the script is written or the set designed, Jacques Lecoq would state that it all comes down to the physical act of performing for an audience in a convincing and engaging manner. This means that we as an audience must believe it. I ask my class to get into groups of four-five people and take fifteen minutes to devise a scene with the theme “Dinner time in a dysfunctional family”. I then introduce the constraint that verbal communication is used only if necessary which forces the performers to express as many things as possible physically. Apart from the fact that it is often very funny, it is always followed by a discussion with the young people about whether they believed what they just saw. I draw their attention to details such as the way the characters eat or the way they listen to each other. Not only does this attention to detail make our young actors aware that details are pivotal to the performance, but it also encourages everyone to tap into their own life experience to portray people. “Ce sont de petits personnages”... “These are little characters”. When Jacques Lecoq would tell you this, you could be sure that it was not a compliment! Performing at the right state of tension and in a believable manner is not enough. Drama has to be bigger than ourselves and our lives. Otherwise, what is the point of doing it let alone asking people to pay to see our shows? Unfortunately nobody has the recipe for great theatre. But we all know it when it happens. So, week after week we give it a go at Sligo Youth Theatre and the only thing taken for granted is that it is always fun!
Jean-Marie Perinetti trained at L’École Internationale de Théatre Jacques Lecoq (Paris) from 2005-2007. Since 2012 he has been the Artistic Director of Sligo Youth Theatre and has co-written and directed a number of productions with them including Shadow Tales from Sligo Gaol, Arabian Nights, Like a Mammy at a Feis and Culture Vultures. He worked as an actor with Blue Raincoat Theatre Company in The Poor Mouth and has been Artistic Director of the Festival Jasidielna in Zilina, Slovakia for the last three years. Sligo Youth Theatre was founded in 1998 and provides an annual programme of theatre workshops to more than ninety members aged 10 to 18. It produces at least one annual theatre show, and develops youth theatre throughout Sligo by participating in a number of community events (Peace Project, Culture Night, Fleadh Cheoil, etc).
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IN THE STUDIO
Verbatim Theatre Devising ‘What we want to say With Youth Theatre and how we say it’
By Fiona Kelly
“Verbatim theatre is great because you often see plays which are what writers think young people want to say, and speak like, but we can put something on which is exactly what we want to say and how we say it”. Jazmin, youth theatre member, age 17
Verbatim theatre offers a flexible framework for young people to create their own scripts and get their ideas on stage in their own words. It is a technique that works well for theme-based devising and it creates an effect that makes the piece feel both current and ephemeral. It can tell a group or an individual’s stories, or provide a vignette of someone’s life at a specific moment. It is a technique for devising which can naturally incorporate other theatrical techniques, such as physical theatre and improvisation, and is an accessible and easily resourced way to create new work. Process Verbatim theatre uses the exact words of interviewees/participants to create an authentic script that is loyal to the individuals’ voices. Our annual senior show Seventeen was devised in May-July 2014 using verbatim theatre techniques. Text The theme ‘what is means to be seventeen’ was decided by the group, as they wanted to create a piece which addressed their friendships, relationships, interests and reflections. The dialogue was gathered by the young people interviewing each other in pairs and in facilitated group discussions (recorded onto an iPhone) and was then transcribed. The role of the facilitator working on a verbatim project is to create an environment that is questioning and open. Once the conversations were transcribed, the young people worked in small groups to divide the transcript into themes and to give the piece a structure. The main themes that emerged were friendships, the differences between how boys and girls see situations, perception and reality in social media and how you change around someone that you like. Here is an excerpt from the script, which was taken from a group conversation about what happens when you talk to someone that you like: Frances Andrew Frances Jazmin
I think it’s sometimes quite cute, if you speak to someone and it goes well, it’s like…you feel good And do you find it endearing if boys say stupid things to you, if you like them? It depends how stupid… You kind of feel privileged when someone acts the fool around you, then sometimes you realise that they are just ….an idiot. But it’s quite flattering sometimes
The dialogue was then assembled to form the basis of the script, which focused on themes rather than narratives. The director finalised the order and added stage directions. The group selected music to underscore the dialogue.
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This image: Customs House Youth Theatre, Read Through, Photo: Fiona Kelly. Bottom left image: Customs House Youth Theatre, Devising, Photo: Fiona Kelly. Bottom right image: Customs House Youth Theatre, Ampitheatre Performance, Photo: Fiona Kelly.
Movement The movement was devised in response to the texts generated by the recordings and was created to emphasise and develop some of the points raised in the dialogue, such as conflicts between friends and girlfriends and boyfriends. Exercises such as ‘Round, By, Through’ (from ‘The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre’) and freeze-frames helped to shape the physicality of the piece. The opening and closing image was a one and a seven made by the performers’ bodies. Staging As the group had created a piece of theatre which is set in the present, it worked well in contemporary, ordinary dress. Because of the style of the piece, the group felt that it would be effective to perform it in a non-theatrical space. As it was during the summer months, we decided to perform outdoors in the amphitheatre outside The Customs House. The response from their peers was that they dealt well with the location and gave confident, funny performances with great insight into how teenagers think about relationships. Integrating movement and music with contemporary theatre techniques is a signature of our youth theatre work. It is important to us that the members devise, tell their own stories, develop their movement vocabulary and gain the confidence to be bold with their physicality. Seventeen presented an ideal opportunity to blend the artistic objectives of the organisation with the interests and knowledge of the members and verbatim techniques were key to its success.
Fiona Kelly has worked at The Customs House since 2008 where she manages and directs Youth Theatre; manages freelance workshop leaders and delivers a programme of devising, movement, acting techniques, and physical theatre. Fiona has directed many pieces including new writing, and most recently a devised physical and verbatim theatre piece on World War 1. The Customs House Youth Theatre was established in 2009, and is based at The Customs House Arts Centre in South Shields, on the banks of the River Tyne. The Youth Theatre is open to young people aged between ten and nineteen years. The group meets weekly and produces two original performances each year. The Juniors, 10 to 15 year olds, and Seniors, 15-19 year olds, are directed and facilitated by Alice Rose Blundell and Fiona Kelly. Since 2011, the Seniors have been part of the National Theatre Connections Festival and have performed at The Customs House, Northern Stage and The National Theatre, London. The Juniors are currently working with a writer who has been commissioned to create a new play which will be performed in March 2015. As well as performing, members can complete an Arts Award at Explore, Bronze, Silver or Gold Levels, go to see shows and attend workshops with theatre companies at the venue.
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Above: Losing Grip, Photo: Marie Boylan.
In 2014, Limerick became the first National City of Culture, and for the last twelve months the city and county have been heaving with cultural activity. In 1997, Limerick Youth Theatre (LYT) set out to offer a creative experience to a small group of young people in the city. LYT had no expectations then that they were laying the groundwork for a community of theatre makers who would animate a City of Culture.
Above: Wildebeest Theatre, On the Wire, Photos: Ken Coleman. This image: PULSE, Weyward Sisters.
Theatre makers Ann Blake and Marie Boylan reflect on Limerick Youth Theatre and Ireland’s first National City of Culture.
MADE IN LIMERICK Youth theatres all over Ireland make a significant contribution to the cultural fabric of their towns and cities and Limerick Youth Theatre is no exception. Since its foundation, LYT has worked with hundreds of young people in Limerick city to nurture their interest in theatre. It encourages and supports members to pursue careers in the arts, it develops collaborative relationships between current and former members and it has been central to fostering audiences. Seventeen years later, LYT continues to have a profound impact on our cultural environment and evidence of this abounded throughout Limerick’s tenure as National City of Culture.
When you are an active member of a youth theatre busy devising for your next piece, you never imagine that the person humming next to you will be designing for your future theatre company. In 2014, they did; our youth theatre colleagues returned to Limerick from far and wide to make our wildest ideas reality. As any youth theatre member will know, collaboration is a really important part of your work in the studio. In our time with youth theatre we learned how to dream, negotiate, play, plan and show. Most importantly, we made life-long friendships and connections with other young makers; we made a community. When the City of Culture Made in Limerick (MIL) applications hit our inboxes, the skills and relationships seeded in our time with LYT came to fruition, and we realized that we had a ready-made group of collaborators spanning Limerick to London, and all we had to do was pick up the phone. The years of sitting on wooden floors dreaming up things we would do if only we had the chance had passed and City of Culture MIL was throwing down the gauntlet. To onlookers, City of Culture appears to be a heady mix of projects and events, and it is. It is also a carefully-curated programme with four key strands. ‘Made in Limerick’ (MIL) is the strand designed to fund local work. The national strand invites prestigious companies to develop and perform work in Limerick. The flagship strand invites renowned international companies to present and make work in the city and county. Lastly, the legacy strand was established to create opportunities for long-term arts sector development. Youth theatre members past and present were involved across all strands. Eleven of the fifteen MIL theatre projects featured past and current youth theatre members (including past DYT members from THEATREClub). Many of the MIL projects such as our pieces, The Unlucky Cabin Boy (The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra and Gúna Nua) and On the Wire (Wildebeest Theatre Company), were conceived, created and supported by theatre makers who first developed their theatre practices in LYT. The Creative Show, an integrated production made by LYT and the Daughters of Charity, was LYT’s City of Culture project. As part of the international strand, Chamber Made Opera (Melbourne) invited Maeve Stone, a former
LYT-er, to Australia to develop Wake. As well as spearheading projects, many past and current members performed in productions including the flagship strand Granny’s Visit with world-renowned theatre company Royal De Luxe. The two-part theatre legacy project Pulse was co-project managed by a past member and a very recent LYT alumnus stage-managed part two. No doubt there could have been theatre made in the absence of LYT, but there wouldn’t have been an integrated ready-made community of young practitioners poised to deliver the programme. Certainly, LYT inspired and cultivated our creative impulses and this foundation paid off during 2014. But we would have been performing to empty rooms without audiences, and LYT has had a hand in fostering those as well. We noticed many of our past youth theatre friends filling the auditoria at shows and events throughout the year. Past members who didn’t choose to go on to careers in the industry, but who continue to retain a lifelong love of the performing arts. This interest and support helps creates the demand that Limerick theatre needs to endure beyond our year in the sun as city of culture.
When the youth theatre was taking its early steps, no one could have predicted that Limerick would become a focal point for the arts. We joined for fun, and those of us who wanted to work in the sector expected to leave Limerick. Now LYT is a network that allows us to stay connected whether we are in Limerick or not. It remains a touchstone for the artistic pulse of the city. The relationships, skills and space to dream that we had during our time with LYT have helped us to make the work that we want to make, to enrich our communities and to reimagine our city for 2014 and beyond. If there was ever a case for investing in young people’s participation in the arts as an act of citizenship, this is it. Ann Blake has a Masters in Drama and Theatre Studies (NUI Galway) and a Certificate in Directing (NUI Maynooth). She is Chair of Professional Limerick Artists Network (PLAN). Her theatre credits include work with Impact, Bottom Dog, Pulse, Wildebeest, Gúna Nua, Beyond the Bark, Limerick Youth Theatre, Villiers and LCCSP. A founder member of Choke Comedy Improv, Ann is also a member of The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra. Marie Boylan graduated from Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin in 2009. She is artistic director of Wildebeest Theatre Company, a board member of The Limerick Theatre and Performance Hub and project manager for Pulse. Her theatre credits include work with Wildebeest, Bottom Dog, Ofegus and RTÉ. Marie also works as production manager on The Creative Show, a yearly collaboration between Limerick Youth Theatre and The Daughters of Charity.
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NEW WRITING REVIEWS Just a Second! Exploring Global Issues Through Drama and Theatre By Pete Mullineaux Afri 2014 94 Pages isbn 978-0-95111-788-0 €14.99 In recent times, I have encountered difficulty getting groups of young people to look beyond their own personal and local experiences and deepen their awareness of global issues. Just a Second! uses elements of ‘theatre of the oppressed’ and what Paulo Friere called ‘education for liberation’ to engage and empower young people through drama and theatre. The genesis of the work covered in the book goes back to 1991 and the Just a Second! project. The project supported by Afri, a justice organisation seeking to raise awareness of global injustices, linked education coordinators, Clare O’Grady and Rose Kelly with drama and theatre practitioner, Pete Mullineaux. The final Just a Second! project finished in 2013 with ‘an education for liberation programme’. It is this ‘education for liberation’ approach that informs the book. Respect for young people is paramount and the approach is one of self-led learning, exploring an issue and developing a creative response to it. The book seeks to multiply this experience for other young people and their leaders or teachers and I hope that it succeeds. With this type of book, I always pour through the introduction to look at the methodology and approach. Just a Second! is clear, with plenty of scope for adaptation. It offers five plays for a variety of ages, dealing with global themes that will empower any group engaging with them. The reader has a variety of scripts to choose from. Not all were to my taste, but some I would be ready to run with.
I particularly liked Push Pull – We are on the Move which deals with forced migration and was originally presented as part of a famine commemoration. The beauty of the scripts lies in their flexibility and in the follow-up section after each play. These sections lay out drama activities that could be used to further the experience, or help the group to adapt the scripts to give them greater ownership of the play and the issue. I found the range of themes – from the arms trade, to food security and sovereignty – interesting. The breadth allows participants to engage on a global level and discuss the impact of each issue on their locale. The approach is always respectful and focuses on empowerment through knowledge throughout. What struck me most was that the themes and flexibility of the scripts allow them to be useful to a multitude of groups. In the formal education sector, this book could be considered by English or CSPE Teachers for 1st and 2nd year students. It deals with themes relevant to the CSPE curriculum and it could assist English teachers looking for scripts to support the oracy element of the new English curriculum. It is also very useful at senior primary and could be adapted for a transition year Action Project. In the informal sector, I could see groups using the scripts as part of awareness-raising programmes and performances. Sarah Fitzgibbon is a freelance drama practitioner who, with her colleague Joanna Parkes, has developed the Step by Step series for the use of educational drama in primary schools published by NAYD. She has worked in a variety of capacities in youth and educational drama over the last twenty years. Currently she is the Educational Consultant with The Abbey Theatre, developing the theatre’s educational resources for teachers and pupils in a changing curriculum, including CPD supports and pupil short courses.
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National Theatre Connections 2014 Plays for Young People Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014 560 pages isbn 978-1472571434 st £16.99 The NT Connections portfolio of plays for young people from the National Theatre is always a rich resource for youth theatres. The 2013-2014 collection contains an especially high quality of writing, with timely and mature plays on subjects that range from transgender identity to old age and death. Members of Kildare Youth Theatre, a perennial supporter of the Connections project, review the plays in this edition. The Wardrobe by Sam Holcroft is about various groups of people in different time periods seeking solitude in a wardrobe where they tell their secrets. The Wardrobe is a character of its own, keeping people safe, guarding their secrets and even giving them the freedom to be themselves. The play is beautifully written and the characters are interesting and unique. However, as the scenes are stand-alone pieces, they don’t give you time to really connect with the characters with the effect that it is a bit anti-climactic. Hearts by Luke Norris is a play about football, set in the changing rooms of a local, unimpressive football team. It explores the tensions and rivalries of the team and of the girls who support them. The play is about perseverance, struggle and hope. It is a visceral, sharplyobserved comedy which appeals particularly to a non-theatre-going audience of young sportsmen and women. There are three scenes: one with the boys, one with the girls, and a scene where they’re together. It’s extremely funny in the way it focuses on mundane situations and how these small little moments may feel insignificant but are actually really important and make us who we are. The girls’ scenes, in which I loved playing a part, ring true to real life with well-captured dialogue and characters. Pronoun by Evan Placey centres around Dean, a transgender teenager. Over the course of the play we are presented with the many questions and issues that Dean faces in his journey through a period of great change in his life. We’re given a realistic view of the confusion and lack of understanding (both internal and external) in Dean’s relationships as he tries to reinvent himself. He consults a poster of James Dean on how to be a “proper” boy: and although this does lend a few laughs to the play as we see him deconstruct what it is to be “manly”, it gives the viewer a heart-breaking insight into the uncertainty and lack of identity that the protagonist faces. There are many writing techniques in this script which makes for a truly exciting, energetic and thought-provoking play. Once we look past Dean’s initial search for identity we realise that this play is not simply about gender, it is about love in all its forms. It’s about how romance, family and friendship transcend gender and sex. What I learned from this play is that love is not about boys and girls, it’s about people. Same by Deborah Bruce is set in a nursing home for the elderly. The characters are in their eighties and mid-teens. The play looks at the similarities between them and deals with family, death and loss in a touching, real and humorous way. There are three scenes set at three different times in one week. The first deals with the young people mourning the death of their grandmother; the second deals with the residents who avoid discussing death –
often in hilarious ways – and the third flashes back to the grandmother’s final moments surrounded by the young people. The comedy is varied but not evenly divided as the older characters get the best lines. The final scene showing the death of the Gran is very sad and thought provoking. It’s a great vehicle for a youth theatre to practice realistic portrayals of older people. Horizon by Matt Hartley is set in ‘Horizon Shopping Centre’ and chronicles a group of friends enjoying their final day of freedom before the new school term. This setting and time frame makes it relatable to most young audiences. Throughout the play it is clear that the characters see the centre as a social hub, a place where they can meet their friends and catch up on the latest gossip. To them, Horizon represents freedom. However, Sally, a member of the group, has an older sister, Holly, who works at the shopping centre and it means something very different to her. As the play progresses, the shopping centre becomes a bleak reminder of what the future holds, and what lies ahead for Sally when she grows up. This play portrays the struggle of two sisters to go against their peers to challenge a system driven by unskilled labour. Horizon is a thought-provoking social commentary on the impact of consumerism on the lives of young people. Tomorrow by Simon Vinnicombe accurately represents the feelings and frustrations of students in their last year of secondary school. Written in a comic style with a big cast, I could see traits of all of my own friends in each of the characters in the play and understood their feelings about finishing school and being worried about what happens next! It is a great play to help teenagers realise that other people their age feel the same way about growing up! In Angels by Pauline McGlynn, a group of young strangers gather in an old graveyard for a community project, watched over by three angels. Over the course of a day and night they talk, sing and bicker as they learn more about each other. I really wanted to like this play, but I found the dialogue a bit clunky with unrealistic attempts at humour. It was a good idea, but it didn’t feel real. A Shop Selling Speech by Sabrina Mahfouz is an interesting idea and is a non-realistic play, relying on symbol and situation to make relevant, timely political points. Questions of freedom, power, gender, greed and revolution are examined in this heightened drama where ‘Speech’ has been stolen – in broad daylight – from a shop in Cairo, Egypt. With Catherine Johnson’s A Letter to Lacey we return to a more usual Connections play. This work deals with a heavy subject, has a large cast and uses music. The songs are well-known chart numbers but have been given new contexts in the play (Johnson did the same with Abba for Mamma Mia). This play explores partner abuse and how it affects not just the couple involved, but also their friends and family. Some of the content is shocking and sad; the musical numbers offer light-relief. Dafydd James’s play Heritage is described in the collection as “a blistering black comedy with music that explores the darker side of nationalism.” There is a score and new songs, and the play’s seemingly comic characters settle down soon enough to wonder what’s going on in their village… Reviews by Kildare Youth Theatre members Evan Lynch, Rachel Foran, Caolán Dundon and Allie Wheelan and edited by Peter Hussey.
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Tenderfoot: A Volume of Plays By & For Young People By Tenderfoot Project; Veronica Coburn Edited by Veronica Coburn Civic Theatre with South Dublin Libraries and Art, 2014 236 pages isbn 978-0-9575115-4-5 €15 from www.kennys.ie / €80 plus postage for class/group set from www.civictheatre.ie / (01) 4627477 This book is a great resource for any youth theatre: the language is current and accessible and its themes are diverse and suitable for the often wide age range in youth theatre. Many of the plays have a small cast size which addresses the often difficult task of getting large casts to rehearsals. The collection would be particularly useful for older youth theatre members to use as a directorial exercise with their peers. Leish Burke – Artistic Director of Greise Youth Theatre Tenderfoot – Play Reviews by Emma Gallagher Party by Sarah Hanolan is a controversial play which looks at the dangers a teenage girl can encounter as she ventures to a popular party. It explores the immense pressure put on teenage girls to be sexual. When Danielle, Courtney and Shauna go to a party they each have very different intentions and expectations for the night ahead. Parties can make or break people, and in this play we witness both. In Escape by Ciara Donohue, friends Calvin and Eve dream of running away together. They have tapped into a ‘secret world’ of drugs to deal with their troubles. Eve is struggling to cope with her father’s abuse. Calvin’s mother is sick and he worries about who will care for his little brother. In this hard-hitting tale of friendship, speaking up and being brave leads to the harsh realisation that sometimes we have to leave our loved ones behind no matter how much it breaks our hearts. TTYL by Declan Moore is a fast-paced play about technology and relationships. Our conversations are no longer spoken, they are typed on screens and captured in pictures. Instead of speaking, people Facebook, send snap chats and, if you’re really lucky, texts. Quick and simple, TTYL highlights the fact that technology never really sleeps and the world is constantly updating itself, post after post. Departures by Simon O’Mara is a sweet and simple conversation between two strangers at an airport. This is a small play about ‘what ifs’, trying not to look back, and the scary, predictable yet unpredictable future. Lone wanderer, Cassie, believes that plans ruin all the fun and we can all handle a little bit of turbulence, but Sam is not convinced. Will Sam board the plane to Athens with his girlfriend or will he choose an alternative route?
A Piece of Me by Seoid Ní Laoire raises questions around who decides what is real and what is not. Erica is feeling down and claims that she is seeing her dead husband. Her psychologist explains that it is a coping mechanism, but is it? A Piece of Me reflects on interesting themes of conflicting beliefs, denial, fantasy, happiness and perception. The play will challenge you to think beyond the obvious and open your mind to possibilities. In P.R. by Scott Byrne, a young boy has lost his life to suicide as a result of cyber bullying. P.R. highlights the carelessness of social networking sites that put young people in vulnerable positions where they feel trapped. It can feel like there is no escape and the sites don’t seem to care. Their goal is to limit damage to the brand, cover up any evidence of being involved and protect the brand’s name. At first glance, Strike by Alison Bryan is a typical play about a group of lads talking about girls, parties and life over a game of bowling. The concept is good; each actor takes his turn to bowl while the other two speak, so you end up with three simultaneous conversations. The discussions are different but have one focal point: who is going to Rachel’s party? The seemingly superficial lads are more than they seem. They reveal secrets to each other about girlfriends and friendship. This short and to-the-point play is guaranteed to leave you with a smile on your face. . Leish Bourke is the Artistic Director of Griese Youth Theatre (GYT). Located in the Meeting House in Ballitore Village in Kildare, GYT was founded in 1999. Emma Gallagher has been a member of GYT for nine years and has taken part in numerous productions, festivals, youth initiative projects and youth exchanges. Emma has a keen interest in writing and particularly enjoyed being an NAYD Young Critic.
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Production Toolkit These articles form part of a series of pieces looking at aspects of producing theatre. This year the focus is on video by Killian Waters.
Video Design for Theatre Video design for theatre is still relatively new when compared to other elements like lighting, sound, costume or set design and this is one reason why there aren’t any clear rules or guidelines around its use. The term video design covers a wide variety of possibilities, but, if pushed, I would define it as the use of a recorded image (still or moving, live or pre-recorded) in a live production and its integration with the various other elements of the piece. More often than not it is a projection of video in a theatre space, but that is never as straightforward as it sounds.
To help get you started and guide you in making decisions about using video or multimedia content in your next production I have compiled a list of key questions. Why? This for me is the biggest question in video design for theatre. As the technology becomes more accessible and the equipment becomes more affordable and available, it is easier to use film and video in live theatre productions. This availability can make it tempting to use video in a production just because you can. Adding video can be time consuming and technically tricky, and it is as easy for the introduction of video to take away from a production as it is to enhance it. A screen on stage is very imposing and can easily draw focus even when there is nothing projected onto it. Similarly, the introduction of video elements or the use of cameras on stage can be cumbersome and break the flow of a scene. As with all elements of a live production, moderation and balance is key. The last thing you want is for the video elements to overshadow or detract from the narrative and direction of the piece. What? Terms like video and media are broad and can cover a wide variety of elements. So figuring out what the visual content will be is the best possible start. Find out if it is a still image or a video, live or pre-recorded. Is it text and titles? Will it be displayed on a TV screen or projected onto a screen or into the space? Will it be a combination of all of these elements? If it is pre-recorded video content, does it exist already or will it have to be filmed and edited? If it needs to be produced, you will have to factor this into your schedule. Video production can be very time consuming. What format is the content in? Is it digital or hard copy? Is it on a DVD or tape? Will it need to be converted and who will do this? The answers to these questions will greatly affect how you proceed with the design. Where? Where in the space will the video content be projected or placed and where in the piece does it fit? The physical presence of a video element in a piece is a very important decision. If you place a screen in a space it becomes a focal point. A blank screen is a space that will be filled at some point and an audience will subconsciously wait for that to happen. Also, how well will a screen integrate into the set designer’s vision for the piece? Does the technology involved fit with the look and feel of the piece? For instance, if you use a video camera in a period drama it provokes questions that will need to be considered. Finally how will the video content integrate with the narrative of the piece? Will the content be stand-alone or will it integrate into the piece? How
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Below: This is Still Life, Photos: Jill O’Malley.
will the content sit with the live elements? Is there any blocking to be considered if actors are interacting with live cameras etc? How? What equipment and technology will you need to achieve the desired effect that will meet the budgets and time constraints of the production? Usually when working with smaller productions you use what is available, either from the venue or borrowed from generous supporters. Although it may seem fine, the equipment may or may not be the right fit for what you are trying to achieve. This is where I would advise using your ‘phone a friend’ lifeline. Knowledge of technology and equipment is acquired over time through lots of trials and plenty of errors. If you know someone who works in this field, or has a knowledge or enthusiasm for cameras and projectors, ask their advice. Go online; look at user reviews and discussion forums for equipment you are using. No two pieces of equipment are the same and it is only through using them that can you come to know their quirks. If you have access to the equipment, try it out. Get it into the rehearsal room and see how it works. Model boxes are also a great way of seeing how a projection will look in a space. QLab is the program most used for playing back video content in a live production. It’s free to download and use but you will need a license to save your work. Some features of this programme can be rented at very reasonable cost so this is a viable option for even the smallest productions. If you plan to use this, download it early and watch the tutorials. Get to know the programme. When? The minute you think there might be a video element in the piece you should start talking about it and start thinking about the questions covered here. The earlier you talk about the video the better. The video projection surfaces can be better integrated into the set if it is introduced at the design stage; set designers have conceived some of the best projection surfaces that I’ve seen. If there are live video cameras being used bring them into the rehearsal rooms and see how the actors look and react on screen. Actors will also become more comfortable with the technology if introduced to it early. Lighting has a massive effect on the quality of video projection in a space; if the lighting is too bright you will not be able to see the image, too dark and you will see nothing but the image. Projectors can throw off a lot of spill light even when not projecting anything. If a blackout is required in a scene you will need a projector shutter. The sooner you talk to the lighting designer about the video design for a production the better. Something else that you need to consider if you are shooting in advance of the show is costume. If you need to record an element for a production which requires the actors to be in costume you
will need to factor this into your schedule and inform the costume department as this will push their schedule forward. Why not? Video design in theatre is still relatively new, which means most of the best ideas have not even been tried yet. Experiment. Try new and different things. Some of the best ideas in video design happen when someone new to video asks, “What if we try this?” Kilian Waters trained in video and film production. In 2006 he collaborated with Brokentalkers Theatre Company incorporating video into a live performance and has been creating video design for theatre ever since. Killian has worked on numerous productions, is the founder and director of Shoot To Kill productions and creates video documentation, promotional interviews and mini documentaries for arts organisations. Samples of his work can be seen at www. shoottokill.ie
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J Workshops
The Quest Workshop By Geraldine O’Neill Workshop for the younger youth theatre. Number of participants: 16-20 Duration: 90 minutes Equipment needed: Container with slips of paper. A bag of marbles. Rory’s Story Cubes. Rory’s Story Cubes consist of 9 dice each with an object on every facet. They are available in Waterstones and on Amazon.
Our Physically Phishy Youth Theatre has members as young as ten and as old as fourteen, which is quite a wide age gap when it comes to attitudes and experience. As you can imagine, designing a workshop which holds the interest of the teenagers and stimulates the imagination of the younger age group can be a real challenge. The aim of this ‘Quest Workshop’ is to encourage these two age groups to work together to create the beginnings of a devised piece based on the structure of a quest play. Both age groups are very familiar with quest play structure as it is replicated in almost all of the games they play on their gaming equipment. The strength of the workshop lies in the fact that the younger members have an opportunity to show the older members how imaginative and playful they can be. During the course of the workshop we use games and exercises which investigate and mirror the early stages of a quest story. These stages are – 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
The hero in his/her ordinary world. The call to adventure. Entry into the extraordinary world. The meeting of allies. The innermost cave. The escape. Return to the ordinary world.
Warm ups/Ice-Breakers. Ask the group to walk the space and as they walk give them tasks. Show me groups with, Three hands touching. Six feet touching. Eight elbows touching etc., Please form Three circles Four triangles Five squares etc.
Child/House/Storm Divide the group into threes A, B & C with one odd man out. As & Bs stand opposite each other and raise their hands high and touch each others palms in order to form the roof of a House. The Cs sit on the ground under the roof they are The Children (no more than one child per house). The odd man out (group size sixteen) is The Caller and he has to find a place for himself. When he calls “House” all the As and Bs must form new houses with new partners. When he calls “Child” all the children swop houses. When he calls “Storm” all the groups must break up and form new houses with children. The Callers will try to obtain a place when the groups are switching and a new odd man out is the Caller. Ask the group to walk the space and explain that you will give them several quests to carry out. Fill a bowl with slips of paper with quests written on them and hand them out. If your group is fairly new to each other you can make the quests very general, for example: • • • • • •
Find someone who has green eyes. Find someone who walks to youth theatre. Find someone who can speak another language. Find someone who likes eating spinach. Find someone who has pierced ears. Find someone who has a tattoo.
If they‘re well known to each other then you will need to make the quests more specific, for example: • • • • •
Find someone who can play the violin. Find someone who can do magic tricks. Find someone who can bake cakes. Find someone who has two different coloured eyes. Find someone who is a vegetarian.
In order to complete the quest, the participants will be forced to speak to and look closely at each other. Each time they complete a quest give them a marble and new quest. The person with the most marbles is the winner. Storytelling. Give a story cube to each group of five. They have five minutes to prepare their story. The first person in the group starts the story and next person continues the story and includes, during the telling, another picture from the story cube and so on until they get to the end of their line. Each group will be given a different cube. Encourage each group to work together to find a beginning, middle and end to the story. They then present the stories to each other.
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This spread: The Quest, Photos: Geraldine O’Neill.
Ordinary World:
Chairs.
Ask participants to get into groups of five. They are to be a family having breakfast and can be a family of anything they like – aliens, bears, refugees, ordinary people, dinosaurs, it’s up to them.
There are a couple of rules which must be stated at the beginning.
Once they have organised their family, they will have an opportunity to show a breakfast scene typical of their chosen family. Once these scenes are completed, hand each group a story cube. They are to choose one image which impacts and disrupts their breakfast scene. For example, they could choose the image of the bird and as a result of their choice they might decide that a bird flies into the room with a letter requesting assistance. Explain that this is the beginning of a quest story where the hero/heroine leaves his/her ordinary life. Each group now presents their ordinary breakfast scene with the addition of the disruption. By now the groups should be invested in the next stage. They can decide who the hero/es are and what their quest might be. Instruct them that it should be fairly urgent and that they need to set out over the coming days. Give each group a story cube and tell them to decide on two images to help them to set out on their quest. For instance, they might use the image of a book (possibly a book of spells), a magic wand, and a star (to guide them). They also have to choose two images which represent danger. For example, a fire (which blocks their way) or a tree (which has poisonous fruit). At this stage it is important to keep a record of each story. As with the earlier storytelling exercise, ask each group to line up and retell their quest story in turn. At this stage the group is gathering together a collection of ideas which can be used for the following weeks of devising. Quest stories have a momentum of their own and have the possibility of heading off in any direction, so that group A’s story may ultimately use group B’s ending. .
1. Move very slowly. 2. Once you leave your seat you can’t go back to it. Each participant takes a chair and places it randomly in the space with enough space to walk around the chair. They sit in the chairs. The person at the back of the space must leave their chair and come to the top of the space. They are the Questor. There is now an empty chair in the space. This Questor must get to a vacant chair and the group must stop him from achieving his quest. The group can’t physically prevent the Questor by standing in front of him or moving the chair. They may occupy the chair he is heading for, but if they leave their own chair then it becomes available to the Questor. Once the Questor gets a seat the person who vacated the chair become the Questor. This game takes a few tries before the group begins to see how it works, and they then begin to work strategically together. End of workshop. Over the weeks following this workshop the story cubes are used to bring the group through the next stages of the quest. Who are their Allies? What leads them to the Extraordinary World? Which object or action gets them out of the Innermost Cave? We have made large polystyrene versions of the cubes which seem to work better with the group than the smaller version. The Quest workshops led to the devising of In Quest of a Play, which is part of Playshare. Geraldine O’Neill is Outreach Director with Graffiti Theatre Company. She is the founder of Activate Youth Theatre and has been Artistic Director for twenty-one years. She is also founder and Artistic Director of Physically Phishy Youth Theatre, which is thirteen years old.
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J Workshops
Puppetry: Illusion and the thing that you can’t fake By Dan Colley A workshop on introducing Puppetry Duration: 90 minutes Anne Bogard said that theatre is both illusion and the Equipment needed: A stock of old bed sheets, tea thing you can’t fake. It lives in the tension between towels, jay cloths or a mix of these materials, music these two things. On the one hand, there’s illusion: that player and music. beds are ships, that actors are characters, that masks are faces, that cloth is the sky – and that the same cloth, when used a different way, is the sea – that journeys take moments and that stories have endings. The thing you can’t fake is that something, the fake thing, is actually happening, that it’s live, that the actors sweat, that there is an audience – and they know it’s an illusion. Puppetry brings together these two seemingly contradictory things. We know that a puppet is an object, but we invest our empathy in it and we bring it to life. We will the illusion into existence – and there’s no faking that will. Impulse Circle (10 mins) This serves as a physical and energetic warm up as well as illustrating basic tenants of the workshop. Get the group in a circle and send around an impulse by turning to your right and making a big nonsensical sound and action. The person you’ve given it to then turns to their right and passes it on to the person next to them, and so on. The aim is to pass on what you’ve been given as accurately as you can, not to pass on the original impulse, or what you think it should be. After an attempt or two at this, acknowledge that it’s impossible to replicate it exactly because everyone is working with their own unique body and voice. But the combination of performers trying (and failing) to accurately pass on what they’re given creates something entirely new which is created by their actual bodies in collaboration with the actual bodies of others. This is something that you cannot fake. Demonstrate the puppet (5 mins) With the group in a circle, making sure everyone can see you, take one of the cloths and tie a knot in one corner and pull the material through the knot so that it sticks out. This is the nose. The knot is the head. Look at the head and ‘breathe’ into it. Make the nose look around the room. With your other hand, take another piece of material hanging down from the knot and hold it like a hand. You now have a very simple puppet to demonstrate with. Your puppet has a head, a nose, a hand and breath. Take your time with this and make sure your audience is drawn in. If you keep looking at the puppet then they will. Be gentle. Then. Suddenly. Break the illusion: Drop the puppet, look at the audience and kick the sheet on the ground. Observe the group’s reaction. A kneejerk of horror (or at least distaste)? Ask the group to observe their own reactions. Did someone gasp? And if so, why? Explain the elements that went into creating the puppet: the nose, the breath, the hand and, most importantly, the puppeteer’s attention. The puppeteer’s attention draws the audience’s attention to the puppet, and together they will it into existence. The moment you stop looking at the puppet, or you let it go slack, the illusion is lost. Build your own puppet and bring it to life (25 mins) Ask the participants to take a sheet and do as you have done. After they have got the hang of that, ask them to walk the puppet around the room. Avoid ‘floating puppets,’ so ‘give it legs’ i.e. allow it to bounce to create the illusion of legs. Experiment with different walks. Ask them to make a noise
along with the breath. Experiment with different sounds. Ask them to say hello to each other as they pass. Encourage them to start conversations with each other. Ask each other’s names. As facilitator you can jump into the action with your own puppet. Ask them to stay in character and form a circle of their puppets. Then, looking at the puppets (not their puppeteers), you should ask one of them their name and ask them to introduce another puppet they met. Repeat this process – take the characters they’ve created absolutely seriously. Finally, ask everybody to lay their puppet on the floor in front of them and ask them to wave goodbye to the character. 15 uses in 15 minutes (30 mins) Create groups of four or five. Divide the materials (cloths etc.) between the groups. Explain that they have fifteen minutes to come up with fifteen different uses of the material. You can give more time, but maintain the pressure. Then, regardless if they arrived at fifteen, say that they should take the different uses and string them together in a sequence that transitions from one to the other. Ask each group to perform their sequence. Play music over it. Get feedback and ask about the illusions or transformations in the sequences. Ask them to identify anything that happened that could be called something you can’t fake. Make Something Disappear (10-20 mins) If you have time and the group have the itch, put them into new groups. Tell them to make something disappear. That’s all. They’ll probably ask clarifying questions (“Do you mean hide something?” “A magic trick?” “Do you mean a person or a thing?”), but resist answering those. See how they do with the challenge of the basic instruction and tell them they have very little time. Then ask them to share their idea with the rest of the group. The imagination that goes into interpreting and executing this “impossible” task is always a treat and makes for great discussions. Dan Colley is a graduate of NUI Galway.He has also completed the National Association of Youth Drama’s Artstrain programme. He is alumnus of The Next Stage, MAKE and a member of The Project Arts Centre. He has facilitated workshops with many groups including the Abbey Theatre, National Youth Theatre Festival, Dublin Youth Theatre, Mount Temple School and South Dublin Libraries. He is the Director of Collapsing Horse. Dramaturg credits include work for WillFredd, Sugarglass, Pillowtalk and Come As Soon As You Hear.
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J Workshops
Stapler, Paper, Imagination By Liam Doona A workshop in performance design This workshop in ‘Thinking about Performance Design’ was part of the inaugural NYT LAB and the results were stunning. Now you can try it in your own studios.
Materials needed: Using readily available and cheap materials such as end rolls of newsprint and masking tape, participants can explore the key principles of visual theatre and begin to think about how design and materiality inform and shape theatre making.
Exploring drama as a visual experience enables a much deeper understanding of theatre and encourages participants to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how the dramatic moment is visually authored and presented.
The apparent neutrality of paper is important. It allows for imaginative projection onto the work and a focus on form, movement, weight and texture.
A Paper Costume
All photos: NYTLAB, Photos left: Liam Doona, Photos below: Alan King.
Using pictorial references recreate the silhouette and volume of a costume on the body of a fellow participant. Participants encounter the transformative power of costume on movement, physicality and dramatic presence. They are required to negotiate interpretations of the original image and creative processes. Aim for the overall sculptural feel and volume of the costume. Explore the natural qualities of the paper to fold, drape and crinkle to replicate texture and form. Present the costumes in groups or make pictorial tableaux. A Paper Sea Paper Puppets Paper puppets are an ideal opportunity to develop skills in making, negotiation, sensitivity to materials, constructing simple visual narratives, empathy, direction and performance. Simple, neutral, paper puppets are quick to make and will allow your youth theatre members to explore basic principles of Bunraku (Japanese multiple operator puppets).
The sea allows the participants to explore the visual as dramatic content, risk, team-work and visual narrative which integrates design and performance. You will need a large space. Roll out multiple long lengths of paper and tape them together with masking tape to create the largest sheet of paper that can be fitted in the room. Six meters by six meters is ideal for a group of about twenty. Position participants equally around the edges of the paper and, lifting it carefully, direct them to create a gentle swell by moving the paper up and down. Begin with small movements and gradually ascend to raise the paper sheet above head height. Take breaks for repairs and rehearse the careful animation of the delicate material. Encourage participants to work collectively and sensitively. Listen to the sound of the paper and watch for emergent rhythms and shifts in tempo.
Keep the puppets as neutral as possible. Don’t allow any decoration or detail. The most important thing is that the arms, head and legs are robust and jointed. A ball of paper for the head should be squeezed and pinched into shape so that a nose and eyes are discernible. This allows us to see where the puppet is looking. Using two or more operators, focus on simple, believable movement. One operator should anchor the feet to the floor to give the puppet the appearance of weight. Another can operate the head so that the puppet appears to observe its surroundings. Develop the animation slowly and step-by-step. Encourage participants to keep as still as possible and only to allow the puppet to make movements which are purposed. Stillness is one of the most powerful states. Rehearse with two puppets until a simple object, for example a hat, can be exchanged between the puppets. Develop a simple non-verbal scenario.
As participants become more confident, direct small groups to walk underneath the paper when it is in its highest position. By gradually increasing the number of participants walking under the sheet you can eventually have all participants cross from one side to another whilst the paper sheet floats on a cushion of warm air above their heads. Try cutting small circles in the sheet and direct participants to move under the paper whilst it is being animated at waist height and to poke their heads or other part of the body through. Using found objects and participants, create a scene at sea, from a gentle swell to a storm and back. Try adding music or an improvised vocal/humming score. Liam Doona is a freelance theatre designer and Head of the Department of Design and Visual Arts at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Since graduating with a degree in theatre design from Nottingham Trent University, he worked extensively in the UK both as a practicing designer and academic. Alongside his educational work he continues to practice as a set and costume designer and has worked for a number of leading touring theatre companies and theatres.
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TALKING TEXTS
Ensemble Theatre Making by Rose Burnett Bonczek, David Storck Routledge 2012/13 230 Pages isbn 978-0415530095 st £21.99 This is a book that any theatre practitioner should read. Relying heavily on their individual and collective experience of working with the ensemble, Rose Burnett Bonczek and David Storck offer a very real ‘window’ into what it is to work with groups. It is also a book that a teacher or facilitator of any group or subject would find immensely interesting and insightful. While not leaning on the theoretical throughout, we are nevertheless assured of their combined academic standing and that what they practice is coming from a very informed place. What jumps from the page is a tangible sense of ‘the ensemble’. What they are, why they are and, very pointedly, who they are. This is a book that articulates what you have likely been thinking about your group but have never vocalised. The extremely indepth unveiling of the individuals that comprise an ensemble is invaluable. Even if theatre making is not your area, the book demonstrates an acute understanding of both individuals in a group context and the greater dynamics of group work itself. Both Rose and David are undoubtedly passionate and this heightens the readers thirst for an ‘in’. Have you worked with a group? Do you teach large numbers of adults, teenagers, or children? If the answer is yes, then what unfolds throughout the book is a comfortably accessible route to identifying the highs and lows of such work. It acknowledges the pitfalls of being a leader, teacher or facilitator that occur due to impatience, lack of empathy, making assumptions and being egotistical. The very raison d’être of the ‘ensemble’ is that we are all working together to achieve a common goal. It is refreshing to see this idea expanded upon and it helps us recognise the themes and notions that originally motivated us and continue to enliven us as theatre makers, but which, for all sorts of reasons, we simply forget or put on the back burner.
The journey this book takes brings us through a process, and it is the unapologetic and deep understanding of that ensemblemaking process that spoke to me as a reader. Through the exposition of this rich practice we are reminded that theatre making is not always about the ‘product’ or ‘the production’. That productions, the authors explain, should exist as opportunities for students to apply what they’re learning, not as a reward in and of themselves. At the moment the reader is intrigued and awakened, and perhaps thinks, yeah, I want to do this, this is exciting work, how do I do that? Where’s the ‘how to’ section? The book even tells you not to be tempted to skip on to another section, rather stay the course and absorb what’s being discussed. Ultimately, what’s being said here is that while this is a recognised and grounded practice, it will be up to the teacher and the members of the ensemble to educate each other as to how an ensemble is made. Each group is different and every family has a shared knowledge of their own particular family recipes. What this book will give you is a set of tools and a bag of wisdom to help with starting out on that building process. It is a book that can be revisited time and time again, which makes it a rather brilliant and handy piece of kit to have in your teaching/ facilitating ensemble making toolbox. Sile Penkert, MA (Drama and Theatre Studies), has over twenty years of experience working in the arts in Waterford and further afield and has worked on every aspect of theatre making. Sile was the Education/Outreach Officer for Garter Lane Arts Centre for a number of years and has directed and co-directed over ten parades for Spraoi. She is well known as a teacher and facilitator and now heads County Carlow Youth Theatre as well as continuing her facilitation work with WYA.
YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre and Youth: Performing Possibility By Megan Alrutz Routledge, 2014 152 Pages isbn 978-0415832199 $45 This book is very valuable for anyone interested in engaging with young people in applied theatre/drama practice, in digital media and in models of storytelling. Alrutz has an easy style of communication and an obvious passion for arts practice with young people, in particular those who are disadvantaged socially and, implicitly, politically. She is passionate about the politics of disadvantage and about the ways and means of honouring, respecting, developing and investing time in the practice of art making and in the theory of making practice happen effectively. The empowerment of the ‘youth voice’ is at the heart of her work. She moves through the devising process with an emphasis on ‘self-representation, multi-modal presentation and knowing the power of your own voice.’ Alrutz views engagement with digital arts and media as a crucial way of telling one’s own story, particularly for the ‘digital natives’ (Carrol and Anderson 2006). It is also a means of addressing balances of power: ‘the alchemy between youth and digital media…disrupts the existing set of power relations between adult authority and youth voice.’ The book is very well-researched with excellent insights and the selected case studies are informative and full of useful ideas. Her first person experiences expertly evoke practitioners’ awareness of space, time, attention, invitation and possibilities. She brings us into rooms with her and takes us through ideas, strategies and examples of thoughtful practice which, as she says herself, ‘engages the wisdom and experience of the young people in a devising process towards a finished product of digital storytelling. My one quibble is that I would have liked more consideration of the aesthetics of the art-forms and the need to create expectations of high aesthetic values for, by and with young people. But perhaps that’s for another book. The focus of this book is definitely on ‘Digital storytelling as an applied theatre practice and as a site for addressing engagement and esteem of youth in society; the creation of new knowledge around self, others and society; the fostering of dialogue and action around identity, culture and community.’ Well worth putting on your shelf. Emelie FitzGibbon is the founder and Artistic Director of Graffiti Theatre Company, Cork and is a long-term member of the Boards of NAYD and Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) Ireland.
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NAYD ANGELS NAYD would like to acknowledge the support of our valued NAYD Angels Local Angels Michelle Carew Emelie FitzGibbon National Angels Dympna Cullen Donall Curtin O’Brien Ronayne Solicitors In memory of Geraldine O’Neill (Cryptic Youth Drama, Balbriggan) StraffanWAN Technical Services
Above: Leitrim Youth Theatre, Photo: Brian Farrell.
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ABOUT NAYD
WHAT WE DO
ABOUT THE NAYD TEAM
NAYD was established in 1980 to support the development of youth theatre in Ireland.
NAYD supports youth drama in practice through an annual programme that includes the National Youth Theatre, the National Festival of Youth Theatres, training and mentorship, commissioning new writing, publications, resources and other services as well as research and policy development. We also work in partnership with local and national stakeholders towards the sustained development of youth theatre, advocate the benefits of youth theatre participation and provide leadership for the sector.
Director Michelle Carew Michelle leads and manages the staff, resources and work programme of NAYD. She ensures that NAYD delivers on its role and mission as an organisation.
In addition, NAYD is involved in developing Drama in Education in Ireland, and works closely with the formal and non-formal education sectors.
youth theatres through the development of resources, training, support and advice. Alongside Rhona, Research and Development Officer, he also provides guidance and support to emerging youth theatres. Alan coordinates the Young Critics Programme and the New Stage Programme. Alan has worked as an actor and director and is a former member of Dublin Youth Theatre.
(National Association for Youth Drama)
Since then, NAYD has been supporting youth drama in practice and policy by advocating the benefits of young people’s participation, promoting quality youth theatre practice and providing leadership for the sector. Now representing a membership of 60 affiliated youth theatres, the organisation has seen thousands of young lives enhanced and transformed by the experience of youth drama. NAYD continues to work towards the sustained development of youth theatres in partnership with local authorities, youth services, theatres, arts centres, organisations and individuals. A commitment to young people and theatre is at the core of the work of NAYD. NAYD promotes: • drama as a medium for learning and as a means of expression for young people • the advancement of the artistic, personal and social development of young people through drama and performance related skills • youth theatre as a medium to extend and enhance young people’s understanding of theatre as an artform • the emergence and development of youth theatres in Ireland NAYD is guided by the following core values: • Commitment to quality in provision and experience for all young people • Commitment to equality of participation for all young people • We ensure our work is young person-centred and that the voice of young people is represented in all aspects of the work of the organisation • We ensure a balance between the values of artistic quality and youth participation
VIRTUAL YOUTH THEATRE Visit NAYD online at www.nayd.ie for: • Latest youth theatre events listings • Programme news: National Youth Theatre, Festivals, Young Critics, New Stage, International Opportunities, Capture YT • Training section. ArtsTrain, Leading On, Young Leaders Programme • Resources & Research section: advice, management resources, workshops, find a play, policies and guidelines, Youth Theatre Supports, publications, research projects • Discover Youth Theatre: What is youth theatre? Benefits of Youth Theatre, Get Involved, Find A Youth Theatre And much more… Join NAYD, Membership FAQs, Membership Benefits, the Reading Room to name but a few! Sign up for NAYD’s e-newsletter at www.nayd.ie/ users/newsletter. Follow NAYD on Twitter @NAYDIre. Become an NAYD fan on www.facebook.com by searching for National Association for Youth Drama.
Administrative and Finance Officer Katie Martin Katie maintains the overall administration of the office including finances. She also assists with the management Each year, on average, NAYD: of the work programme. Katie is NAYD’s Designated Liaison • reaches up to 3000 young people participating in Person for Child Protection and Welfare and manages the approximately 4000 hours of drama activities with 60 Garda Vetting Consortium. She also looks after website affiliated youth theatres across Ireland management and manages internal and external • engages hundreds of young people directly across seven communications with members and other organisations. high quality national programmes including the She worked for a number of years as a leader with Tallaght National Festival of Youth Theatres Youth Theatre. • provides over 2000 hours of advice and guidance to affiliated youth theatres, emerging youth theatres, Youth Theatre Officer other youth services and individuals developing youth Alan King drama activities in Ireland Alan supports the sustained artistic development of
NAYD is principally funded by the Arts Council, the Department for Children and Youth Affairs, and is also affiliated to the National Youth Council of Ireland. Become a member of NAYD and make sure that you don’t miss out on fantastic youth drama and youth theatre opportunities every year: training, seminars, events, activities, research, latest news—and lots more! NAYD has three categories of membership: Individual: €30 (student/unemployed discount €10) For a wide range of individuals from freelance facilitators to youth workers, teachers or academics. Organisation: €50 For any organisation with an interest in young people and drama or youth arts more generally. Youth Theatre: €70 For active youth theatres working with a group of young people regularly.
Research and Development Officer Rhona Dunnett Rhona supports youth theatres in working to identify local structures, agencies and partners at a county and local level, and develops measures to support their sustainability. She carries out a range of research including the major audit of youth theatre in Ireland, Centre Stage +10 (2009). Rhona also coordinates NAYD’s International Programme. She is a former member of Activate Youth Theatre, Cork.
National Training Co-ordinator Dave Kelly Dave develops and coordinates the implementation of the national training strategy for youth drama, which is delivered regionally and locally. Training programmes include ArtsTrain, Leading On… Leaders Training Programme and For more information on NAYD please contact info@nayd.ie Skills Development Programme. Dave is a former member or visit www.nayd.ie of Dublin Youth Theatre ArtsTrain Assistant Coordinator John Taite John assists the Training Coordinator in the design and The board of NAYD meets five times a year, and agrees on delivery of the ArtsTrain training programme. He submits the strategic development of the organisation. required materials to QQI and supports the ArtsTrain • Sean O’Brien — Independent (Chairperson) participants in achieving their accreditation. John also doubles • Jen Coppinger — Independent Theatre Producer as the resident documentary maker! John is a former • Caoimhe Dunn — Buí Bolg Youth Group member of Red Lemon Youth Theatre, Dun Laoghaire. • Brian Harten — Louth County Council • Professor Áine Hyland — Independent Social Inclusion Officer • Emelie FitzGibbon — Graffiti Theatre Company Colin Thornton • Tony McCleane-Fay — County Wexford Youth Theatre Colin leads out on JOIN IN, NAYD’s mentoring programme • Mary Murphy — Independent for youth theatres who are working to become more • Geraldine O’Neill — Activate/Physically Phishy Youth socially inclusive. JOIN IN is a development from NAYD’s Theatres Community Drama Training Programme which Colin • Fiona Quinn — County Limerick Youth Theatre delivered from 2011–2014. Colin is a founder member of • Síle Penkert — Waterford Youth Arts Droichead Youth Theatre. • Fionn Woodhouse — Lightbulb Youth Theatre
NAYD BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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YOUTH DRAMA IRELAND
Below: Sligo Youth Theatre, Arabian Nights, Photo: Jean-Marie Perinetti.
BE AN ANGEL BE AN ANGEL
NAYD Angels are a club of individuals who believe in the values and positive outcomes of youth theatre. You can choose to give at one of three levels. Local Angel — €100 (or €8.30 per month) Do you think more young people in more towns in Ireland should have access to youth theatre? Be at the heart of what we do and help us to support and grow our network of youth theatres. Your donation will contribute to the cost of providing over 2000 hours of advice, guidance and mentorship to our member youth theatres as well as to new and developing groups each year. In this way your donation is put to work bringing the benefits and joy of youth theatre to young people in communities all over the country.
BENEFITS
National Angel—€250 (or €20.83 per month) Be an important part of the youth theatre community by supporting NAYD’s national programme. From the annual National Festival of Youth Theatres, to our Young Critics programme, through to the provision of expert training courses for young leaders. As a National Angel you help to ensure that we can continue to provide nationallevel opportunities at no cost to young participants. Guardian Angel—€500 (or €41.66 per month) Be a big part of our future. Help us to dream. Help us to deliver our biggest projects including the National Youth Theatre where we showcase the best of youth theatre on the National Stage. As a Guardian Angel you can help us to provide young people with unforgettable experiences that inspire bright futures.
Along with the satisfaction of supporting Irish youth theatre, in return for your donation you will also receive: • Acknowledgement on the supporters section of the NAYD website and in the annual Youth Drama Ireland publication • Regular updates on our activities via our special NAYD Angels e-newsletter • An invitation for you, plus a friend, to our annual Angel’s reception • In addition, National Angels will receive a complimentary ticket to the National Youth Theatre production* • Guardian Angels will receive a pair of complimentary tickets to the opening night of the National Youth Theatre and will be acknowledged in the production programme. Guardian Angels will also be the first to receive insider updates on the National Youth Theatre from the start of production to opening night* *In years where there is a full production of the National Youth Theatre.
For more information on becoming an Angel, contact Katie on 01 878 1301 or katie@nayd.ie