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Bringing the Generations Together
Try to find a venue in which both groups will feel at ease. You will need someone to take notes or a video camera for record the event. This first meeting is an important moment. The participants are finding what common ground they have. Out of the discussion the shape of their future collaboration will be forming.
Present the improvisation/s that have been planned and then gather everyone together in a circle to discuss the issues raised. Remember that as facilitator your role is to listen and keep the discussion going by asking open questions only when absolutely necessary. Before they part those who are ‘opting in’ need to plan how often and where they are going to meet.
Performers need to be heard so voice exercises
are useful. The following instructions can be used with the groups.
Choose a partner, make two lines with partners facing each other close together.
Start whispering to your partner. Listen and talk while walking backwards
increasing the volume only enough so that you can hear your partner and they
can hear you within the rising volume. When you reach the wall walk slowly
back together and gradually decrease to a whisper as the partners meet in
the middle.
Form a circle, bend or squat down and say ‘ahhhh’ in the lowest voice participants can make, slowly rise in height and pitch till everyone is on tip toe with high pitched notes. Descend in height and scale. Play with the volume and vary from ‘ahhh’ to’ zeee’.
Devising a Play from Improvisations
Your group will have already identified a key issue and used it to produce an improvised sketch. Other important themes will have emerged during the participatory theatre research process.
Focus on one incident with a main protagonist or group of protagonists. Improvise that scene, freeze it and make a ‘still picture’ of an earlier scene that may have caused or affected that incident. Experiment with changing one of the actions taken in the scene. Then improvise how that changes the main incident and affects other people in the community. Improvise what happens in the future, it could be ten minutes, ten years, or whatever seems relevant. You will find that the background research begins to build the play for you.
The form a performance takes will be influenced by the culture of the participants. The participants in Generation X were very interested in TV chat shows so they elected to create their own Ely version. (This also allowed the older people to perform sitting on a sofa.) Through this unlikely format it was still possible to explore the key issue of gang rule. The vandalising of the chip shop become a ‘live’ incident which was covered on TV and discussed in the chat show.
In Ely in 1997 issues of joyriding and NHS cuts led to the choice of the format of a Hospital Drama. TV again being a dominant cultural influence.
Whatever performance evolves, if it is a reflection of the concerns of the local community then it will engage the audience and open the possibility for discussion. This collective learning can be a step on the way to positive change.
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