Week Eight

Week Eight of placement happened alongside a particularly busy week in my other academic modules and coincided with a flare up with my disability. This combination of factors meant that I worked from home, going back to complete and add to previous blogs and researching some of the things that had come up so far. The reading that stuck out from my research in week eight is linked below.

The impact of theatre on young people. 

“The nature of theatre – subjective, nuanced, intangible – is one of the things that enables human beings to realise their individual power of expression and belief. The private world of experience is the strength within us all no matter our knowledge or expertise…
In many parts of the world, adults are invested in control. Driven by anxiety about safety and fear of the world we live in, we deny our children physical freedoms we once had and we are inclined to fill every waking moment with interpretation and commentary. Through theatre we have the chance to offer space and time to subjective experience and offer a place where the child’s power and sense of control is returned.”

Sue Giles, International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ)

Theatre and the arts also play an important role in the broader development of children, contributing directly to both formal aspects of
the education curriculum and informal areas of child development. Engagement with theatre is seen as part of the process of ‘educating
the whole child’.

Matthew Reason 

 

Not knowing
When seeking to explore how children see the world – here specifically how they see theatre – it is vital to recognise the knowledge that
children possess themselves, rather than overriding this with the assertion of supposedly superior adult expertise. This has been described
as adopting the position of ‘not knowing’ and seeing the children themselves as expert in terms of the meanings and emotions that they
attach to their drawings and experiences.
‘I am asking children, directly, to help me, an adult, to understand childhood. I want to investigate directly with the children… I
want to acquire from them their own unique knowledge…. I present myself as a person who, since she is an adult, does not have
this knowledge.’
Berry Mayall                                                                                                                        Drawing the theatrical experience. Matthew Reason                                   drawing-the-theatrical-experience

‘Children are not the audience of the future. Rather, they are citizens of the here-and-now… An 8-year old is not a third of a 24-year
old, a quarter of a 32-year old, or a fifth of a 40-year old. Being 8 is a whole experience … there are understandings and meanings
particular to being 8.’

Martin Drury

Tenet Five: The Role (or lack thereof) of the Child as Audience
In Theatre for Young Audiences, the role of the child is that of a consumer. Unlike adult theatre, in which adults create theatre for adults (themselves), in TYA (theatre for young audiences) adults create theatre for children. This marked difference between audience (child) and creator (adult) hugely affects the myriad variables involved when creating art for young people. Schonmann elaborates on this point, noting that “new forms of children’s theatre should grow from the young people’s concerns; their own ways of seeing and knowing the world. The palpable tension is that in TYA adults write the plays, act and direct the performances, and choose the plays to be watched by them young audiences. So here we face a complicated situation in which the world of the young will always be constructed through the eyes of adults and their perceptions”
Breaking Tradition: Reaching for the Avant-garde in Theatre for Young Audiences 2009
Meredith Hoppe

A marker of quality in a cultural experience is its enduring resonance as it engages its audience intellectually, imaginatively or emotionally. This is certainly the case with theatre that is madefor adults and we should have the same ambition in theatre made for children.

Thinking Theatre
Enhancing Children’s Theatrical Experiences Through Philosophical Enquiry, Matthew Reason
“The child is equal to the adult. If we go to the theatre it’s because we want to self-reflect, to understand ourselves and the worlds we live in better. It might take our mind off things, or educate us too, but ultimately our main aim when experiencing theatre is for self-reflection and well being – that is also vital for the young child. They also have a need, to exercise that muscle to develop empathy and see something from a different perspective.”
Sue Buckmaster, artistic director of Theatre Rites
“..evident benefit of theatre attendance for children, across a range of developmental areas. Theatre can improve social bonding, allow for emotions to be explored in a safe space, and kick-start conversations about important issues.”
Kirkham, Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development
Further to this general research I also revisited some of my questions and consolidated my thoughts on sharings, I had asked in one of my last blogs
‘How can we frame feedback in a way that brings out really good quality reflections?
How can we frame sharings in a way that lets the work grow authentically and doesn’t put pressure on the artist to share a finished cohesive narrative?
Who is the ideal audience to present a sharing to?’
I think as an artist making work I put too much pressure on myself to share a complete and polished piece of work every time I share and the first step toward making sharings useful is to let go of this expectation and to set out the sharing in a very clear way that means the audience expectation is not to see a finished piece.
Secondly I think the needs of the work have to be considered, know your work well and know what want to ask of an audience. It important to share your work with specific people. Going into sharings with intention makes it easy to know who you need to share to. Are you looking for artistic guidance ? Is it about materials, sound? Are you looking to see where the funny parts are ? Do you need to check where the energy goes ? Choose the audience best equipped to give you what you need and in work for young people by all means use fellow artists and professionals to develop the work but always test the work with an audience of young people. They are the only people who can really tell you what the work is doing for them.
Finally I think facilitating a sharing is something that should be given thought. Just having people turn up, see some work and then asking them what they thought is clumsy, it creates an awkward stilted atmosphere where your audience feel put on the spot and artists easily feel vulnerable- its not a good way to get high quality feedback.
The space must be held, feedback has to be given a framework.
If you’re looking for specific artistic input maybe framing the work at the beginning with a question such as – ‘How does the use of materials impact the piece?’ or ‘Which specific moment feel the most important ?’ Would allow people to see the work through the lens you need them to. For more general audiences direct questions or at least a framework to direct focus is still needed, perhaps even allowing the answers to be mediated through some form – written on post its around the room, discussed in sub groups etc stopping the forced polite, stuntedness of ‘what did you think ? – oh yeah, it was really good…’

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