Week Seven

In week seven of my placement with Imaginate I was able to get some time to chat one on one with Noel Jordan. Noel is the Festival Director of the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival and joined the Imaginate team in October 2015 from Australia where he had worked in Theatre for Children and Young People for almost 30 years.
Noel has extensive experience as a producer, director, actor-devisor and drama educator. Working as a Drama Lecturer in Arts Education at the University of Melbourne he also completed his Masters in Education.  As a producer Noel worked at Sydney Opera House where he curated the House:ed and Kids at the House annual youth programs (2004-2010 and in 2011 as a guest curator). He was previously an Executive Committee Member of ASSITEJ from 2008-2014.

Noel is tasked with the job of selecting the work that is showcased at the festival each year and is fully committed to bringing the very best work that is available. He sees an average of 350 productions a year all over the world of all different forms and from those chooses the best 12.

I asked about what makes a truly good piece of work and Noel spoke about work that is bigger than its bubble, that expands, challenges, confronts and excites us. About how important it is that work engages the heart and the mind, its not just about aesthetics and drawing young people in with flashy colour but about really relating to the wider world. Good theatre makes the world bigger, it provides young people with a window out into the wider world, a perspective different than they had before, the knowledge that there are alternatives – alternative viewpoints, stories, endings , opinions, options.

The whole conversation felt so inspiring. My placement with Imaginate has surrounded me with people that feel so strongly about what they do. That share that same joy and excitement I feel when I think about work for children and the impact it can have. My desire to pursue a career in this sector has only become stronger and my feelings about giving young people access to good quality theatre have been so validated and reinforced here by all of the passion shared by the different people that form the Imaginate community.

Having worked for so long both seeing and making theatre for young people Noel had a lot of really helpful things to share, some of the thoughts that really sat with me following our meeting are noted below –

• As an artist you need to fail and you need to see bad work.
• The flaw in educational theatre for children is that there is an inherent judgement in it. A didactic moral lesson that comes from a place of the artist assuming they know better than the young people in the audience. The importance of children’s theatre is in the questions you raise, not the answers you give.
• Know your audience, really test your material. Ask Kids.
• There is no pressure to make an hour long show. Take the shortest possible time you can to get your point across. In theatre for young people the shorter the better.
• Always give yourself time to fix the gaps after the first performance, launching straight into a run or a tour doesn’t work. Performing it for real is always going to highlight the things that cant be felt in rehearsal.
• Only take the feedback that resonates. Feedback is good but to develop as an artist you need to recognise that its never going to be perfect to all people. There will always be someone who would take it in a different direction than you. Take the feedback that resonates. Ignore what you don’t need.