Keeping What Matters

In the past few days, my social media feed has been lit up with updates from Doorstep as they cautiously, responsibly but so much needed restart their ‘live’ engagement with the community of Torbay. I say restart, but like so many other inspiring and fundamental to peoples lives organisations, Doorstep Arts have continued despite everything to bring creativity, colour, joy and a ‘safe space’ (virtual or otherwise) to share! This lifeblood is our community - storytelling and culture as important as ever. With even more uncertain times on the horizon, I think it is crucial to rebuild from the community grassroots. Whilst we are in the middle of this weird, scary state where individuals can go to pub but not buy tickets to the theatre, I thought I would reflect on something that happened during the YMMV SW Tour 2019 and remind myself why theatre matters…

I also wanted to give an update on #LifeInSuspension, because the conversations happening there are super exciting, buoyant, critical and thought-provoking - all very relevant words to describe the brilliant responses we have had for the project so far!

Therefore, I will proceed to take you back to Autumn/Winter 2019:

After mixed feelings, audience members and improv moments we found ourselves back from the road and in our home town - mighty Paignton! A little bit of a gap has opened between our glorious appearance at South Devon College on the 16th October and the Palace Theatre showcase on the 15th November. A degree of rustiness was felt, leading to one of my most treasured lines from Steve occurring when he, half jokingly and perhaps half seriously, said to the group ‘how does the play go again?’

(Yes I have looked up all the dates and facts - 2019 and our first ACE funded project seemed like a lifetime ago, but one that I have fond memories of.)

The Palace Arena performance was roughly mid-point of the tour and although collectively we have had a ball together, the travelling, logistic planning, keeping up with marketing, stressing about tickets sold, repairing the set and props had all taken their toll on our fatigue levels. To add to the general chaos levels this mighty creative undertaking was shadowed by a critical and stressful point in a potential life damaging medical assessment I was having (and am still enduring). All this negative feeling was beginning to mask what was meant to be a brilliant experience for me and the company. It wasn’t so much that we weren’t enjoying the narrative, nor not finding joy and meaning in the retelling and definitely not because we were tired of being in each others company - it was more the constant uphill struggle for a diverse young company from Torbay. Detailed in previous blogs, up to this point we had to deal with a lot - from a broken lift threatening our premiere to last minute changes of promised spaces.

It was therefore an immense help and a moment to chill when the Palace offered us some free rehearsal space for a couple of evenings before the performance day and even more of a relief was being able to leave most of the set in situ. Even with this bonus, the day of the performance was very much pressured. It is always difficult to judge how long a get-in will take and there will always be unforeseen issues to overcome - it is also important to leave plenty of time for breaks and chill outs before the pre excitement and anxiety kicks in.

I think if you asked any of us, we would all say that this was our favourite date of the entire project - we were right royally looked after by Theatre Royal Plymouth who took much of the stress and pressure out of the performance. But the Palace date will live long in the memory as an epic day. There was pure energy in the air that afternoon/evening and the magic really began with a misunderstanding which is how all great creative stories begin:

Leading up to the day there was much negotiation with the Palace on how long we could have to get-in. This concluded in an undefinite ‘enough’ time which I took to mean at least 5 hours and they took to mean definitely under 3! The result was perfect, but we didn’t realise that at the time - Jen had to wander around the building trying to find the key and Sophie was almost barred from entry as the confusion swelled. Locally renowned and much celebrated ROC creative (Untied Response - Robin Owens Community) were booked into the space and already inside… hence no key. After awkward smiling and small talk, ROC was really up for sharing the space with us and this added some much needed company when setting up. There was a real synergy and a natural balance between not getting in each others way and each creative group adding to the energy to the air - adding to each others process. This deepened as we were able to offer ROC staff and participants free tickets to experience the matinee. They were a brilliant audiences - getting the text and subtext of YMMV - and maybe on an even deeper level than other audiences. I felt like that moment when we were able to gift tickets was true ‘public engagement’. Income, etiquette, creative ownerships all potential barriers to groups like ROC accessing theatre was broken down when one set of creators were able to welcome another set of creators into their world - ROC offering their space with a smile and us offering them tickets with a grin!

This feeling of community was to continue throughout the day with the arrival of DYT - Doorstep Youth Theatre! We were buzzing from matinee and it was fantastic to share the treatment of the day with Erin and Jade and DYT. We were honoured that they would do a curtain raiser for YMMV evening performance. Whilst they were arriving up to half an hour before their call (always dedicated) we were setting a totally professional example to the young people on how a professional acts professionally before a professional sharing professionally. DYT proceeded with a warm up, unfortunately accompanied by my giggles as Sophie whispered in my ear ‘That warm up thing looks like a good idea, why don’t we do one of those'?’ Steve however rose to the challenge and offered a vocal warm up in the form of a song sung in a round in which the two naughty kids, now having stifled their laughter joined, in!

I hope you are picking up on slight sarcasm! We are actually quite professional… we just prefer to do our warm-ups individually… with our eyes closed… 30 seconds before the audience arrive.

The magic of DYT performing the curtain raiser should not be lost here. They were delighted to have an audience to try out their new material and experience an audience reacting to their original work, but we were more thrilled to have them - the context being that I used to be a young person finding my own way in DYT with the cool, calm and awe-inspiring Erin and Jade at the helm. Without these profound experiences, I would not have had the confidence, skills, dedication, creative spirit and belief to call myself an artist and to be writing this blog now. I hope that at least one of the young artists performing that provoking and brilliantly devised curtain raiser will look back from that point with pride as I’ll look back at my time with DYT…

So this is what we need to keep or indeed fight towards. Words like community, participation, the creative process, company, belonging, collaboration get thrown around a lot, especially in applications and lobbying letters. They don’t really mean a lot on paper or the screen, you have to feel them, you have to be part of them… Ok, they have to be planning and piles of paperwork, but the true sacred moments only really appear fully flourish in spontaneous acts of companionship which only the arts create - a moment of ‘yes, you can share our space, of course you can’ is when the magic is brought to life.

there are plenty of more smartly worded blogs than mine on particpatory arts and there importance I hope to add to there momentum with this…These shared ‘yes’ moments in time do not come about too readily, especially in Torbay as a young person growing up. Now with covid-19, all the realities of 2 metre-distance and the continual ban on indoor gatherings, is really taking its toll on the cultural sector, opportunities are more scarce… we have to keep more of what matters…

If you made it this far, as always well done - I wouldn’t! Enough reminiscing and onto the future:

We have been blown away by the responses to #LifeInSuspension #HangingAround. The project has brought me so much joy over the past few months. Thanks to Exeter Northcott The Time is Now commission, I have been able to stay creative, messy and connected with Sophie, Jen and Steve. As well as developing my own practice, this commission has been an honest community collaboration, which feels as though there is still plenty of mileage left in its tyres. I loved spending a morning with CEDAs (Community Equality Disability Action) learning disabled group on Zoom and more recently hosting a half workshop, half open-table discussion with some of Torbay’s finest creative minds. These two virtual sessions have raised my spirits tenfold!

Now we have loads of content and not quite sure what to do with it to truly honour it. Our original plan was to create a second community documentary of lockdown, but the content received seems to warrant so much more - it seems a little bit like cultural appropriation to try and weave our narrative onto their stories. I think that’s a big statement and not quite fair, but we are still trying to develop a language around what participant led means in the new landscape. When the commission went live back in March everyone was scrambling around, finding ways to engage the community, but now we have a deeper understanding of what the Zoom software is capable of and I think it is right to sit back, reflect and find new ways to engage… #LifeInSuspension is coming but it’s going to be true to the community and definitely worth the wait.