Faciliation

Jan 2021 - Feb 2021

Brief/project overview:

“How do we hold space? How do we create space to talk about the things that are hard to talk about? How do we create gatherings that bring people together? How do we host for many people to learn? How do I share my practice?”

I was interested in this project as there were links to looking at community themes in my film project; I also wanted to explore working with communities to create performance - links to my background of growing up in a village community in a Midlands town. I also admired Kane Husbands’ work (who was running the project) with The PappyShow and I wanted to learn about his practice, and how he works with others.

Unfortunately the project didn’t run as not enough people were interested, however Kane worked with me on a couple of key elements he felt would benefit me in learning from his practice. These were:

• identifying my values as a practitioner

• assisting Kane in running a workshop

Going along to a workshop with Kane:

Kane invited me to join him and his The PappyShow co-founder Marc Benga in helping run a workshop that was part of Matthew Bourne’s Overture programme. This was an opportunity for me to observe how Kane and Marc worked; I had attended one of their workshops before so I knew the type of thing to expect. This was a workshop focusing on creating work within a community space, and how as a leader you might curate similar work. The participants were from dance/movement backgrounds, and it was refreshing to meet and work with people from multiple ways of working - we did a variety of exercises which looked at relationships between performers, dynamics of movement to tell a narrative, amongst other ideas. From this experience, I took away how important it is to listen to others when working together, and to give plenty of time for play - I know this is one of Kane’s key values in his workshops, and I witnessed during this experience what it can bring to a group of people - we had loads of fun! I knew I wanted to take these learnings into my own practice, especially when working with others.

Watching BOYS

The PappyShow was performing BOYS at the Barbican, so I went to watch - I had seen the show previously a couple of years ago, and so I was keen to see if it might be different. The main takeaways from the show for me were: the dynamics of the performance - all performers together on stage down to one person, then maybe a few and back to everyone; the infectious joy that was created; the truth of the performers - they weren’t playing characters and I felt that invited the audience to connect with them more; and the simplicity of the staging - there were parts where imagination and minimal props/costumes created such strong moments, nothing else was needed.

Reflection:

This project, although small, was pivotal in reflecting upon my practice - it opened a window into how I could work with others to create work that is not dictated by one person. As a dancer earlier in life, I had been used to being told where to stand, what to wear and how to move; apart from burlesque which allows alot of personal creative freedom, my experience in theatre had been one person making all the creative choices. The workshop showed me that work can be created by a collective (similar to but not the same as there were roles in the Psycho(ish) project), and that community is key when creating truthful performance. I wanted to explore these ideas further in my own work; this came to light during the CSM Alive project, and also in my Modern Girl film project, focusing on community and celebrating others.