Farewell (but not goodbye)

To mark the end of this stage of the InterACT! Project, the Theatre for a Change participants have made this final video addressed to all the participants in the UK who shared videos, stories and ideas over the last 6 weeks.



The participants in Ghana have completed a review of the first stage of this project and we are now working on ways to ensure that they can maintain, develop and grow the connections that they have made. We are really excited that some partnerships have already started talking about possible collaborations, visits and projects.

This blog will continue to run in the new year, recording new steps and connections and hopefully featuring new videos made by the TfaC practitioners, their UK counterparts and perhaps even some new participants.

We will also be reviewing ways in which the InterACT! video project can grow and expand - perhaps to even more countries and people.

Please keep checking back and do email us with your thoughts, ideas and questions.

If you would like to support the work of Theatre for a Change, please click here.

A final link

Nii Kwartelai Quartey's final video from Gabby Vautier at the Young Vic Theatre has arrived - and it is the last video postcard from this stage of the InterACT! project.

In the video Gabby introduces some more of her work in depth, including an interview with a project worker with whom she collaborated on a recent project.

As with all of the participants, Nii and Gabby will continue to communicate by email, with major developments, ideas and plans posted on this website.

Looking back

The TfaC participants in the InterACT! Project spent Saturday reviewing and evaluating the project so far, talking about what they've gained and learnt from the videos and how they can continue the project in the weeks and months to come. The UK participants have also been sending their feedback.

I am now travelling to the East and North of the country for the next 10 days. On my return we hope to have a new video from Gabby Vautier at the Young Vic to Nii Quartey and a special one-off video from all the TfaC participants here in Ghana.

In the meantime, if you have been reading this blog and following the video conversations we would really like to hear your feedback. What have you enjoyed and found interesting? What else could we have done? Whose conversations and videos have you most enjoyed?

You can comment on the project - all thoughts and contributions welcome - by hitting 'comment' at the bottom of this post or by emailing me.




Ned

A final postcard from Debra

In this final video postcard from Debra Glazer at Hampstead Theatre to Forster and Amanda, we learn some more about Hampstead Theatre's history, some games that Debra uses with her groups to help them generate text and dialogue and her hopes for the future - including a possible opportunity for the young TfaC facilitators to work on developing scripts in collaboration with one of Debra's groups in the UK.

You can watch Forster and Amanda's last video here.

Didi replies to Susan

Another video postcard drops onto the metaphorical InterACT! doormat, this time to Theatre for a Change's Monitoring Officer Susan Dartey from Didi Hopkins at the Roundhouse in Camden, North London.

In her original video to Didi, Susan showed us round the building that currently functions as the Community Theatre Centre in James Town.

A letter to Diana

Beckie Mills, the Projects Co-ordinator at the Almeida Theatre, made a video reply to Diana Quow's original postcard a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, encoding problems meant that the video played entirely in fast-forward, and there was nothing we could do about it.

So, instead of the video, Beckie has sent Diana this letter:


Dear Diana,

I hope you enjoyed watching me in fast forward – sorry about that!

Thanks very much for your video message, and for sharing one of the exercises you do.

My video showed the ‘Happy Mondays’ group which is made up of 16-19 year olds who have been involved with Almeida projects, and now want to come to the theatre on their own. We were doing several different exercises based on Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill, which is a play about gender politics, sexual politics, and subverting expectations.

One of these was a very simple ‘stop’ ‘go’ game, where you have to follow a series of commands (eg, stop when I say stop), and then the second time round, so the opposite (stop when I say go). It’s trickier than it might sound, and is really useful for thinking about breaking free of received patterns of behaviour.

You asked my about challenges in my job.

We’ve just finished a big project working with 75 young people form 2 of our partner schools in Islington, creating a contemporary second half to Cloud Nine, set in 2007 in Islington. (Act One is set in colonial Africa in 1879). One of my biggest challenges on this project has been enabling the participants to explore ideas that are controversial, or conflict with what they might believe, and then be open to creating theatre using this work. As a team, we’ve had to be sensitive to individual opinions, but not afraid to question them.

Some of the views expressed have been conservative, some very liberal on subjects such as:

• Sexuality
• The rights of men and women
• Racism
• Parenthood
• Nationality

The participants (all 75 of them) performed their scenes on the Almeida stage on Tuesday 27th November, to a great reception, especially from the cast of the production.

There’s definitely more territory to mine here, but we made an exciting start.

What are you up to at the moment, Diana? Do you have another song you could teach me?

Best wishes,

Beckie

Speedy connection

This is the final video from Marcus Romer and the team at Pilot Theatre to Collins Smith, who sent his second video to Pilot last week.

Marcus writes:

Here on World Aids Day we are able to be part of a potentially life changing project and here at Pilot Theatre we are really proud to be part of it. We would like to continue our engagement with the artists and workers involved and for this to be the spark for future collaborative work. The power of the internet and its capacity to create connections is both empowering and liberating, and artists across the world need to look for new ways of developing dialogue, communication and new ways of working.

This is just the beginning.