Creative
Development Group
'What is really the best way to find out something insightful about this? How can I engage people with the questions, in a meaningful rather than superficial way?’
Gauntlett, 2016
The Creative Development Group - CDG - brought together a collective of local artists who identified with the idea that the mainstream theatre ecosystem locally was not working for them. Initially, our aim was to respond to the provocation of exploring what a "new theatre" might look like, using plans for PurpleDoor, which we were hoping to open in 2020 as a bold new vision of the theatrical experience. A mixture of external global events and the shift in thinking attributed to this research ultimately morphed PurpleDoor's aims in a different, and much more valuable, direction.
In planning for these sessions, I was particularly inspired by the Lego Serious Play methodology, particularly due to its inclusively support for all participants to begin to articulate and consider barriers that may not have been part of their every-day thinking.
'LEGO SERIOUS PLAY rejects the idea that external 'experts' must be brought in to identify problems,
and to propose solutions; on the contrary, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY begins with the assumption that the answers are 'already in the room', and invites participants to 'think with their hands' to build their understandings. Every member of the team participates, and everyone has a voice.'
(Lego, 6)
I wanted to move beyond simply describing problems and to place the participants into a form of role-play, by giving them permission to think critically, to learn from one another's experiences, and to experience the compromising challenges of turning solutions into reality.
This approach also helped to bring to life the interlinked nature of systemic problems - from the personal lived experience to the system-level network of funding, policy, people and place. Breaking this individualist thinking would take a more sustained effort and require a clearer articulation of responsibility for change.
From Problems to Solutions?
'Practice as research in the performing arts pursues hybrid enquiries combining creative doing with reflexive being.'
Kershaw, 2011, 64
The outputs form this first session with the CDG were hugely instructive. Back in late 2021, it was very much the intention of PurpleDoor as an organisation to explore how we could turn these ideas into a tangible form of alternative theatre. In our framing, we saw ourselves as excluded and oppressed, a binary thinking which the work of the CDG would ultimately help to challenge and complicate.
The tasks were scaffolded in such a way as to encourage an abstract approach to complex systems design, and helped to support the individual voices of the participants to come through by reflecting their intersectionality and priorities as artists.
Initial CDG workshops led to small groups pitching ideas for seed funding from PurpleDoor. The idea was for these ideas to start to bring to life the solutions proposed by the CDG. While well intentioned, this approach highlighted the naivety of delivering change at this scale and the assuming of responsibility for actually delivering change.
As noted in Chapter 1, the CDG ultimately did not last. Despite good intentions, this gradually fell away though as schedules, priorities and relationships to the local ecosystem changed.
What change was actually possible and who should do it?
The outputs of the CDG and the initial aim to implement a new form of theatre, spoke to the complexity of changing systems and how intersectionality could not be ignored. That artists held the answers, based on their own lived experiences and creativity, was hardly a revelation, but the shared sense of struggle despite different starting points, lived experiences and artistic interests was ripe for further exploration.
Although the CDG itself didn't deliver in this form, its ideas and findings are ultimately within the DNA of the Fringe Maker Project.
Embracing Messiness
'Intuitive messiness and aesthetic ambiguity are integral to researching theatre and performance'
Kershaw, 2011, 2
Embracing the 'messiness' Kershaw refers to in Research Methods in Theatre and Performance (Kershaw, 2011, 2) has been a key driver of this project, particularly in how it has evolved gradually over time, rather than remaining fixed to any sense of a pre-determined question and outcome.
Theatre architecture, management structures and the role of the regional theatre were my earliest anchors - and although this focus has evolved it has done so in conversation with these early draws.
But how I got there tells its own story, not just of my own continued curiosity and academic resilience, but of a deepening understanding of the relational framing of the work, which speak to the position of the Fringe Maker within a wider ecosystem of policy and practice.
Workshops, rehearsals, engagement and performances were all part of this rich period of curious grappling. I often described circling around a centre that had not yet been defined, and which would come to be filled by the notion of the Fringe Maker. This was a period ripe with new ideas and rabbit holes. With curiosity and frustration.
The media below encapsulate this eclectic mix of experiences following the conclusion of the CDG and the messy, contradictory, synergetic rode towards the eventual production of As You Like It.
Click image to see more and read descriptions.
'Nothing in theatre has any meaning before or after. Meaning is now.'
Peter Brook, 1994
The Role of the Canon.
I grew increasingly interested in the role of the canon as this project developed. As I started to think more about so-called "opportunity culture," I saw a disparity between new writing and existing work, both in terms of how these respective fields were opened up to newcomers, and how these linked with ideas of taste and skills development. My staging of King John and The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 2022 was only tangibly linked to this research, but nevertheless provided the necessary sounding board for approaching As You Like It as both an artistic and material practice.
'I think the word "Culture"
will put a lot of people off.'
Feedback from West Kirby Streets Launch
Defining the Fringe Maker
What is clear in documenting this research journey, is the difference in representation between the messy, complex and contradictory, and how the presentation of the emergent ideas and themes suggests a coherent pathway from start to finish, or from uncertainty to clarity. Adam Ledger argues that 'while there may be tensions between the live nature of practice and a recording of the work, documentation can be seen as a potentially dynamic and interactive process between practice, its audience and more traditional written critiques’ (Kershaw, 2011, 163). I aim to continually draw reference to the fact that this is not a true reflection of the process, with ideas in fact being missed, discarded, returned to and mulled over in an organic process of discovery and rediscovery. What is apparent though, as I look back, is how ideas echoed and lived on as the project progressed through its various iterations, in ways which were not altogether clear to me at the time.
The West Kirby Street's Project was intended as a way of me grappling with provocations emerging from the failure of the CDG. I felt sure that a form of hyper-localism was the answer, in ways which emerged again in early ideas for As You Like It. Ultimately the Street's Project had moved me too far away from the actors themselves, and at the time I felt particularly lost, with the radio interview and community meeting listed above feeling like false starts and dead-ends.
This touches upon another theme, and is something I feel strongly as I choose to share these false starts, namely, our propensity to avoid and forget our missteps. To refer to any of these developments as 'failures' is perhaps too simplistic, but acknowledging the journey as a complex and shifting one is key to understanding how the groundwork was eventually strengthened by these diversions. At the time, I felt that the pushbacks to my ideas around the Street's Project were unhelpful. In time, I would come to see them as incredibly useful challenges for visualising how systems are interconnected, establish buy-in, and help build a movement for change. This is the manifestation of what As You Like It became, in its enabling of a theatre led by values rather than by vision.
What is presented on this page aims to encapsulate something of how it felt to be in the midst of this complex journey towards uncovering what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. It is not to be understood as a chronological journey towards a pre-determined aim, but the practical representation of a process of cyclical engagement with theory and practice. Like sifting in a river for gold, this was a process of repetition, patience and emergent clarity.
'What four things would you like to see in a new theatre?'
Artists were limited to just four key priorities, to encourage them to distinguish the most important personal issues.
The four sticks were glued together into a square.
Stage 1
'Join your squares to form a solid structure. As you do so, some ideas will be erased. What is most important to keep?'
In moving from individual ideas to collaborative compromise the participants were forced to begin prioritising, making choices, and seeing how component ideas link into systems of change.
Stage 2
'Expand on an idea of interest and explore what this might look like.'
In asking participants to self-select ideas of interest, I invited them to place themselves back into the research process and to consider barriers through the lens of solutions.