Apologies - not massive ones, just proportionate ones - for the lack of newsletter last week. Life and life only. I’m sure you occupied yourselves.
Field Notes for Getting Lost and Found
As organisations inside, outside and beyond Arts Council England’s National Portfolio adjust to the idea of an extra year before the magic sorting portal that governs multi-year funding reopens, I want to spotlight Red Earth Theatre, some brilliant people that chose to leave the portfolio, and have generously shared some lessons and questions in finding - pun intended - closure, in a new publication: Field Notes for Getting Lost and Found.
Wendy Rouse and Amanda Wilde are the founders of Red Earth Theatre, a touring company which specialised in theatre for children and young people, working with communities to involve them in making theatre. They draw attention to the influence of Dorothy Heathcote, and her emphasis on the power of theatre to transform our understanding of the world. Red Earth Theatre has specialised in making work involving deaf and hard of hearing creatives for both deaf and hearing audiences. I’ve been lucky enough to work with them several times, often in their HQ in Belper, where they consistently won both Best Dinner and Best Dogs Award in my imaginary Prizes for Clients ceremony. (Their dogs Ella Fitzgerald and Dusty Springfield rightly merit their own page in the Field Notes.) They are passionate, thoughtful committed people, ever curious and playful whilst being totally serious about what’s at stake when making theatre.
Whilst a little surprised when Amanda and Wendy announce they had decided, with their board’s backing, to not reapply to be a National Portfolio Organisation, I also admired the clarity of thought, and the implicit acknowledgement that creative lives can take many forms. We had worked together previously on models and creative resilience - their restless willingness to adapt in pursuit of core purpose is something I’ve referred to a lot - and I was glad they were acting in accordance with one of my nostrums: being resilient does not mean you have to carry on forever. (Maybe Jurgen Koop learnt from them, I can’t rule it out.)
As part of their reflective closure/ending process, Wendy and Amanda have written and edited a fantastic record and resource for anyone thinking about inclusive creative practice, especially in theatre and performing arts, especially in relation to the inclusion of deaf and hard of hearing young people and practitioners.
Field Notes for Getting Lost and Found tells the story of Red Earth Theatre over the last 25 years in a multi-focal, multi-vocal way. It gives Wendy and Amanda and their many collaborators and co-creators space to celebrate but also to critique their own work and acknowledge the difficulties of working in a genuinely inclusive way. Inclusive productions can mean two or three languages, for instance, which you might be asking an actor to use simultaneously. (Signing whilst speaking dialogue, for instance, is essentially that.) Not to mention creative challenges of design, sound, care, culture, support and others. The rewards, though, are potentially great.
What this book reminds me of is how finding the most productive point of reconciliation between goals or methods is essential to the creative act, and to inclusivity. It illustrates how time, energy and ultimately resources are central to inclusive theatre. Time and adjustment are a commitment to inclusive design, co-creation and quality.
The Field Notes reflect how the company developed. As the Board put it:
‘The company was committed to many different voices on stage; to a multitude of stories, not a single story; to deaf, disabled, and diverse artists and audiences, especially those who are marginalised and disenfranchised. Red Earth was led by the value of collaborating with people, places and communities as much as with artists and other companies.’
The Notes do not hide how hard it is to be a theatre company with these values for 25 years. (It is perhaps easier to share such thoughts when freed from the institutional marketing function an anniversary history publication might have if the company was continuing, of course.) This story and the 360 degree reflections on it, make a strong piece of advocacy for a kind of practice, and for shifts in creative practice to lead to a greater range of stories being told. As we face further, less voluntary, closures, it also sets an example of necessary processes for healthy endings.
In their conclusions Wendy and Amanda put this very clearly:
“As much as we tried to take care of the people we worked with and ourselves, the stresses and strains caused by the required level of commitment and drive to make inclusive work was not always the best for our creative teams, performers and support staff and not great for us as directors and managers. There is an imperative in theatre to produce. The audience is coming soon and the show must go on. The wellbeing of theatre workers is often the last thing on the to do list. The future of good, creative, ground-breaking theatre hinges on changing the dynamic so that people are well enough to give the enormous energy needed for the creative process.”
They end by asking a question all creatives should ask, and answering it in a way which reflects their “heroic optimism”, to quote a phrase of Marina Warner’s:
“What can theatre makers do in a world apparently on the brink? One strategy is hope; it comes out of action and action is the antidote to anxiety. When you are fully engaged in something, you can feel hopeful. What theatre makers can do is do what they do best: tell stories; stories that are entertaining, but much more, stories that offer meaning and hope.”
Amongst the many quotations woven into the publication is this Japanese proverb: “Nothing lasts. Nothing is finished and nothing is perfect.” I’ll admit I enjoy this quotation because I find it reassuring and true to my experience, but it’s also characteristic of Wendy and Amanda’s approach that they quote it so positively at this transition point.
The Red Earth Theatre website will close in March. You can download Field Notes through either of these links:
Dropbox link to download Field Notes, click HERE
Google Drive link to download Field Notes, click HERE
One more thing
I was especially interested to read the experiences of collaborators when making theatre with casts and creatives who included both hearing and deaf and hard of hearing people (who also had lots of other differences and commonalities of course), as I recently sat in on work in progress for Night Classes, a new show by Unfolding Theatre. (I should say I am a trustee of Unfolding Theatre. Award-winning Unfolding Theatre, I should say.)
It was fascinating to see how the small cast were working to use BSL and English alongside each other, working out what that mixed enabled. From a seemingly simple principle flow a multitude of technical, craft and artistic decisions that were stretching everyone. Yes, mainly positively, but also in more challenging ways.
How does the BSL interpreter move on stage if at all - given they have a role for audience and deaf performer? How do languages and physicality combine? These are questions Red Earth and others have been exploring for decades, which are now being discussed more widely.
The work in progress sharing gives me 100% confidence to recommend you get to ARC in Stockton on Wednesday 20 March and Thursday 21 March to see how the creative team respond to these and other questions, including the key one for the show: what if we celebrated interdependence as much as or instead of independence? Or if you can’t do that for some reason like being hundreds or thousands of miles from Stockton, watch out for a tour later in the year.