The Guardian
What is a Community Play?
A Community Play brings together a professional theatre team who work inclusively with large numbers of people, for no less than eighteen months, to create a total theatre experience that both celebrates and challenges. Through the months leading up to the production an abundance of activities, committee meetings, workshops and rehearsals develop friendships and support between people that represents the major rewards of the work. The process, carefully prepared with local consultation, aims to respond to the specific needs and expectations of the particular community. The process, like the plays themselves, is designed for the unique needs of the community they serve. The result, properly executed, is a thrilling climax of achievement. A testament to the creativeness and co-operation of people is that the work is always of a high artistic standard; communities are never less than surprised by what they achieve.
Criteria of a Claque Community Play
- Claque advocates ‘inclusiveness’ & seeks to draw in as broad a cross section of people as possible.
- We practice equal right of access and participation from all section of society irrespective of race, religion, politics, age or disability
- Whilst we engage in activities that target specific consumers the aim is to draw people towards participation in the wider community.
- Claque is committed to community ownership; engaging people in all areas of the process.
- The play is a culmination of a purposeful arts programme over a minimum time period of eighteen months.
- There is guidance and commitment from an experienced team of theatre practitioners, who facilitate and encourage rather than dictate.
- The play, written by a ‘quality writer’, is found through a process by which the community becomes better informed of itself.
- The writer creates a script that is directly related to the lives of the people within the community.
- The play, whilst capable of being politically and morally tough should equally become an honest, shared act of celebration.
- The performance incorporates a style that includes a role for the audience within the performance.
- The process encourages a commitment to develop and sustain future activities. The process assumes that individual creativeness, if not already evident, is latent and only waiting to be released.
- The process enables people, in a safe atmosphere, to reach their fullest potential.
- The play not only develops participation in the arts but also encourages new audience to experience contemporary work of high quality.
Community Play Mission Statement
"To enable the widest possible range of people in a community to produce and participate in an original play of artistic excellence, and contemporary relevance; in the process it releases and develops the thinking, talents and strengths of individuals and the community leading towards further collective and creative sustained activity"
Rundown of a Community Play Programme
Starting Up Months: 1- 3 Months
Projects start with identifying and gathering together a volunteer set up committee. They undertake a feasibility study to assess the support or otherwise for the play; the study looks for potential venues, help in kind, costs and funding. The findings of the study together with recommendations about aims and objectives are presented to a public meeting and the community vote on whether they want a play or not. A community play project doesn’t happen without a strong sign of community support. If the community decide to go ahead they distribute volunteer forms.
Planning Months: 4- 6 Months
A Steering committee of local volunteers is formed. They take responsibility for the management of the project. We want to empower people to organise and manage their own project so that the skills they learn help to enable future work once the play is over. Claque are on hand to give advice and support, they also have a manual, simulation community play game and draft administration documents to help with the process. Other teams or sub committees may be formed to take responsibility for the varied aspects of the specially designed programme, these have, in the past, included Research, Fund Raising, Publicity, and Events.
The cost of the project is determined by what the community can afford. The feasibility study will have assessed how much in kind support and money is available, and from where. The majority of the money usually comes from outside the community through Trusts, Arts Councils, Lottery and Sponsorship. The community then determines its own fund raising targets and box office potential. Only when a true idea of the scale of the project is understood can anything be planned. Claque supplies lighting and sound equipment, design workshop tools, desk top publishing, audio visual aids (camera, video) display material, a transit van along with insurance and public liability. These services together with experience can dramatically cut costs, save time and improve the quality of the work.
Community Arts Programme: 7-13 Months
An arts, cultural or heritage programme accompanies the lead up to a community play. This parallel programme is especially designed to respond to the unique needs of the host community. In the past parallel projects have included lantern parades celebrating diversity, an outdoor photographic exhibition, mobile recording studios to record oral history, art installations etc. During this period the play is being researched and developed collaboratively between local people and an experienced writer through meetings, workshops and chance encounters. We run Soundings and Drama Searches using techniques to discover and debate possible ideas and examine their contemporary relevance. Fund raising activities and events raise awareness to the project, constantly encouraging more and more people to participate.
Casting and Play Reading: Month 14
The majority of the money should have now been raised and the play written. There should also be a substantial number of volunteers on the database. We always hold a public reading of the play followed by inclusive casting that is to follow. It is a policy of Claque that anyone wanting a performance role gets one. Casts are typically around between 100 and 130 people, sometimes more, seldom less.
The Production Period: 15-17 Months
About twelve weeks prior to the agreed first night of the play a professional theatre team becomes resident in the community. The size of the team and the length of time they are resident depends on budget and needs. The teams more usually consist of a Director, Play Co-ordinator, Designer, Design Assistant, Production Manager and a Musical Director, but can include stage manager, choreographer, lighting designer and filmmaker. Rehearsals begin and the design studio and play office open to the public. People are invited to help build sets, props and make costumes with the guidance of theatre designers. Workshops are taken into schools and other establishments. The whole town can become come involved with a new creativity.
The Play: Month 18
The plays themselves are presented in the dynamic and visual promenade theatre style for which Claque are famous. The space, be it school, barn, church, castle, warehouse or tent is transformed with a series of stages around the circumference. The action of the play swirls all around and through the standing audience. The community cast have been transformed into ‘social actors’, trained to implicate the audience in the drama.
Afterwards
Some two months after the play we hold a post play meeting to encourage and support the community in setting up a group to develop and manage new initiatives. The enthusiasm engendered by a community play, if harnessed, can create and sustain arts and cultural events long after the play is over. In the past communities have created arts centres, started festivals, built up choirs, bands, drama societies, politicised and organised themselves in stopping unwanted housing developments, rescued declining areas, preserved cultural traditions This is made all the more possible when the original concept is one of community ownership.
Benefits of a Community Play
- They allow a community an unparalleled opportunity to discover its history and to challenge some of its contemporary preconceptions.
- They give people a collective voice to express their concerns through an exciting and democratic process.
- They give people a sense of identity and ‘contact’ with the place in which they live.
- The play helps to relieve the sense of alienation that many people can feel.
- They strengthen and widen horizons, sets new standards, stimulate ideas and open windows in the mind. Individual’s potential is stretched
- Existing skills are developed and new ones explored, the community becomes aware of its range of skills and learn to respect others ideas.
- People learn to explore common ground and develop group problem solving skills.
- The community rediscovers the joy of co-operative participation and become bonded in the pursuit of achieving collective goals.
- They demonstrate that art and the idea of celebration is fundamental to the growth of a healthy society.
- By receiving the idea of the play a community begins to accept a responsibility for its own cultural development.
- They encourage a community to make a greater investment into the future because the individual feels more empowered and effective.
- The scale of the play touches the lives of hundreds of people. They absorb people who naturally participate and reach those who don’t.
- The play breaks down cliques by drawing everyone together in a new, wider and inclusive initiative.
- They are a great leveller- by demonstrating everyone has a valuable contribution to make, preconceptions and prejudices are broken down.
- It stimulates a healthy community life by developing rapid and easy communication and a feeling of mutual support.
- It culminates in a play that is high profile. There is a kudos attached to them that helps restore flagging community spirit.
- They allow people to feel a sense of pride in themselves and where they live.
- It closes the gap between professional and amateur theatre expectations. Standards of local theatre are raised
- It brings theatre back to its roots and ordinary people into the front line of contemporary theatre.
- It humbles the professional by giving them the experience of working with real people striving to reach the best within themselves.
- Not least they give enormous pleasure, and special memories. Many people experience a new lease of life and form lasting friendships.
So you want a Play for your Community?
If you want a Play for your community, want to know more or would like Claque’s support, advice or input write or e-mail us. We will usually ask you to gather together a few leading drivers and shakers in the community and arrange a date for us to come and meet with them. Should the group be interested we would then negotiate the way forward. Claque rarely asks for a fee until there is some success with funding approaches although we do ask for the cost of incurred expenses by mutual agreement.
You don’t need to have had any arts or management experience; neither do you need an excuse to have a community play other than you feel it would significantly benefit the community.
Write to: Claque Theatre. 12 Apsley Street, Rusthall, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. TN4 8NU
Telephone: 01892 537034
Email: john12oram@aol.com