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Why Did You Change The Name of Colway Theatre Trust To Claque? We have relocated to the South East from the South West that had been our home since 1978. Ann Jellicoe founded Colway Theatre Trust is 1979 after a successful, rather experimental project that has since become known as 'a community play'. She wanted to form a company to explore and develop the work further. I know for a fact that she found it difficult to find a name. Whatever you call yourself you become marked by a particular perceived identity. She nearly called it Jelly goes round the West, but that does sound like something specifically for children. She eventually settled on Colway after the name of her house Colway Manor, because, I suppose it was neutral. It was very new work and quite really impossible to give it a name that identified what she was doing. In many ways, when you start out on things you don't even know quite what it is you are doing. Now twenty-five years later it's much clearer what the abiding principles of the work are. The principles that drew Ann to the work in 1978 and still drive what we do today. Inclusiveness, for instance, anyone can participate, no-one is turned away; the pursuit to find better ways to allow community input at every level, managerially, creatively, researching and influencing the play; breaking down the distance between audience and actors. The promenade style for which we are best known is really only one attempt to breaking down barriers. There's a great paradox in collaborative community plays, the cast and the audience belong to the same community, many audience members have collaborated just as much as the performers. On a performance evening the experience shifts back and forth between theatre and social event. Hence Claque. A French word that refers to the Claquers of the 18th century, hired members of the audience who would applause, heckles, even invade the stage. The Claquer were an organized body of people who, either for hire or from other motives, banded together to applaud or deride a performance and thereby attempt to influence the audience, especially during competitions. As an institution they date back to ancient Greece. Under the Roman Empire claques were common in the law courts as well as the theatre. In the 16th-century a French poet, Jean Daurat would buy up a number of tickets for a performance of one of his plays and distributed them gratuitously to those who promised publicly to express their approval. In the 18th century they created an organisation of claque, and opened an office in Paris for the supply of Claquers. It became a regular institution. The manager of a theatre sends an order for any number of Claquers. They would usually work under an elected leader a chef de claque, whose duty was to start the demonstration of approval or disapproval, depending what they were hired to do. The Claquers had different roles - there were the Commissaires, those who learnt pieces of the play by heart, and drew the attention to the audience to its good points between the acts; The Rieurs who laughed loudly at the jokes; the Pleureurs or pleaders who feigned tears, and the Bisseurs who simply clapped their and shouted to secure encores. Claque Theatre is another reinvention. By my definition
they are the social actor a member of the community who participates in
the play. The audience and the actors of the same community, In a Claque
performance the audience and actors mix in a shared promenade space. The
stories and ideas that make up the play are pulled from the community
and the lines between public and player are often blurred with actors
in the auditorium and the audience caught up inside the action. You've mentioned 'collaborative Community Plays, why collaborative? Well there has been so much debate over what a community play is or isn't I got tired of the arguing. The fact is there are as many descriptions of what a community play is as there are people doing them. I'm not in the business of defining community plays for everyone else - I can only tell you what I struggle to do. So I began calling what I do collaborative community plays to stress what I want from the process. What do you want from the process? I want to create an atmosphere of ownership for everyone involved. I want a shared and collective input in what it is we are making. We attempt to find and express a collective vision. At the beginning nothing exists - nothing, that is, except the creativity and experiences of the participants. This is the starting point. It's their interpretation of major local historical and contemporary events that matters in the first place. We try to analyse these events from the perspective of the different people who live through these experiences and their consequences. Therefore we try to involve as many people as we can from the widest possible backgrounds. The repercussions of any one event will affect individuals in many different ways. That's the material of our drama - not consensus but attempting to understand the kaleidoscope of the different perspectives. Everyone's opinion matters because everyone's perspective is different and adds to our understanding of the events. How do you go about making a script collaboratively? We will have a research team made up of people experienced or interested in the history of the town. Their first line of enquiry will be to research individually or as groups areas that interest them. We don't pre-empt what we are looking for so there's really no 'best' place to start. At the same time another group are setting up what we call ' Community Soundings' These are public meetings, debates, workshops - they take many formats - which aim to identify contemporary issues and collect a wide response to them. The next step is to bring together the two areas of investigation and look for parallels. We ask, "What in our history is a metaphor for what is happening today?" We search for fellowships - groups in the past who have lived through similar circumstances to us today. In Shaftsbury we chose the period around the dissolution of the monasteries - when the town lost its abbey. It was a period that allowed us to draw a number of parallels that had meaning for us today, such as the town's response to change, its attitudes to the homeless and dispossessed. All this information feeds into and informs the play. What remains of the director in this kind of collaboration? They have to define the form for the production. The writer and director are responsible for a part of the construction of the whole, just like the community actors. No one person should, or could carry a production within them, though I know some who try. As a director and, sometimes, writer, I find I am led more by what I don't want than what I do want. What I want remains unclear for a long time. Directing is always like that. Ninety nine times out of a hundred I don't tell community actors to do this, but rather steer them away from not doing that. I reject certain things. I can't decide things before rehearsal, I know many do, but my decisions happen during or after a rehearsal as a direct response to what others have offered me. Most of the time other people produce something very different from what I would have anticipated. Most of the time they are the ones who bring the final touch - something of 'them'. My role consists of searching for a synthesis. Sometimes they bring something that is fully realized straight away and I have to struggle with them so they keep the essence of that in their repetition. On the other hand, there are others that begin to sketch something out which I must help to develop. Essentially though it's about evoking things from them rather than imposing things on them. Are you implying there is no hierarchy? Creation can be absolutely creative, precisely because everyone is in his or her place, ensuring maximum creativity in each function, and there's someone who centralises. I certainly don't want to imply a hierarchical vision. One does not create altogether, everyone creates, one after the other - if everyone creates at once there is a short circuit, like when everyone speaks at the same time. Everyone must at least be able to have the floor. So It's not a question of the director's role diminishing - it's that the roles of the others are increasing. You will not achieve collective work without a director, because this is the wrong attitude. Collective work does not imply the suppression of the specific place of the individual. I'm not talking about hierarchies, but about function. The role of the community actor will always remain fundamentally different from the director. What has changed is the dialogue becomes richer and better informed, increasingly equal, but remaining a dialogue between two people who fulfil two different functions. The director or the writer does not have to be the originators of everything. There are more things that happen without them, that take place beyond them. I like to think we are all equal but not identical. We don't collectively decide to paint such and such that colour; the person who decides is the person who knows what to paint it. Each has something to offer, often within a specific discipline. With this way of working, talent is easily shared, there's no talent hierarchy. I am restricted and bound by my own insecurities, but my instincts are towards a collective expression, to get closer to a popular theatre. I want it to be as democratic as possible, something which doesn't preclude centralism, so that the community actors and stage managers and technicians can be in the fullest possession of the work and reach the best of their potential. People enjoy being in the service of what everyone else wants. I tell the cast that a community actor's responsibility is to go on stage to make everyone else look wonderful. I think it's true of everyone involved and it's enriching for everyone when that happens. It happens to some degree every time, never fully. I don't know if that possibility exits, I've not seen it, but one shouldn't say it can't happen. What's in it for the audience? Ultimately everything we do, every choice we make is for the audience. The goal is produce a work of art in terms of a community. They is the thing and must be bigger than all of us and that makes us reach beyond ourselves. I want to involve the audience, encourage participation, engage them in the creative, draw them in. The audience should be implicated. I like to devise ways of treating them as 'other' - give them a different role, another identity. We try to move them away from being a spectator into being witness. The plays can sometimes feel more like a meeting room, a courthouse or a communal event - the guests are encouraged to take initiatives. The actors and the audience share the same environment. We've a lot of experimenting to do in this area. Everything is only bound by our lack of imagination or courage.
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THE MARRIAGE OF TWO MINDS by Jon Oram |
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A prevailing trend in the arts in recent years has been towards democratisation - integrating as many people as possible into the practice of art forms. In a professional system where "creativity" is the practice of the elitist few, it becomes all too easy to alienate the common majority. Most people will ignore most theatre if most theatre ignores most people.
The function of community arts is to make the practice of the art more overtly accessible, to retrace a culture where Arts are more central to life. We have to have art to know who we are. When the world is in chaos or losing its way we need people who recognise calamity and with their feet planted on the ground hold on to their own truth. Art keeps the balance. There is a common misconception among community artists that one should demystify the Arts. Yet everyone should share the mystery - the participation and practice can only strengthen its mystic quality. There is a strong tendency to demystify art by compromising on its disciplines as well as imagination. It is about communication as well as self-expression. It is no good doing bad, shoddy work just because it's community art. To avoid this movement becoming mere self-indulgence it is important to develop the "artist" in people. Not to involve people at the very highest potential, reaching above the ordinary, the common or the banal is both condescending and damaging.
Colway plays a vital role in developing the idea of community plays, where a group of professionals: writer, director, designer, play co-ordinator, musicians etc and work with the community over a significant period (up to two years) and literally involve hundreds of people. Out of this work will rise a play which reflects, challenges and celebrates the community. For over a decade Colway has been pioneering high quality theatre which is fundamentally different from existing forms. The process leading up to the play, the research, the rehearsals, the making, somehow releases a universal spirit of group identity which is exhilarating. The very nature of using so many local people creates an energy the professional theatre cannot emulate. The disciplines initiated by the professional team making something that the amateur could not produce alone. There exists between professional unions and amateur defensiveness, an attitude we have come to call the "siege mentality". Community plays are a proven means of drawing the two halves together to address the feelings of the time: a marriage of two minds.
In creating theatre a theatre society needs to exist which has distinct codes, rules and standards. The theatre society can have a special role to play in the real community. From the very first rehearsal the aims of such a society is visible in a process which involves everyone. The demands for excellence produce a co-operative working ethic, dedication and energy which encompass a consideration of the other's needs. The most inexperienced are as much involved in matters of quality as the most sophisticated. Whether in the rehearsal, the design workshop or in a publicity meeting the concerns are about image, colour, shape, style, interpretation and emotion. It is and will always be a distinctive aim of our work to only except that which will enhance the final play and raise the expectations on standards that people have about themselves.
Every practical question becomes an aesthetic one - artistic criteria rule every decision. Because the final product carries the highest consideration there is no moral sense as to whether an individual's work is acceptable. People can more readily divorce judgements from their own ego when the focus is on something higher. What happens is a Community works together all the time according to precise, shared, often unnamed standards. At every stage the work is asking people to make that switch from what most satisfy as us individuals to what best serves the play. Once understood the quality of the work lifts, tensions disappear, people find a real pleasure in working together. Judgements are all about what fits the play and the focus seems to be off them as individuals - it kills competition stone dead.
We have a choice in art in life. Either we can do plays to bolster our own egos or we can aim for something beyond and larger than ourselves, i.e. a work of art. With higher aims one needs the guidelines of professionalism. The professional stimulates, set standards, provokes and widens horizons. They initiate the discipline which unlocks the instinctive spirit of communities. It is that very spirit about which the professional has a lot to learn. There is often a gap between the life that is going on imaginatively within the person and the releasing of it - the performances are not always as alive as the imagination which feeds it and it is the professional's task to fill that gap. Both groups must have enormous respect for each other. Respect for what people do and for what they strive to do is central to the work. The greatest hurdle is often developing people's respect for their own work. Most of us have been through an educational system which has damaged our potential as individuals. The early part of the work has first to destroy the myth that we are not creative. When people react against failure it is because it reaffirms what we were taught about being uncreative. I would see failure as a positive state of learning. The work should release in people of vision of the extraordinary being possible.
Colway's influence in North America, the fact that they attract writers such as Arnold Wesker, David Edgar, Howard Barker and others, that they not only have they survived in the Eighties, but are expanding in the Nineties demonstrates not only the companies tenacity but a real demand for the work. Theatre company with real potential for growth is these days, rare.
Each time we set out on a new project there is a healthy feeling that one has reached a critical moment in the development of the work. Whilst almost 20 years experience has established certain policies we are aware that "formulas" can become dangerously blinkered and restricting. As a community project, for instance, we involve as many people as possible - all those who naturally participate, those on the edge and the many more who would not normally be touched by the arts (a harder and more time-consuming effort). Nevertheless we should explore the possibilities of working with groups within communities. Pensioners of Sheffield who have formed into an action group to address the problems faced by the elderly - becoming a united political/social force. The community play would benefit and become a strong medium of expression for such groups. we would still saying it is important to accommodate and even encourage others to be dissipated in that "voice". Nobody should exist alone and outside a community. The community play should take the very greatest care, however, in not simply becoming a political machine failing to maintain its integrity in the arts.
Problems often arise in towns at the very idea of doing the community play. It is a misconception that these plays are comfortable and do nothing less than give kudos to the town. In Basildon the local Conservative council was deeply concerned that the play might portray anti-Thatcher points of view. As the major sponsors (albeit public money) it is not in their interest to support such an enterprise and they could inferior exercise all real power over the play is content. People are very protective of where they live and the plays are deeply personal to them. What is understood by all those who express anxiety is that community plays radically change people. We have an enormous responsibility with these claims in respecting the line between maintaining the power of the art and becoming puppets. The plays create a greater identification than any other theatre form I know. and
The writer has to create something with a greater degree of sensitivity, patience and tact, remembering all the time that what may appear to the visitor to be a universal truth is often for the native a very personal observation and criticism.
Within the framework of understanding we must not deny the artists natural instincts to question. The plays have to be more than mere pageant or costume drama. I generally disliked costume drama because it usually refers to a nostalgic view that the old days were the good days. They can encourage a longing for a world where servants knew their place and where poverty exists to evoke comparisons of complacency about today. History can be used not for its nostalgic value but to explore any comfortable image we might have of it in order to evoke, or unlock, feelings about today. Dorset villages have existed (and some still do) under a feudal system - the twin symbols of protection and oppression. Where does one pass into the other? This may be a good question to ask in creating a metaphor for today. The persecution of Quakers is a metaphor through which we can examine a modern equivalent in countries across the world. Always, while writers are researching, they seek out the truth which can both celebrates and disturb but essentially they should be for today.
We want writers to have more dialogue between themselves about the nature and direction of the community play; we want individual writers to return to our work in order to explore the possibilities. We want to train professionals into the work. In this way it will become enhanced by their experience and expertise and a greater understanding of the contribution that these plays can make to world theatre will be found.
The community play is a serious movement creating a
vision of theatre which is a part of life, difficult to ignore, refusing to
go away, and to which everyone, as artists, can contribute.
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