Underwater Thoughts on creating a Diverse Theatre

Thanks to everyone who has joined the 'What Shows Where Debate' (see forums section). It's great to get your ideas, opinions and creative suggestions. We had a very productive away day with the board on Tuesday, looking at the 30 possible projects we have in the mix at the moment, and starting to get a sense of the overall shape of the year's work, if not of individual programming decisions. Lucy and I will be doing a lot of work over the next two months to hammer this input and all your thoughts into a killer first year of shows. Meanwhile, I'm trying to catch up on my reading - looking at examples of work by a range of Welsh writers - playwrights, poets and novelists. We will not only be commissioning plays and adaptations for next year, but also inviting writers to work with physical and site specific theatre companies, so there's a lot of different writing talent needed.

Everything has been a bit delayed this weekend though. I was in London for meetings, smugly enjoying good weather as news of Cardiff storms reached me. I got my comeuppance when I arrived home though as my apartment had been badly flooded - so much of Sunday has been taken up with buckets and mops and desperately trying to dry out some irreplaceable art and albums that have borne the worst of the damage. Moments like this remind you how important the personalised, hand-touched objects in life are, and how very replaceable much of the other stuff is. So, in a nutshell, my excuse for everything next week will be water damage - don't say you weren't warned.

While in London I led a workshop on solo performance for the Storm project - a collaboration between Lyric Hammersmith, Graeae (the disability-led theatre company) and Push (the initiative for new black theatre founded by Josette Bushell-Mingo). The week-long project looked like it was a big success, with 40 artists from very diverse backgrounds working together for the week and taking part in workshops run by people including Emma Rice of Kneehigh, David Farr of the RSC, and Scott Graham of Frantic Assembly and many others. The initiative was set up because the organisers felt that there were too few culturally diverse practitioners in the physical and visual theatre worlds, and that a really focused initiative was needed to turn this around. Similarly, for several years, Contact, the theatre I used to run in Manchester, collaborated with Nitro and Tara theatres to run a project called Live and Direct, which focussed on the development of black and Asian directors, at a time when there was an increasing diversity of actors and writers, but not of directors.

So - I have another question. Do we need a more culturally diverse theatre in Wales. And if so, can it be achieved by focused initiatives like Storm or Live and Direct?

Okay, back to the mopping

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Comment by Gary Owen on June 16, 2009 at 23:29
I'm from a generation that signed on the dole for their early theatre-making years, but that's not such an option these days.

Yup, me too. I wonder if it will become more of an option for the next few years, when it seems like many more of us are going to be on the dole...
Comment by National Theatre Wales on June 15, 2009 at 2:50
I agree Gary. I'm from a generation that signed on the dole for their early theatre-making years, but that's not such an option these days. Of course, there's no competition between kinds of diversity. We should be aiming for a theatre that's more welcoming to audiences and potential artists from the widest possible range of backgrounds. I guess a question arises when you do something - a training course or a bursary say - for a specific under-represented group. If you don't focus it in some way it becomes redundant, but the danger is in looking like you have excluded other groups. My tendency is to go ahead and do the focused project and then look at what else you need to do for other people afterwards. Often the initial project acts as a stimulus for new ideas and demanda. And otherwise everything stays in discussion for ever. But that may just be my impatience.
Comment by Gary Owen on June 15, 2009 at 1:01
Clearly diversity is an issue for us - compare the mix of people on Queen's Street to the mix in the Sherman, and the point is made for you. But I think Catherine's on to something as well - Mark Ravenhill made the point in one of his Guardian columns that a massive issue around diversity in our theatre is class. Most people who go into theatre will have to work for a few years on very low or no pay, and obviously that's easier to do if you're from a better off background. I've known incredibly talented people have to turn down assistant roles because they were unpaid. Meanwhile the job is taken by someone who, say, has a flat on which their parents take care of the mortgage. This is never a comfortable issue to raise within the community, for obvious reasons - and clearly, none of us has the right to complain about not being born with a trust fund. But still, it's a factor.
Comment by National Theatre Wales on June 14, 2009 at 10:19
Thanks everyone for your comments. Kylie, I'm sorr I missed Mr Foreigner, I hope I'll get to see it when it tours. Catherine, I agree that theatre needs to dig into all sorts of backgrounds, and mix things up in unexpected ways. I guess my question is whether or not the theatre around and about us is doing that enough. It sounds like new companies such as gaijin-sin are making a start and the rest of us need to join in!
Comment by Kylie Ann Smith on June 11, 2009 at 4:57
Hi john,

my name is Kylie Ann Smith and i am the co-director of gaijin-san company based in Cardiff and we make devised, experimental dance theatre work and recently toured a production 'Mr.Foreigner' where we collaborated with performers from South Africa and Poet Patrick Jones, which was made possible with arts council funding and support bfrom the Atrium. The piece was about asylum, detention, heritage and borders. The process was very challenging yet rewarding , bringing together performers from diverse backgrounds and very different working methods. We are looking to re-work this project and are applying to take it on tour next year and will be looking for performers to collaborate with from various cultures to put their own creative stamp on the piece. Your blog made me realise how under-represented black and ethnic minority artist are in Wales and that this should be addressed. The fact that we had to fly performer/theatre makers over here, rather than working with local talent, which i am sure is out there. The initiative you mentioned could open up opportunity for people to get involved in theatre who may not have had the chance yet,or may have felt that the theatre world was closed to them and maybe some exciting new projects and collaborations could be made.
Comment by Catherine Capelin on June 10, 2009 at 3:29
Reading all comments on this page has made me think, and that is something dangerous! At the moment I am fairly new to this game and since looking for work, or seeing other peoples work it occurs to me that it is actually easier to work in this industry if you come from a non Caucasian background. Now in some cases this is fantastic because it means that we are excepting and rightly so the cultures of today, and the vibrant country Britain has become and the issues that arise in these different cultures. And also creating new work for new faces (big thumbs up to that)However I feel it only fair therefore to dig deeper in to the backgrounds of people like me the average Joe who is whiter than Casper the friendly ghost and clutching at straws to keep above the unemployment sea and not to drown.
Also to smash these cultures and races together to create an awesome piece would be fantastic to see as each culture and race has something to offer. Please don’t read this wrong and think that I want to stop the projects like Live and Direct, all I want to do/see is groups like this for all. Please let me know if there are such groups around. Like I said I am new to this game and eager to learn.

I would love to see a collaboration of plays that look in to all cultures but also gives everyone a chance to see new and exciting talents.

Please forgive me if I have gone way off the subject here, but I tend to be good like that.
Comment by National Theatre Wales on June 7, 2009 at 23:04
Thanks Peter. Am slowly drying everything out and getting onto the boring things like insurance!

Re diversity. Thanks for those useful thoughts. I agree that rural populations can easily get ignored in debates about diversity. This is certainly something we need to work on in our first year. Are there other populations, though, that are not seen in theatre and arts here - and whose stories get told less than rural stories? Cardiff as a city, for example, seems to me to be a lot more diverse than its theatre audiences; and I've yet to see a play here (admittedly after only a few months) that represents the experience of black or Asian communities in Wales. Would be great to hear of any good work that people know of.
Comment by Peter Cox MBE on June 7, 2009 at 21:40
That's harsh John! What a homecoming! And how upsetting losing precious personal collections of art and archive - the things in our lives that carry so many stories and so much meaning. Especially, I think, for theatre makers when each creative project undertaken can seem so transient. Those possessions become iconic fixed points on our life's journey, don't they? And the dark irony of the name of the London project where you were leading a workshop - 'Storm'!

On the cultural diversity side of things two slightly oblique thoughts strike me.

One is the relationship of Wales today to the Welsh Diaspora - both historic and more contemporary. Might that be a starting point for ideas for work created in international partnership? (There are numerous examples and angles on this but I noticed one in particular a few years ago during some research - the number of American Football players in the NFL with Welsh roots in their names.)

The second is the cultural significance of the rural population in Wales - often a forgotten or ignored non-racial grouping. (This, of course, has cross-over issues under the 'What and Where' discussion). How to give this community a voice and a place in NTW's work and the access to a place at the table would be well worth considering.

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