Category: Performance

Practical Text Deconstruction: giving some Shakespeare the once over in Germany

I worked with seven Theater Pedagogik students from the Osnabruck Technische Fachhoch Schule.  My workshop intended to explore how the eight elements of Bojeian story deconstruction might be applied to a piece of Shakespearian text in order to see how and whether that text may be re-presented as a text of inclusion, as opposed to the text of exclusion that Shakespeare texts can be portrayed as.

My session began with a simple name game played in a circle:  I name myself, throw a small pocket size German-English dictionary to a workshop participant and suggest they repeat the exercise.  Before long, all participants have picked up the idea and are beginning to establish the names of the other members of the group.  I develop this game eventually by plucking at random a word out of the dictionary, repeating my name then throwing the dictionary to another participant, again suggesting that participants repeat the exercise.  I encourage participants to pick any word, quickly, whether this be German or English, comprehensible or incomprehensible.  I accelerate the game so that participants eventually build up a chain of six words, five of which are taken from the dictionary, the sixth being their name.

I then request the participants to write the words onto flip charts I have attached to the wall.  I encourage them again to write quickly, with little time to consider of reflect on what they are doing. Once up on the wall, I ask members to construct an imaginary story using the six words of another group member, but using additional words as they see fit.  Eventually, short stories are generated by each of the group members about the other group members.  Given these short stories are based around six random words, the stories themselves display remarkable levels of abstraction, illogic and fantasy.  Nevertheless, members construct stories which are intelligible to varying degrees: the point being made here that human’s abilities to generate meaning is deeply ingrained in our psyche and that our powers of interpretation and meaning-making are perhaps as essential as our ability to breath and digest and reproduce. We focussed on three of the deconstruction techniques that Boje and Dennehy propose, in particular:

Reinterpreting the hierarchy: writing a letter is frequently about trying to present a  story from one point of view: introducing a second point of view which distorts and attempts to force its own control on the emerging narrative means that story writers are constantly reassessing and reinterpreting the hierarchy they are trying to establish.

Establishing rebel voices: the automatic letter writing exercise – especially in larger groups acts to deny the authority of the one voice.

Denying the plot: these writing exercises are designed to confound plot at all stages of its possible grip.

Tracing what is between the lines: constructing words from six random words encourages participants to trace and generate what is not said by filling in the blanks and imagining possibilities, however ludicrous or far-fetched.

After these warm up exercises, I then present participants with two pages taken from Steve Gooch’s Cut Shakespeare version of The Winters Tale. Apart from the Gooch technique of presenting his cut version of the play in a mix of bold and ordinary type face in the document, I provided no other contextual or explanatory information about the play.  Participants claimed not to know anything about the play at all and a number of them professed difficulties with understanding the language. This prompted a discussion about the status that Shakespeare has within the traditional literature canon and how this compares with the place of Goethe in Germany.  Students’ alienation from the text thus provided a metaphor of disability within the group: in one sense students could be seen, if viewed through a medical lens, as having a deficit in that they had a lack of intelligence to grasp a text presented to them: in another sense, if viewed through a social lens, the text had the effect of disabling them as there were no immediately apparent mechanisms open to them which would assist them in accessing the text.

However, participants were open to attempting to read the piece and began by identifying particular phrases – whether in bold or in ordinary type – which caught their attention. These phrases were discussed and possible meanings established.  I confirmed for participants that there was no right or wrong answers in this process.  After some initial caution in the process which I interpreted as participants wanting to know whether they were giving me the right answer or not, they continued to work on the pieces in two groups: one group of three men participants, and one group of four women participants.  The two groups then developed their own interpretation of the texts which they presented back to an invited audience of other students after about 15 minutes preparation.

The men’s group presented a non-verbal presentation in which the ‘king’ – identifiable by his posture and mimed cape – issued control of his kingdom and subjects through the use of visible computer remote control which he wielded at random both at imaginary characters in the play and to the audience in an apparent attempt to control their words and actions.  This control was in vain though: as he continued his attempts at control, the two other actors – who take on the role of off-stage, stage managers, steadily removed parts of the set and his costume whilst he was apparently oblivious to their actions.  Eventually his set and key costume elements – wooden blocks and scarf – were taken away from him and he was left with nothing apart from the ability to curl up, foetus like, on the stage floor.  The presentation ends in silence and finally, on applause, the actor acknowledges the audience and the presence of the two stage managers within it.

The performance was touching and regarded sombrely by the audience. We were left with a picture of a dying, reducing king whose influence and power was steadily declining.  We were encouraged to feel pity for him: a far cry from the usual portrayal of Leontes, the king in the ur-text, who is portrayed as a man who suffers from extreme jealousy which leads him to lock up his wife (and thus brings about her eventual ’death’) cast his new born daughter into the wilderness and lose his son into the bargain.  In this scenario, the text has been decentred from a  performance intended for two actors playing within Shakespearian conventions, to a performance for one solitary actor performing to an unseen multitude of other characters off stage as well as two actors playing the roles of two stage managers.

The women’s group however produced a piece which was far more pantomimic in character.  They produced a script which was performed in a graphic, comic style.  A narrator announces characters who gesture or offer a few words at particular moments to reinforce the words of the narrator.  They played with theatre conventions of the stage curtain (by using the black out curtains of the rehearsal room in a mock theatrical manner) and stage lighting (by switching the overhead neon lights of the room off abruptly at the end of the presentation).  They bow together, as a company at the end of the performance with tongues firmly in cheeks. The script they produced is as follows.

Schauspielerin: Es gab einmal einen König.  Dieser König hatte eine sehr gute Königin.  Doch die Königin gehörte einer feministishcen Bewegung an. Immer wieder schrie sie: Erhängt alle Ehemänner!  Und ihr Mann, der König sagte: Du bist ein Teil vom Nest voller verräterinnen.  Er wart ihr sogar vor, der sahn sie ein Bastard, und nicht von ihm selber.  Als eh ihr eines morgens den Hals umdrehte, schrie er: Nimm den Bastard! Der Sohn reif verstört: Ich bin nichts, bei diesem guten Licht!

Licht aus.

Alle: Besser!

In summary, both groups managed to significantly rewrite the Shakespeare text presented to them using the elements of story deconstruction described previously.  The text work particularly offered participants to use the eighth element described: resituation: i.e the ability to find a new perspective, one that resituates the story beyond its dualisms, excluded voices of singular viewpoint.  Participants reauthored the story so that the hierarchy was resituated and new balance of views was attained.  They re-storied the text so as to re-present dualities and margins and thus scripted new actions.

Whilst this process took place over only a few hours on a Friday afternoon, it offers a number of possibilities that can be used in further text workshop exercises, particularly with groups of participants who may have felt traditionally excluded from participating in an integrated interpretation of a Shakespeare text.

(Extract from The Puppet Question revisited: movements, models and manipulations; reflections on cultural leadership)

The Saturday Guide: 8 steps of story deconstruction

The application of story deconstruction processes can play a catalytic role in telling new stories about Valentines Day and other commercial festivals.

A model of narrative deconstruction is offered by Boje and Dennehy (1993)  below.

1. Duality search make a  list of any bipolar terms, any dichotomies that are used in the story,  Include the term even if only one side is mentioned. For example, in male centred and or male dominated organisation stories, men are central and women are marginal others.  One term mentioned implies its partner.

2. reinterpret the hierarchy.  A story is one interpretation or hierarchy or an event from one point of view.  It usually has some form of hierarchical thinking in place.  Explore and reinterpret the hierarchy  (e.g. in duality terms how one dominates the other) so you can understand its grip.

3. rebel voices.  Deny the authority of the one voice.  Narrative centres marginalise or  exclude.  To maintain a centre takes enormous energy.  What voices are not being expressed in this story? Which voices are subordinate or hierarchical to other voices?  (e.g. who speaks for the trees?)

4. other side of the story.  Stories always have two or more sides.  What is the other side of the story (*usually marginalised, underrepresented or even silent?)  reverse the story, by putting the bottom on top., the marginal in control, or the back stage up front.  For example, reverse the male centre, by holding  a spotlight on its excesses until it becomes  female centre in telling the other side; the point is not to replace one centre with another, but to show how each centre is in a constant state of change and disintegration.

5 deny the plot.  Stories have plots, scripts, scenarios, recipes and morals.  Turn these around (move from romantic to tragic or comedic to ironic).

6. find the exception.. stories contain rules, scripts, recipes and prescriptions.  State each exception in a  way that make its extreme or absurd.  Sometimes you have to break the rules to see the logic being scripted in the story.

7. trace what is between the lines.  Trace what is not said.  Trace what is the writing on the wall.  Fill in the blanks.  Storytellers frequently use ‘you know that part of the story’.  Trace what you are filling in.  with what alternate way could you fill it in  (e.g. trace to the context, the back stage, the between, the intertext?)

8. resituate.  the point of doing 1 to 7 is to find a new perspective, one that resituates the story beyond its dualisms, excluded voices of singular viewpoint.  The idea is to reauthor the story so that the hierarchy is resituated and new balance of views is attained.  Restory to remove the dualities and margins.  In a resituated story there are no more centres.  Restory to script new actions.

Its worth seeing how you might apply this to love stories to see how the stories of relationships can be re-presented, re-communicated – and re-enacted.

Consequences of the medical model of disability on performers and audiences

The Medical Model of Disability identifies disability as being a individualised medical problem based on impairment, deficit and dysfunction.  This model depoliticises disability and extracts it from wider socio-economic, political and cultural contexts.  In this extraction from context the medical model means that performance environments, artistic content, performer identities are all at  odds with the specificities of disabled artists.

Theatres continue to exclude by virtue of their physical and sometimes geographical inaccessibility. Curricula of artists training courses promote standards that some with (or without) impairments will never reach.  Curricula content say nothings of the history of exclusion experienced by disabled people.  Artists are assessed in ways that celebrate achievement over contribution and  difference. And at the most ordinary level, disabled performers continue to be singled out for the specialised attention of specialness, are segregated from non-disabled peers through the presence of non-disabled adult supporters and remain unrepresented in images of schooling and educational attainment. There are three further consequences of the Medical Model on the involvement of disabled people in the performing arts.

Firstly, it generates a culture of dependency in which relationships between disabled and non-disabled people are often seen as a kind of master – servant relationship in which the masters – non-disabled people – may sometimes masquerade as servants and vica versa: in short, relationships which are not only defined by an imbalance of power and control but relationships where the locus of power is neither easily identifiable nor controllable.

In some examples we’ve seen, the ‘master’ is not necessarily the simultaneous presence of another human being on stage: it can be the disembodied presence of a plaintiff voice in a song or the digital imperative of a 4:4 rhythm generated by a computer programme: the performer becoming what you might call becoming, thanks to that old Grace Jones track, a slave to the rhythm.  The masters of the action on stage come in all shapes, sizes, sounds, pictures and media.

Secondly, the Medical Model generates the notion of a Hierarchy of Disability.  In this Hierarchy, disabled  people with hidden impairments such as dyslexia may be disinclined either to see themselves as disabled or, more dramatically, see themselves higher up a scale of social value due to their perceived lower degree of impairment.  It also leads to conversations which  uses the assessment of the degree of impairment as a means to assess the aesthetic quality of the work in question.  Here, we say things like ‘Wasn’t that work fantastic bearing in mind they are . . .’ where  the dot dot dots of the punctuation can be joined up by using such terms such as learning difficulty or deaf or blind.

The hierarchy of disability also leads to the possibility that the value of a piece of work can plunge rapidly – much like the share values on stock exchanges across the world at the moment –  if we learn that rather then being performed by a group of disabled people, it was performed by some people who weren’t disabled at all.  Hierarchy of disability means we are constantly assessing the degree of impairment: not the meaning of the work presented before us.

A third consequence of the power of the medical model can be detected in how audiences are encouraged to respond to the work before them.  The medical model leads to the phenomena of disabled people as being described as tragic but brave;  as having suffered with a particular physical or mental impairments;  and as people to be either pitied, patronised or demonised. The ‘ahhhh’ moment is a frequent manifestation of audiences and can be brought about by the falling cadence of a solitary accordion, the slow fading light of a follow spot or the isolation, centre stage, of a character who’s been presented with an external hostile world of attendant characters and impossible plot demands.

The techniques of isolation and segregation here are critical in establishing this kind of response from audiences who might find themselves whispering to their partner, There but for the Grace of God reflecting perhaps a sense that there is more at stake emotionally for certain audience members in this moment of performance by disabled people than there is in  performances by non-disabled people.  Perhaps the histories of conflict with the medical authorities, with the social services and with the wider, dominant  expressions of normality that disabled people and their families share means that the expression of audience responses to disabled performers is always likely to carry additional significance.

The medical model highlights the manipulative, emotional power of theatre and art, perhaps to the disservice of both performers and audience.

(Extract from The Puppet Question revisited: movements, models and manipulations – reflections on cultural leadership)

Who in this performance could be replaced by puppets?

Integration of disabled people into the performing arts continues to be a hot topic these days. It’s like a badge of courage we might have won at school, something our mothers proudly stitched onto our jackets, wearing it over our hearts to show an organisational’s professional and political credentials.

Many arts projects view the prospect of complete integration up as a kind of holy grail of achievement, distinguishing them from other projects using the language of segregation, inclusion, participation and joining in. In this next series of posts, I want to consider those assertions closely and to see whether the badge of courage we think is stitched onto our jackets is more like those temporary children’s tattoos which wash off in the rain.

I want to look at the differences between integrated performance and assimilated performance. And I want to ask whether our desire to get people to join us and join in to our artistic endeavours is getting in the way of the more radical desire to join up a disability arts aesthetics to a wider critical pedagogy discourse. A discourse which relocates and nurtures the power of production in the hearts of those who are more frequently on the receiving end of the powers of cultural producers (artists and educators) who have their own artistic vision and agendas to promote: however benign and well intended those visions might be.

This will involve revisiting the puppet question, a proposal I developed in 2000 and 2008 and which asks of performances, performers and audiences:

Who in this performance could be replaced by puppets?

(Extract from works on Cultural Leadership)

How not to close a school.

Whilst the logic of school closures is portrayed in communications from the British Government and English local authorities as an act of logic and rationality, school closure invariably generates press stories of incensed parents, irate communities and exhausted teachers. What is frequently lost amongst the sturm und drang of closure however are the tiny stories (Denzin, 1991) of loss: of professional expertise, of collective memory, of shared hopes and fears.

This paper introduces a research programme which asks what is lost from a school community once the programme of closure has been agreed and a school moves inexorably towards its final days. In counterpoint to the national Building Schools for the Future programme, this project is informed by earlier work conducted by Whitefield (1980) Molinero (1988), Schmidt (2007) and Picard (2003). This study is thus both timely and of significance to future policy developments: the lived experiences of the community of teachers, families and children during school closure is rarely researched and a great deal of understanding and knowledge remains uncaptured, analysed or assessed.

This study begun as an ethnographic study of the closing months of a single primary school, Centenary Primary School on the Wirral which celebrated its 100th birthday with its imminent closure just months away. It adopts a multi-method research strategy, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, the latter of which involves a traditional ethnographic approach coupled to an arts based educational research methodology.

One methodological consequence of adopting an arts based approach to the research has been to engage a team of artist researchers. This means that knowledge of the lived experience (van Manen, 1997) of school users can be developed from different perspectives which privilege not only linguistic forms of communication but spatial, musical, and visual: a method we believe is important to the school given its diverse mix of users and participants. It thus may be of use to schools in similar circumstances who wish to effect positive political outcomes during periods of future rationalisations: and in doing so, transform their tiny stories into noisy histories.

5 steps to getting your research paper published – in a London theatre

Closing Schools for the Future is being published / performed at a top London venue this week, the Riverside Studios, as part of the Tete a Tete Opera Fstival. But how did it get there and what does this process tell us about the connection between research and performance?

1. Start at a micro-local level. The first manifestation of CSF was in Seacombe Library, a small local library in Wallasey. It was presented in the form of a photographic exhibition to families, teachers and local residents.

2. Pitch to a discipline specific conference – in this case, the Oxford Ethnography conference which does exactly what it says on the tin. Talk, share and argue for ethnography. This supplied a friendly ‘on-board’ audience who were not averse to offering some important critical feedback.

3. Pitch to an international audience overseas who start off not having a clue what you’re talking about. The intelligent but ignorant audience really helps you to interrogate your own hard earned findings (in this case at the 1st Educational Research conference at the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). At this point the paper had been extended to take into account not just local, but regional and national perspectives too.

4. Take the leap and present to an international audience, at home: but in the format you’ve been aiming at all along – ie a performed reading with sympathetic, intelligent and friendly-critical artists. In this case, at the BERA conference at the University of Warwick with composer Gary Carpenter and vocalist, Jen Heyes.

5. Put it out there with the support and advocacy of aforesaid artists. Get invited to leading innovative opera festival, in this case the Tete a Tete Opera Festival at Riverside Studios.

The next steps…? Wait and see but this story isn’t finished yet.
What else have we learnt about this process? More to follow, tomorrow.

The death of Powerpoint?

Closing Schools for the Future is an operatic performance which is unique because it draws its subject material not from Greek tragedy, ancient European myths or Italian romances – but from research into the day to day lives of ordinary people who are facing a critical event in their local community; that of the closure of their local primary school.  Our research project has taken two years to look at the effects of school closure in schools across England and has focused particularly on schools in Wirral and Knowsley.

Many people have asked why school closure is a suitable subject for an opera, and whether opera is a suitable means of communicating research: and our answer is a qualified yes to both questions.  School closure is a huge issue these days.  Whilst there have been many initiatives to provide new schools (the government scheme Building Schools for the Future is one recent example), what gets lost in these initiatives are the hidden consequences to peoples communities, peoples jobs and the very fabric of their society.  This generates many poignant stories, larger than life characters and real life drama which often does not find an audience either in the media, in the arts or in education.

Even when research about those events are communicated within educational circles, the way those stories are communicated are often arid texts, written and communicated in academic terms and the results frequently ignored.  This leads to a real disconnect between those whose stories were being communciated and the audiences who are listening to those stories.  However, using music and drama to tell those stories – through the discipline of Arts Based Educational Research – communicates that research more effectively, with more emotional vibrancy and it has the chance for a greater impact – and for the lessons learnt in the research to be acted upon.

Closing Schools for the Future has already been presented in 3 educational conferences in Oxford, Ethiopia and Warwick.  At its last presentation, the audience left asking, Is this the Death of Powerpoint?  And whilst this might be an over ambitious outcome for the project, we certainly hope that by using opera as the means to communicate research findings, that these performance provide new opportunities for the results of our research into school closure to be acted upon.

Production team credits

Nick Owen, Director of the Aspire Trust, is a producer, director and artist educator who has worked across the UK and internationally. Recent publications include Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning (Routledge) and Outsider | Insiders: becoming a creative partner with schools (International Handbook of Creative Learning) and the film, My Life as an American (Latent Productions).

Gary Carpenter, Composer, has written operas, musicals and a radio music-drama (with Iris Murdoch) as well as film, dance and concert music. He was Musical Director on ‘The Wicker Man’ (1973) and won a British Composer Award in 2006. His portrait CD Die Flimmerkiste is released on NMC. Gary teaches at the Royal Academy of Music and the RNCM (Manchester).

Jen Heyes, Vocalist, is a director, producer, performer, educator and artistic director of the Liverpool based company Cut to the Chase Productions. As a theatre maker Jen has worked regionally and nationally (touring and individual works) and internationally (Berlin, Porto, Lisbon, Luxembourg, and Hong Kong) working on small, medium and large scale productions. She specialises in multi-media site specific theatre and always strives to use live music within her work.

Brian Hanlon, designer, is an Arts practitioner with specialist skills in design. He works in a range of settings from Youth Theatre to the West End. He recently worked on the Manchester Day Parade, for the second year with Walk the Plank. And with the Aspire Trust Scouse Wedding: The Opera.

Tiny Stories, Noisy Histories

Tiny stories is a  technique used within the practice of creative writing workshops. Nanofiction or microfiction are terms given to writing exercises in which the length of a story is arbitrarily determined to perhaps absurd lengths: Stern’s microfiction model for example states that micro-stories should be no more than 250 words. The World’s Shortest Stories (Moss, 1998) is more stringent: stories should contain no more than 55 words (excluding the title which must be no more than 7 words long) and each story must contain the following four elements: 1) a setting, 2) one or more characters, 3) conflict, and 4) resolution.   Snellings Clark (2008) refers directly to the term tiny stories and whilst offering another set of limits on length (100 words) also directs the writer not to use the same word twice (albeit making an exception for contractions).  She also offers a set of aesthetic criteria which describe how the tiny story might most effectively function:

Little stories that are larger on the inside than they appear on the outside.

Stories that leave an aftertaste, that linger.

Special nod to stories that include elements of the fantastic.

Little things with big effects: lost keys, a scrap of paper, a chink in the armour, a missing screw.

The inexplicable in the definable, the fantasy in the reality, the uncommon in the everyday, that something under the surface.

The secret little things….

The results of  the Closing Schools for the Future project are written as a series of tiny stories which conform to the Snellings Clark model: no more than 100 words in length, in commemoration of the age of the school at its closure.  78 tiny stories were written, each one representing a child who would have been on the school role had it been kept open in September 2008.

Whilst this constitutes a small ethnographic project where n=1 and where the characters, narrative, dialogue and critical actions appeared to inhabit a microworld with microscopic movements, cataclysmic change was felt widely, resonating out across the landscape in which the school is based in ways not fully understood or predicted.

The soundscape of the territory was a microcosm of silence. Resistance had been purposeless, directionless if not completely futile. Questions remained unanswered, under investigated, under challenged: the assumption of logic, incontestability was all pervasive.  In this world of tiny stories, teachers identities were sometimes subtly, sometimes seismically challenged: John, a class teacher of some 15 years in the school had decided he just wanted to continue to teach in any school, despite being offered extra pay for taking on enhanced management duties.  But he just wanted to teach; and unable to play the job interview game refers in an observed class to the on-looking new head in a throwaway aside as an old witch  which didn’t enamour him with her – so he failed to win the job in the new school and had to revisit his cv, his approach, his understanding of how he did what he did.  No longer a respected teacher for 15 years who had taught at the school classes across the range – he was now back in the market place with a label of as being a bit of a trouble maker.

These tiny stories were not part of the building schools for the future meganarrative of secondary schools; no bright new shining vision of educational pods for sophisticated young people who are able to opt for down loading content from their mobile phones over the attendance of a master class by an overperforrming uberteacher who would be performing ballet steps one minute an entertaining the visiting private sector funders the next.

These stories had no shine, no brighter picture of a future but were stories of a quiet, seeping desperation which was prevented from turning into a collective madness by the efforts of teachers and children who continue from day to day as if nothing was about to happen. This was not a indignant narrative about the alleged lack of consultation of the authorities, an ironic parable about administrative dysfunction or a moralistic tale of performative brutalism – although each of those narrative genres emerged in the fabric of this story of school closure as it unravelled in its last few months.  It’s  a collection of tiny stories of a tiny school told by tiny narrators.

Behind these tiny stories, more complex narrative compete for attention and recognition as sources of authoritative voice.  The  bigger narratives pull at the microscopic texture of school and community and family relations and the unravelling of that texture pulls on deep seated threads which pull elsewhere in our civil fabric: echoes and rumours of closure and melt down permeate the rest of the community.  The loss of a name is mirrored close by with the demolition of  a local church and the  slow seepage away of local sights, knowledge and identity:  the local Centenary Vic Working Men’s Club has to announce it’snot closing in a letter to the press, perhaps indicative of  a microscopic flaking away of community of which the school is part of.  These microscopic actions have macro effects which are unpredictable, chaotic, complex and still only partially understood.

Closing Schools for the Future is to be performed at  Tête à Tête Opera Festival, Riverside Studios, London, 4 – 5 August.