Welcome to The Future Playground - Please Tell Us a Bit About Yourself

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Permalink Reply by Sue Buckmaster on January 28, 2010 at 11:29

Hi. I am Sue Buckmaster, the Artistic Drirector of Theatre-rites and a specialist director of puppetry. For me, making work for children continues to be a liberating experience. My fear was that in working in this area my work would not be required to be of excellence and I would not get the resources to protect this. I personally have not found this to be the case. I have been blessed with funding, recognition, amazing partnerships and collaborations and opportunities that are certainly comparable to any I may have achieved in the adult theatre world. This has not come easy, but nothing does. And there are many who still believe that childrens theatre doesn't require such rigour. But I do, and I am happy to encourage anyone else who does too.
Creating work for an audience that encompasses a cross-age group of adults and children has released many wonderful things for me as an artist. If this was not the case, I would have shifted to other ways of expression long ago. I shall not go into detail here, but I will mention the areas which I find particularly rewarding in case they trigger off debate on this site:

As a working mother I find creating art experiences for children and adults makes me feel more integrated.

Making work for children allows me to access my playfulness and spontenaiety as well as my intellectual rigorous approach.

When adults experience art it seems to be about re-discovering something, whether it be an adult or childrens show. Children experience it as a discovery in the NOW. It is immediate and truthful. I find it very exciting to engage with this response.

I love breaking the rules of what theatre is meant to be. An audience who hasn't learnt the rules yet are a perfect allie!

I am making work for children and yet I spend hardly any of my time thinking about this aspect of the work - I just follow my own creative instincts.

.......well they are my thoughts for today anyway :-) Sue

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Permalink Reply by Ned Glasier on February 10, 2010 at 19:01

Hello all, I'm Ned Glasier, a freelance director and Artistic Director of Islington Community Theatre, which I founded in 2008. Since starting out with ICT we've had a wonderful 18 months - growing really quickly, making some great new friends and generating some really interesting projects and productions. We currently work with over 130 young people every week, all of whom are selected on the basis of how much they'll benefit from being part of our workshops, projects and productions.

Everything that we make as a company is focussed first and foremost on it being good, exciting, interesting, innovative, brave theatre. I think that if the art that we create is rigorous and exciting enough it will have a profound impact both socially and educationally, rather than try and focus it on those aims from the outset. It makes me sad that sometimes I have to disguise our artistic intentions behind words like 'social cohesion', 'literacy' and 'inclusion' in funding applications - good art helps with all those things and more and we should celebrate its power to do so.

We called our company Islington Community Theatre because we wanted to reclaim 'Community Theatre' and make sure we encouraged people to think of work made with and for local people as high-quality, exciting and worth watching.

Before starting ICT I worked at the Almeida and in Ghana with Theatre for a Change making work focussed on HIV/AIDS prevention (the most issue-y work I've ever done). Aside from ICT I'm currently developing the special schools theatre festival at the Young Vic.

More about Islington Community Theatre here: www.islingtoncommunitytheatre.com

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Argent on February 11, 2010 at 15:24

Hi. I am Sarah Argent, I'm a freelance director based in Cardiff, specialising in Theatre for the Under Fives, although I also create work for older children and adults.

I've devised and directed all of Theatr Iolo's work for the under fives over the past 8 years, but I've also worked for other companies - M6, Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Tam Tam Theatre, Welsh National Opera - and I'm very excited to be directing a show based on the children's book, "The Night Pirates", for Theatre Hullabaloo in the autumn.

I'm very lucky to have been able to create a really eclectic mix of productions over the past couple of years. Some of the highlights during that time: I received a Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales and a Seeding Fund Award from Small Size (the European Network for the Diffusion of Performing Arts aimed at early childhood) which allowed me to research and then create a piece of work for babies/toddlers aged 6-18 months, I collaborated with Marleen Vermeulen of Tam Tam Theatre on a piece which took her into new areas of non-verbal work with a sparse narrative for 1-3 year olds, I've written and directed an opera for 4-5 year olds for Welsh National Opera, I created a site-specific piece for nursery children in a forest near Cardiff, I've devised and directed a hard-hitting, contemporary play for teenagers with Welsh playwright, Gary Owen, and I've directed Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter". I also teach acting students at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and drama students at the University of Glamorgan.

It's a fantastic way to make a living - I feel immensely privileged!

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Permalink Reply by Will Tuckett on February 18, 2010 at 9:31

Hello! I'm Will Tuckett and I am a freelance Choreographer and Director making a range of work for both children and adults. In recent years I've been more and more interested in making work for children and also families and have been based primarily at the Royal Opera House where i am Creative Associate for ROH2 for whom I make a lot of stuff mainly performed in the Linbury theatre but also in the Clore studio theatre...I have recently been making almost exclusively narrative work and dealing with dance, text and puppetry. Making work for me is all about collaboration and to be honest that doesn't change relative to an intended age of audience. I have however pondered that work for children needs to have possibly even greater rigour than work one might create for adults...adults might give you a bit more slack but children let you know how they're feeling pretty quickly!
I am currently in the middle of putting together a show which I am making in the Spring for teenagers based on the work of artist William Hogarth, which is a combination of dance and opera/song...Hogarth's work doesn't really pull any punches and so am currently in debate with various departments at the Opera House over what is and isnt appropriate for a 13 year old...a 15 year old! A 16 year old!!! To be honest it feels like a bit of a minefield albeit a fascinating one, and ultimately I keep coming back to the source material and its content in order to think what should or shouldnt be in the show...I have seen already that there is talk on this site about age ranges and what is and isnt appropriate and I must say that I constantly change what i think. Audiences can range so widely and context is of such importance...
Anyroad I really havent ever made anything with young adults specifically in mind before so am really looking forward to sitting down with a load of potential audience and getting their feedback as I make the piece.
Hopefully see the people who are already on here at the Wells and then look forward to meeting more people on this site- what a great idea and forum! Thankyou!!!

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Permalink Reply by Clare Halstead on March 9, 2010 at 9:50

I think that supporting children's creativity and imagination from the earliest age is really important, and I've seen my own children benefit from shows created by some of the people on this site - in the sense that I think that seeing creative and imaginative work is like opening up extra rooms in your mind that you didn't know were there. I have created performance work for nurseries and schools - albeit on a very small scale - and seen at first hand the transformations that take place. I now work as an arts officer for West Sussex County Council and have made creativity in the early years a focus of my work. I think as well as creating work directly aimed at children, there is also a need to work with the parents and carers that children spend their days with so that they can support and not squash children's imagination, and also enjoy their own creativity. I hope that I use my role to create the spaces where this can happen.

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Permalink Reply by Tony Graham on March 9, 2010 at 10:54

This question - age and what's appropriate - is the devil of a question. It's always with us. It's here now more forcefully than ever partly because the traditional barriers (religious and social authority, family structures undermined) have been breached, partly because commerce has broken these barriers (what's now available to kids), and partly because our own role (writers, directors, producers etc) has grown and to some extent filled a vacuum. I sometimes wonder whether our age-o-meters (for shows) should forsake the traditional age spectrum and replace it with Inocence at one end and Experience at the other. And i'm not being entirely facetious. The point is that no single age is even internally consistent. Seven year olds are as various as fifteen year olds. Each age contains a range of wildly varying experiences. I once taught fourteen year old girls in the East End who were old before their time - world-weary, resigned to a life of drudgery, wise beyond their years. My own answer to this thorny question is to ask whether I am prepared to take responsibility for what we present on stage, what questions we ask, what imagery we reveal. Do we simply present material and then retreat? Are there ways in which we can offer a responsible framework (eg teaching resources, Q and As after the show etc.)? I do have a responsibility to younger audiences. But the fundamental responsibility is as an artist. Is the work substantial, poetic, emotionally engaging, and can it speak to our audiences? And while I always feel that the work has to speak for itself without qualification, there is nothing at all wrong about continuing a dialogue with our audiences either before or after a show. On the contrary. You say you'll enjoy getting their feedback. Well, precisely. And maybe this can happen while making the show rather than waiting until it opens. But we all know that it's rarely the young audiences who are the most exercised about all of this. What they demand of us is, above all, to be truthful. This is quite different from censorious, worried parents and teachers who are rattled by the moral vacuum bequeathed by late capitalism. If we are not challenging our audiences at some level then what on earth are we doing? And isn't it interesting that I suspect most wouldn't have a moment's doubt about taking their children/classes to an exhibition of Hogarth. Its proof once again of the power and life of live theatre.

Will Tuckett said:

Hello! I'm Will Tuckett and I am a freelance Choreographer and Director making a range of work for both children and adults. In recent years I've been more and more interested in making work for children and also families and have been based primarily at the Royal Opera House where i am Creative Associate for ROH2 for whom I make a lot of stuff mainly performed in the Linbury theatre but also in the Clore studio theatre...I have recently been making almost exclusively narrative work and dealing with dance, text and puppetry. Making work for me is all about collaboration and to be honest that doesn't change relative to an intended age of audience. I have however pondered that work for children needs to have possibly even greater rigour than work one might create for adults...adults might give you a bit more slack but children let you know how they're feeling pretty quickly!
I am currently in the middle of putting together a show which I am making in the Spring for teenagers based on the work of artist William Hogarth, which is a combination of dance and opera/song...Hogarth's work doesn't really pull any punches and so am currently in debate with various departments at the Opera House over what is and isnt appropriate for a 13 year old...a 15 year old! A 16 year old!!! To be honest it feels like a bit of a minefield albeit a fascinating one, and ultimately I keep coming back to the source material and its content in order to think what should or shouldnt be in the show...I have seen already that there is talk on this site about age ranges and what is and isnt appropriate and I must say that I constantly change what i think. Audiences can range so widely and context is of such importance...
Anyroad I really havent ever made anything with young adults specifically in mind before so am really looking forward to sitting down with a load of potential audience and getting their feedback as I make the piece.
Hopefully see the people who are already on here at the Wells and then look forward to meeting more people on this site- what a great idea and forum! Thankyou!!!

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Permalink Reply by Yvon Bonenfant on October 20, 2010 at 16:53

My work uses extended voice to reach across disciplines - the sonic moves into the visual, the tactile, the spatial. I am interested in developing sophisticated installation-style work for children that activates the voice and the haptic senses. This is a new departure in my work, though I have written and thought about the relationship between children and vocal freedom in particular, and its relationship to extended voice work and audience reception of it.

In particular, I am currently exploring ideas around the integration of video feedback technology, audio processing technology, live adult 'animators'/facilitators/actors and installation-style play environments for children to make work that responds to their bodies and that facilitates them enjoying shouting, singing, squealing, flapping, goofing, dancing, screaming, calling, etc. while actually being in a quite visually/spatially sophisticated environment that they, in part, control, arrange, and turn into architecture. This interest has come out of my current project Beacons.

This desire to make children's work is very much in the conceptual stage and I'd be interested to dialogue with anyone who takes a fancy to anything in this description and to learn more about others' work in this wide and exciting field.

My profile is at www.yvonbonenfant.com.

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Permalink Reply by David Harradine on October 22, 2010 at 16:45

Hi Yvon

It's really great to find you on here. The Future Playground is absolutely intended as a place where conceptual thinking can be extended into practical action, through debate and dialogue and exchange, so it's great to have an artist who talks in the way that you do about your work on here thinking about children. And well done for being the first person to use the word "goofing" on the site.

x

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