Andrew Breakwell looks back at over thirty years of theatre-in-education work in Nottingham.
Nottingham Playhouse Roundabout was created as a theatre-in-education company in 1973, although the Playhouse had programmed work for young people and run a wide variety of youth theatre workshops since its opening in 1963. The Roundabout?s remit was to tour schools with plays and interactive programmes that challenged the work of teachers across the curriculum. In addition, the company produced a main stage play for children. The provision was funded at that time by Nottinghamshire Education Committee and the Arts Council of Great Britain, and, like many similar organisations, provided the touring work at no cost to schools!
Over the past 32 years the company has continued to provide these services within a number of different administrative and funding contexts. In 1998, local government reorganisation resulted in a three-way funding partnership with Nottingham City Education, Nottinghamshire County Education and East Midlands Arts Board (now ACE). The remit was to tour work into schools, assisting with the delivery of the National Literacy Strategy, the Citizenship agenda, and the Personal and Social Education curriculum. By this time, the ability to provide this service for free had been lost, and a small charge per pupil was levied.
In 1999, the scope of Roundabout within the Playhouse was extended and a new strand of work developed. This theatre education programme aims to develop an understanding and appreciation of theatre as an artform within the context of lifelong learning, and to promote the development of current and future audiences for the Playhouse. That wider remit includes BRIT, the Black Regional Initiative in Theatre, which promotes a variety of initiatives to encourage the attendance and participation of citizens from the African-Caribbean community.
Roundabout still tours to schools within the City of Nottingham, throughout the county and much further afield. The plays aim to raise important issues of the time and operate on three levels. There are the educational theatre plays produced at ?studio theatre? level. These are fully staged plays by established writers, telling stories to engage the young audience, and performed to up to 120 pupils within their schools with sets, props, costumes and sound. Recent examples are ?Warrior Square? by Nick Wood and ?The Gardener ?by Mike Kenny. These productions are previewed to teachers, are accompanied by a resource pack to aid curriculum development, and may also be supplemented by post-show discussion or a simple workshop.
The company also produces ?mirror plays?, which reflect the themes of main stage productions and are offered as an audience development tool. These are often written by emerging writers, are simply staged, and are sometimes performed by members of the main stage cast. They are always accompanied by a post-show discussion and a simple set of resources; however, they are principally provided to enhance and deepen the experience of visiting the Playhouse to see the ?proper? play.
Finally, in the past three years, we have gone back to basics and developed a third strand of schools work operating within a classroom environment. This is very much a European style of theatre-in-education work for schools, and the most recent manifestation is ?Mia? by Nick Wood, a co-commission with our colleagues at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg.
?Mia? begins with the actor entering the classroom and explaining that she has been asked to wait there. The audience doesn?t know if she?s real. Eventually she explains what she?s doing there, and how she came to be in this country. She?s Roma, a gypsy, and she knows what they all think of gypsies. It?s a tale of asylum and refuge, and a quest. ?Mia? has played more than 130 times all over Nottingham and in Hamburg and Dresden, and soon there will be a number of other European versions. Roundabout offers it as a free performance to schools, funded through a separate funding stream, and co-ordinated by Networking Association of Voluntary Organisations. It has a positive, political message about racism and stereotyping, and sets out to change hearts and minds in the old coalfield areas of Nottinghamshire. There is training provided for co-ordinators from the schools, and a pack created by staff working at the Holocaust Education Centre in North Nottinghamshire. What the play and accompanying workshop require are the old-fashioned virtues of an actor/teacher. Someone secure in their role and character, but always monitoring the responses of the audience and engaging them eyeball to eyeball.
So what are the similarities, differences and changes that I?ve seen in the 35 years of making theatre for schools? There are very few free productions now ? and those that there are come with very specific criteria. Almost no-one produces work that takes place over an extended period of time, a whole day or even a half day. The quality of writing, design, direction, targeting and marketing is vastly improved, and much of the acting is excellent. There are now many companies performing for children and young people in a theatre context and many buildings that set out to be child friendly ? all positive developments. But I?m old enough to remember the 1977 Arts Council report that recommended a theatre-in-education company for children in every local authority (familiar enough in Europe, where they have purpose-built theatres in every major town!). Whatever happened to that aspiration? And the great dilemmas still exist. Who are the audience? Is it the children and young people or is it the parents and teachers who buy the tickets and book the performance? Is there an arts entitlement for the next generation and how do we ensure that it?s available to all our futures?
Andrew Breakwell is Director of Roundabout at Nottingham Playhouse.
w: http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk
