The Bemusement Artcade is a new community arts space in Ilkestone. We aim to run workshops and activities that engage the local community in positive social action through the arts.
We want the space to be used for and by the community and initially starting a series of “Talking Shops” where people can come along and share there ideas whilst exploring some of the things we have come up with already
An interactive touring Parliament that invites participants to explore issues that are relevant to their community. Unlike the adversarial style of politics we are used to seeing in the media and in PMQ’s, this workshop places a emphasis on finding commonality amongst participants, and through the use of interactive exercises, theatre and storytelling, we hope to develop ideas that can make a meaningful
difference to peoples lives and the paces they live.
Participants are presented with a story that reflects the issues that are happening in their locality. The story is brought to life by Actors. Participants consider the perspective of different individuals involved in the story. They are then asked “what needs to be done” in relation to the story. We use an exercise that refines the ideas down to three or four issues that are commonly agreed upon as being the main issues. We then create Three single issue political parties. Participants can join the party that they feel most strongly aligned to. In their parties people come up with A Bill that they would like to make an Act of Parliament. We debate the bills and put forward amendments. The final Act is chosen and people pledge the action they will take to make the change happen.
Anyone! We have developed this project with a broad range of people in a number of different communities. The Chamber has visited Cities, Towns, Schools, Prisons, and Universities. We have worked with people in business, homeless people, activists, offenders, Looked After Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities. We find that the more varied the experiences of people in the room then the more informative the debate. If needed we can focus the content on specific issues. We have been working with Warwick University and have delivered a series of workshops focusing on public perceptions of crime and criminal justice.
Join us on Saturday 12th of May, 2018 at the Central Hall in Coventry for an opportunity to debate and discuss political issues that concern you and your community, and for a chance to meet and interact with others who are passionate about Britain’s political life. The event, which is free of charge, will start at around 11am and will finish at 3pm and will include lunch.
During the course of the workshop, the participants will be invited to debate specific issues relevant to their constituencies and their own lives. They will be challenged and have to manage opposing views, lobbying and the difficulties presented by a parliamentary system. Our aim is to inform participants about the workings of the UK political and civic system, and to encourage them to reflect on their roles as members of British society.
No prior preparation is required, but you must be aged 18+. Participants will include a diverse range of residents in Coventry, Leamington and the surrounding region. Join us for a fun and informal exchange!
Details about The Chamber:
The Chamber is an immersive theatre workshop framed as an interactive game that invites players to take a seat in a fictionalised parliamentary chamber. Players-participants will start the game by reflecting on key social and political problems facing Britain. They will create some issue-based political parties of their own and will create characters and stories that represent their key voters. These characters and stories will be brought to life by actors. Each group of players will devise a Bill or a policy to support and influence their voters. These bills are debated and voted on. The winning party are those with the highest number of votes. Although fictionalised, the workings of The Chamber will be based as much as possible on the real workings of our Parliamentary democracy. This theatre-game experience promotes active citizenship and civic responsibility by placing players in the role of those with political power.
This workshop aims to:
The Chamber has been designed by Face Up Theatre in consultation with Rideout Arts for Rehabilitation and Derby Quad. The workshops are subsidised with funding from Arts Council England and a Creative Exchange collaboration between the University of Warwick and Coventry University. Face Up Theatre make work that engages all audiences in personal, social and environmental change. Our work encourages people to consider and question their own and others experiences, views and behaviour, inviting them to take steps towards making change possible.
Please book a place at the workshop by signing up here. If you have any questions please feel free to get in touch with:Dr. Anastasia Chamberlen, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick a.chamberlen@warwick.ac.uk or Twitter @a_chamberlen
We look forward to meeting you!
Ian Pringle – Artistic Director, Face Up Theatre
Saul Hewish – Director, Rideout Theatre
Dr. Mark Ryan – Law School, Coventry University
Dr. Henrique Carvalho – Law School, University of Warwick
Dr. Anastasia Chamberlen – Department of Sociology, University of Warwick
This short video we hope will give you a sense of how the presentation works and its impact on audiences.
“Amazing, the children and staff loved it!”
Sarah Holme, Belper School
“Every time i see the masks I learn something new, we have had the presentation for the past 4 years”
JD Price, Ibstock Place School
This highly engaging theatrical presentation invites audiences to explore and learn about their behaviour and the behaviour of the people around them. The Mask is a brilliant metaphor through which to explore all manner of complex personal and social issues. Children who attend this presentation will learn….
● How thoughts, feelings and beliefs impact on behaviour
● How to manage their own behaviours effectively
● How to best react and respond to other peoples behaviours
● How to challenge the behaviour and not the person
This presentation can be delivered to up to 100 children. There are follow up lesson plans available and we also offer workshops to extend learning for smaller groups.
This presentation has been used with Children in schools around the country but has also proved to be highly effective for training adults as well. The Masks have been used to train Police, Fire Officers, Nurses, Teachers and people in all areas of business.
We are offering this presentation at an initial introductory rate of £300.00 for all schools who book a presentation that is delivered before end of July 2018
This is an evaluation of the development phase of The Chamber. The main focus of this page is the evaluation of the Pilot Tour. We evaluated four distinct groups that we worked with, these were Sixth Form Students in main stream education, Undergraduate students, Prisoners and Looked After Children accessing alternative education provision.
Each group experienced a day long workshop that explored the process of Parliamentary democracy. The day focused on developing the skills and knowledge to effectively share and take action about issues that effect people in society.
We have created podcasts from each group that gives some qualitative feedback. We also did a pre and post workshop evaluation that focused on individuals likelihood of voting.
The Chamber is an immersive, one day, theatre-based workshop that invites participants to take a seat in a fictionalised parliamentary chamber. Each participant will be given a specific fictional constituency with information on budgets, demographics and needs within that constituency, they will also be assigned a fictional Political Party to represent. Although fictionalised, the workings of The Chamber will be based as much as possible on the real workings of our Parliamentary democracy.
This experiential workshop promotes active citizenship and civic responsibility by placing participants in the role of those with political power. During the course of the day the participants will be invited to debate specific issues relevant to their constituencies and their own lives. They will be challenged and have to manage opposing views, lobbying and the difficulties presented by a parliamentary system.
Our aim is to educate participants in the workings of the political and civic system within the UK and to invite them to consider their roles as individual members of UK society.
This workshops aims to…..
•Give realistic insight into the UK Political system
•Challenge individual perceptions of citizenship
•Develop active citizenship and civic responsibility
•Build confidence to share opinions
•Develop personal responsibility
•Develop decision making skills
•Improve communication skills
•Develop skills to manage conflict effectively
The Chamber has been designed by Face Up Theatre in consultation with Rideout Arts for Rehabilitation. The workshops are subsidised with funding from Arts Council England. The workshop is adaptable for all groups. We are working with a variety of groups including, School Children, Prisoners, University Students, Children in Care and Adults with moderate learning disabilities.
The Chamber is a one day, experiential workshop that promotes active citizenship and civic responsibility by placing participants in the role of those with political power. During the course of the day, those involved will be invited to debate specific issues relevant to fictional constituencies and their own lives. Participants will be challenged and have to manage opposing views, lobbying and the difficulties presented by operating within a parliamentary system.
Our aim is to educate particpants in the workings of the political and civic system within the UK and to invite them to consider their roles as individual members of UK society.
The workshop is available from the week commencing 13th November
Through participation in a range of drama-based activities and discussion we anticipate a number of benefits for participants:
• Development of active citizenship and civic responsibility
• Challenged individual perceptions of citizenship
• Increased confidence to share opinions
• Development of personal responsibility
• Development of decision making skills
• Improved communication skills
• Development of skills to manage conflict effectively
Facilitators: The Chamber has been developed by Face Up Theatre and will be facilitated in partnership with Saul Hewish from Rideout.
Derby-based Face Up Theatre is run by Ian Pringle. Ian is an actor, facilitator and mask maker, with many years experience of working with hard to reach groups including work in Primary and Secondary Educational settings, Ian is a associate Lecturer at Derby University.
Saul Hewish, director of Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) was a founder member, and former director of Geese Theatre (UK). He co-founded Rideout in 1999 and since that time the company have established a strong reputation for high quality arts-based work with hard to reach groups across Staffordshire and the West Midlands. Saul Lectures at Warwick University.
Cost: This workshop is subsidised by financial support from Arts Council England and is therefore offered at the significantly reduced cost of. Please contact us for more details.
WARNING – The following is my own personal opinion based on some cursory research and my own experiences. I hope by reading this you will feel compelled to contribute, comment and add to this conversation. I am happy for people to come up with alternative arguments or correct any misunderstandings on my part.
Can you name a Mask Theatre Company currently touring the UK?
There will be theatre aficionados in the UK that could probably reel off a handful of notable theatre companies in the that have existed in the past 40-50 years, but even these exceptional individuals would struggle to name many currently in existence. Trestle is still going strong but they haven’t made a mask show for a long time. Horse and Bamboo although still going they seem to focus more on puppets and community work these days. Strange Face are making work and the masks of their founder Russell Dean can be seen in the work of Vamos Theatre. These are great companies and their work is wonderful, if you get he chance then please check them out. A quick Google search will turn up a couple of Commedia Dell’arte Companies in the UK, Ophaboom and Old Spot Theatre can be found lurking.
However, thats not many.
Why?
Well I came to ponder this questions whilst being interviewed by Dr Yeliz Biber Vangolu, who is currently researching a book exploring contemporary mask theatre in the UK. What she discovered was that there isn’t many contemporaries at all. In fact the majority of Mask makers are quite old. It turns out that at 40 years of age I was one of the youngest she had spoken to. I am by no means a master craftsman, I can make a mask but not with the skill of experts such as Russell Dean, Mike Chase, Stephen Jon, Sally Brooks or the late great Ninian Kinnier-Wilson. Many of these makers trained with Donato Sartori the son of Amleto Satori the sculptor who worked with Jaques Lecoq and others to revitalise mask traditions. Both Donato and Amleto are no longer with us. These few individuals have probably made the majority of the masks that have been given life by some wonderful companies in the past five decades.
Masks are beautiful works of art in their own right and the wonderful artists listed above make some of the best. The process of making a mask is slow and laborious. To make one single mask from scratch will take the maker a number of days or even weeks. If you wish to take part in a extremely pleasing a therapeutic activity I suggest you make a Mask. Its great. Its not quick though and, if you wish to use a professional mask maker to make a set for your company, it is not cheap either.
Is it a financial issue?
Well its certainly a consideration. If you are a young company and you are struggling to find the funds to take your first show to Edinburgh, unless you yourself are a mask maker, you are unlikely to have the budget. Then there is not only the cost of making the masks there is the added dilemma of needing performers who can bring a mask to life a sustain a full length performance. If you are making a full mask performance then there is the added complication (if you see it that way) of making a show without words.
So is it an issue of training?
It seems to me that the system for training Actors in Drama Schools in the UK (or certainly England) is still very much biased towards some kind of text based work. Universities may have a slightly broader curriculum and tend to turn out more theatre makers/companies in the alumni, but still, if these students did spend any time working with mask it will have been very brief. Some do take their training further and perhaps go to other parts of Europe to study. Lecoq certainly uses mask in its training, most notably the neutral mask, but this is still more of a learning tool than a performance method in its own right. It seems to be the case that mask is not traditional form of theatre practised in most learning institutions.
No cultural tradition?
The use of Mask goes back thousands of years and appears to have be a very early form of cultural expression, a shamanic custom for many cultures. Traditional masks are still important in many parts of the world. Pick up any book on mask and the history of masks and you will find examples of traditional masquerade and theatrical masks in Africa, Japan, South America, and parts of Europe. You will not find anything for the UK. There probably has been some kind of mask tradition in the UK but it is not living now, and perhaps if and when it did exist it was killed of by our history of colonising and being colonised. Our theatre tradition is so influenced by Shakespeare and the whole idea of written drama that perhaps if there were mask shows in our past they were not recorded and therefore not passed on. Ironically there is much in the traditions of Shakespeare that likely was adopted from Commedia Dell’arte. Commedia is probably one of the strongest traditions of mask theatre and because of the nature of its plots being driven by the strong archetypal masks. Didi Hopkins has been educating and advocating the power of Commedia for a very long time in the UK. She has worked with the National Theatre and the RSC to bring Commedia to life on these big stages. However neither company actually went as far as asking its actors to wear masks! Im sure our pagan forefathers must have loved a bit of mask ritual when bringing in the seasons etc, in fact we can see some of this during Green Man Festivals and other pagan influenced celebrations. Perhaps it was Jesus who did for the mask in the UK?
Does it suit our culture?
If one attempts to define British culture then perhaps we could say we tend to be more cerebral than guttural. We like to (appear to) be high minded and in control of our emotions. We share some similarities with Japanese culture and yet there is no lack of Mask in their society. In fact one would imagine that for an inhibited culture such as ours we would be more inclined to mask. After all it gives the performer the opportunity to hide and set free some of there repressed desires. Theatre in the UK is certainly elite and anyone who says it isn’t just simply hasn’t looked at the audience of your average theatre venue. Its not for want of trying. I know theatres are desperate to broaden their appeal and get new audiences through the door, but it still isn’t working. Perhaps traditional theatres are not the place for mask. This makes sense if you consider the history of mask which in essence is a street/outdoor performance style. Interestingly one company that has been using mask successfully with its audiences since the 1980’s is Geese Theatre Company. They have found mask to be extremely successful with their audiences who, being mainly prisoners and people who are involved in offending, are far from your average theatre going demographic.
A problem of copyright and staging?
The relationship between the mask maker and the producing company is complicated. Often the maker is working freelance and is commissioned to make the masks. They, as the artist, hold the copyright for the masks. The company owns the physical object and is generally free to use them in their own work, but they are not at will to share them with other people, and certainly they could not sell them on without explicit permission from the maker. If the company were to pass on the masks to another company it would almost certainly be to produce a new piece of work and the maker would understandably feel like s/he was missing out on a new commission. It is unlikely that a new company would produce the same show as a previous company because most contemporary mask shows are devised by the company and, particularly with full mask, there is no written dialogue only a synopsis of the plot and technical/staging notes. In text based theatre it is pretty easy for a group to get the licence to produce a amateur performance of a play and the playwright will receive a small payment. This has never been the case for mask theatre. Whatever you think of amateur theatre it is often peoples first experience of performance and is therefore, I believe, hugely influential in terms of audiences expectations. Young small scale touring theatre companies currently tend towards making original work. I guess this is because they are working with an even smaller demographic of studio-theatre-going audiences. These audiences are probably made up of like-minded professionals and the more avant-garde, early adopter types who like to see the new ground-breaking work and also don’t mind take a risk and potentially wasting their money on a incomplete, incoherent, indulgent waste of air. These companies are also very interested in carving their own unique style. So for all of these reasons they are unlikely to re-stage an existing mask performance.
So what can we do?
Reducing costs? I am currently working with The Institute for Innovation In Sustainable Engineering, they are exploring the potential of laser scanning my masks and 3D printing them. Purists will reel at this, but perhaps there is the potential to use Computer Aided Design to create masks and then simply press print. In a way this has already been achieved by Steve Wintercroft with his amazing geometric masks.
As established above there is no traditional set of character masks of uk origin. I wonder whether a group of like-minded mask makers might make a set of masks that define British cultures and then make the designs of these freely available to any company that wishes to make them or print them. This might sound counter intuitive to some people, but perhaps we could learn from the music industry. Over the past couple of decades, musicians have recognised the benefit of giving their music away. The benefit comes from the process of developing new audiences. This is not applicable to just Mask Theatre but to the whole sector.
Perhaps funding could be found and theatre companies could bid for commissions to make work using the same set. Mike Chase ran an excellent mask festival in Stourbridge. Likewise Stephen Jon ran a very successful symposium on masks. I feel that a yearly mask festival such as these would certainly increase the likelihood of mask theatre being adopted by a younger generation of theatre makers. Perhaps such a festival would do well to encourage and financially support new British mask work?
What else? Let me know your thoughts and maybe we could make something happen…
