Scene - The Global Learner - June 2023

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Who was I before?

The global learner IN THIS ISSUE

Guild of the Goat and the Jangama Collective

Playful activism

Perseverance and the arts

Scene Staff Editor - Helen Abbott Design - Keriann O'Rourke Assistant Design - Anna Norriss Proofreader - Janet Schorer Proofreader - Emily Jane Grant Advertising - Tom Scott

ISTA Lakeside Offices The Old Cattle Market Coronation Park Helston, Cornwall TR13 0SR United Kingdom office@ista.co.uk

SUBSCRIPTIONS Digital copies of Scene are available through the ISTA Shop.

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Global learning through theatre

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CONTENTS 6

EDITOR’S NOTE

FEATURES

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CALL TO ACTION - THE CASE FOR THE ARTS IN A POST-COVID WORLD Alex Soulsby, Creative Director for Prem International School and their Artist Residency Thailand, examines the role the Arts play in our challenging world.

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ACADEMIC/THEORETICAL - IF ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE...

Professor Rosee Riggs examines the power structures that suppress creative potential and the strength of the ensemble.

60 INTERVIEW WITH MIKE PASTERNAK

A discussion on the development and attributes of the Global Learner.

LESSON PLANS AND UNITS OF WORK

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PLAYFUL ACTIVISM

77 STORIES AS STARTING POINTS

The power of stories and units of work for the whole school.

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FEATURES

GRIMM AND GRIMMER

YOUNG VOICES

Students from the International School of Geneva reflect on a recent project which saw 6 Grimm stories brought to life.

ARTISTS AND COMPANIES

28 PROFESSIONAL - GET OUT OF THE WAY Introducing Jangama Collective and Guild of the Goat and their work exploring the self and the world we live in.

CASE STUDY WHO WAS I BEFORE?

A participant’s reflection on a lifechanging experience working with displaced young people.

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DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION

PERSEVERANCE AND THE ARTS Introducing Nadia Albina, actor and advocate of greater representation for disabled performers within the industry.

SPOTLIGHT - JANE COULSTON Jane Coulston of Beyond Repair Entertainment reflects on a recent piece of work at Wakehurst Kew Gardens.

92 PATHWAYS - 5 MINUTES WITH DESTA HAILE

Artist Desta Haile answers our 5 questions.

ISTA RELATED

7 ISTA NEWS 8 THE ISTA APPROACH - THE ISTA GLOBAL LEARNER

Global learning through theatre

Officer- in-charge, Tom Scott, defines what attributes we aim to develop in the ISTA Global Learner.

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PROFILE - THE ISTA ARTS ACADEMY Introducing the ISTA Arts Academy, an independent playground where young people can come together to create and connect.

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Global learning through theatre

WHO WE ARE & WHAT WE DO The International Schools Theatre Association (ISTA) specialises in global learning through theatre.

We are a UK based charity, founded in 1978, providing transformative learning experiences for educators and young people worldwide. We create communities of learning, working closely with over 240 member schools around the world and we are the International Baccalaureate’s exclusive global provider of teacher training for Diploma Theatre.

We believe in the unique power of theatre and the arts to connect, develop, transform and empower people to become active members and change makers in their own communities and the world.

Click any of the links below for more information.

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Editor’s Note Welcome to June’s issue of Scene, the last for this academic year and one that completes a full cycle of our redesign. Over the last 12 months we have brought you Exploring the world through theatre, Theatre in the world, The world of theatre and now this issue, focusing on The Global Learner. Here we explore strategies and approaches for the development of the Global Learner and the role the arts can play both in growing key skills and in helping young people to be confident, compassionate and resilient human beings.

As the world changes at an astonishing speed and becomes increasingly interconnected, it is more important than ever that theatre continues to explore and question and help us to understand and engage with diverse cultures and perspectives. Inside you will find articles exploring how a theatre company can be a model for society, interviews with education experts, lesson plans exploring stories as a starting point for devising and profiles of theatre companies such as Guild of Goat whose work aims to bring new perspectives that reflect the complexity of our diverse world.

We also feature articles that explore the ways in which theatre can educate, inspire and empower educators and learners to become Global Learners. From Coney’s local community-based projects to ISTA’s international collaboration with Amala Education who work with displaced young people, theatre can be a catalyst for social change and a platform for myriad voices.

Helen Abbott Editor

I hope that this issue will inspire you and, as ever, please continue to share your thoughts and experiences with us and the whole community.

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New ISTA Membership offers

ISTA NEWS

ISTA has recently announced new and exciting Membership Offers for 2023-2024 as well as making improvements to the membership renewal process.

Highlights include: Tiered Membership offer now includes PREMIUM Membership level with additional discounts and benefits ALL Membership subscriptions now run 356 days from activation/invoice payment to allow members to choose an “ISTA Year” that works for their budgeting year.

Want to know more about Membership? Contact ISTA’s Engagement Manager, Vicki Close, to chat.

vicki@ista.co.uk Or click here to book a meeting

IB DP Theatre Student Handbook NOW AVAILABLE Written by experts to give students comprehensive coverage of the IB theatre guide, the Diploma Programme Theatre Student Handbook is a clear, practical and imaginative toolkit filled with practical activities and top tips for assessment. Providing students with everything they need for their IB theatre journey and reflecting a constructivist approach to teaching and learning, this title is intended to both supplement course delivery from a subject-specialist teacher and to help steer those students who are working independently.

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THE ISTA APPROACH

THE ISTA GLOBAL LEARNER TM

by Tom Scott

Director of Operations & Officer-in-Charge

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THE ISTA APPROACH From ISTA’s very beginnings, learners have been at the heart of what we do. We’ve always known that the young people we work with are unique and passionate and that ISTA is so beautifully placed to nurture their curiosity about the world through their love of theatre.

Forgive me for comparing them to something from a bakery, but one of our most recent goals was to think about what ingredients are needed to make the global learner. What qualities must they have and what must our provision do to ensure that we instil and continually reinforce these? After all, we are in a privileged position, one where we can nurture and guide them to be kind human beings, empowered to change the world responsibly.

Developed collaboratively with the ISTA staff team and support from our Board and Honorary Life Members, we developed a list of attributes.

Like much of ISTA’s work - this collective approach ensures what we create and offer is robust and meaningful.

Through transformative, collaborative and immersive experiences, ISTA uses theatre and the arts to explore the world and create interconnected global communities of learning while recognising the power of the individual. www.ista.co.uk

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This list is not exhaustive and we appreciate that the Global Learner will possess many more equally desirable qualities - but the list gives us a great focus and enables us to ensure we directly apply them and can evidence them at our events.

We know that theatre and the arts have the power to inspire our young people to be better humans. The soft skills we help develop serve them so well in later life, both personally and professionally. We see ISTA students start careers in a broad range of professions, many not arts related. It’s all good and well to say this www.ista.co.uk

though, but unless we can confidently prove that our events and services reinforce the qualities of the Global Learner, then it’s just another document that talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk.

'The ISTA™ Ensemble Method initiates the collaborative process bringing learners together, first as individuals and then working towards a cohesive ensemble.'

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THE ISTA APPROACH

What are the qualities of an ISTA™ Global Learner?

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CONNECTED

I connect to others, to my community, to the world and to myself.

COLLABORATIVE

I value diversity and recognise the power of working together with different people. I listen to and respect others while also sharing my own thoughts and ideas.

CREATIVE

I am imaginative, open to new ideas and possibilities. I use the arts to play, inquire, problem solve and develop new insights.

COMMUNITY MINDED

I am aware of local and global issues. I understand my community responsibilities and the importance of advocating or being a catalyst for change.

COMPASSIONATE

I am kind and empathetic, considering the feelings and perspectives of others. I am inclusive and I act to help others when help is needed.

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THE ISTA APPROACH

Why are ISTA events essential to developing the Global Learner?

Our events are full of opportunities to instil the qualities of the Global Learner. Listed below are just a few ways they do this:

CONNECTED We create transformational environments and opportunities that allow connections. From the moment our young learners, educators and artists arrive at an event, they connect. From that first ‘hello’, to the final sharing, every participant is making these connections.

They understand how they connect with the people around them, how they connect with the event focus or story and they also explore and learn about how they can connect with their community.

COLLABORATIVE The nature of an ISTA experience is collaborative. The ISTA™ Ensemble Method initiates the collaborative process bringing learners together first as individuals and then working towards a cohesive ensemble. A community of openness is built within the ensemble, allowing learners to share, reflect, listen and explore with those around them. They see the power of collaborative work as they move through the ensemble and full group sessions.

CREATIVE Each event is designed creatively, from the initial conversations with hosts we hold creativity at the heart of every event. Learners are encouraged to play, explore and question. Using the arts provides a framework in which they explore their curiosities, giving them a new creative perspective of the world. They pull on the threads of ideas to unravel another and they develop their own skills in creativity as well as supporting their ensemble to develop theirs.

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THE ISTA APPROACH

COMMUNITY MINDED ISTA events centre around the community. The community surrounding an event and within each ensemble. Events are all unique to their location and theme and ISTA works with school hosts to explore their community and how we can bring this into the event or work with them. The visiting learners often experience the local community through homestay or the cultural excursion and these then connect back to the festival theme and story. Time is also given so educators and their schools can explore how they may take their experiences and learning back into their own communities and what impact can this have moving forward.

COMPASSIONATE Learners are given the space to be kind and empathetic through ensemble work, learning from each other, discovering similarities and differences and working towards a shared experience. Learners are often naturally compassionate but through the festival experience they learn to recognise this attribute not only in themselves but in those they work with. We offer the environment that gives them tools to encourage this value and develop it so they have the confidence to be more compassionate in other aspects of their lives.

I am confident that this issue will be as inspiring as ever and help unpack and explore The ISTA™ Global Learner. ◾

Participants [can be] characterised as artist-learners; learning through art and making art through inquiry and play. This experience is identified by Bishop (2006) as fulfilling the triple purpose of participatory and interactive artistic practice: ‘activation, authorship and community’.'

Dinos Aristidou, 2019

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THE ISTA ARTS ACADEMY

In line with ISTA’s mission and vision, the ISTA Arts Academy is an independent playground where young people passionate about the arts can come together to create and connect.

by Anne Drouet

COLLABORATIONS / PARTNER PROFILE www.ista.co.uk

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COLLABORATIONS

Since 2014, the Academy has been hosted by the Western International School of Shanghai, WISS, the Hong Kong Academy and now it is moving to a new home at the Canadian International School of Hong Kong! Over the past eight years, students have collaborated to create their own work, responding to deep and meaningful stimuli.

Often, with an aim to inspire active compassion or to raise awareness for an issue close to the students’ hearts, our work helps students understand why they have to say and how they can deliver their message that will leave a lasting impression on an audience.

'WE STRONGLY BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF THE ARTS TO SPEAK OUT FOR THE VOICELESS.' 16

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COLLABORATIONS

Untold Stories At the Academy, we strongly believe in the power of the arts to speak out for the voiceless. To this end, we have collaborated with local charities and community groups to explore social issues and have also invited our students to look deep within to question their own values and beliefs.

We once held a 5 day event in collaboration with local charities Impact HK who help the homeless community of Hong Kong and Branches of Hope which advocates for the asylum seekers and refugees of Hong Kong. Our special guests shared their stories which in turn inspired our students to create drama, write songs, physical theatre to deliver an intense message to their audience.

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'TO SAY THIS WAS A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE WOULD BE A HUGE UNDERSTATEMENT.' Off the back of Untold Stories, students got together to create a student-led arts fundraiser to highlight the plight of those in need and this event is still a biannual event in Hong Kong five years later. In addition to performing, the students also learned how to edit the week’s worth of video footage to create short social media reels.

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COLLABORATIONS

Industry connections With an impressive board of patrons, our Academy welcomes industry professionals not only to deliver masterclasses and workshops but also to help connect young talents to the industry. It’s a great way to break down that mental barrier between our own world and that seemingly intangible professional world. Plus, when an award-winning professional tells you that you have a talent, students (and their parents) are much more likely to take it seriously than when hearing it from their teacher!

Image: Academy Alumna, Asha performing with our patron, Andy Summers (The Police)

What’s coming up?

There will be several weekend events for young people aged 11-18. Whether you’re into theatre, film, music, movement or visual art, we hope to have something special for you.

We are about to welcome a new patron….

With this new patron will come industry professionals who will bring a world of theatre magic to work alongside ISTA Academy Practitioners such as Dean Krawchuk, Juliette Simms, Anne Drouet and Darren Scully.

Click here to read more about our Arts Academy Practitioners.

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Click here to read more about our board of patrons.

'THE ISTA ARTS ACADEMY IS AN INDEPENDENT PLAYGROUND WHERE YOUNG PEOPLE PASSIONATE ABOUT THE ARTS CAN COME TOGETHER TO CREATE AND CONNECT' www.ista.co.uk

What alumni say about us

COLLABORATIONS

'The ISTA Academy helps you to develop skills that you can apply to life in general - from developing an open mind to collaborating with a wide age range of people.'

'I have learned so much more than Drama.

I have learned to collaborate, listen, explore ideas, let go of ideas and bring my very best to the process - for myself and for everyone else.' www.ista.co.uk

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What parents say about us 'Being part of ISTA has pushed my child even further in their ability to have empathy and understanding of others.'

'Their work got me so emotional. I realised all of these issues transcend, age, gender, culture and country and I think these are the root causes of so many problems in humanity. It's so inspiring seeing such young people get to the core of it so early on in life when many of us don't.'

'The students were able to express their feelings regarding the past 2 years, their struggles, their transitions.'

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Interested in getting involved?

COLLABORATIONS

The Academy welcomes theatre teachers and theatre makers to come to collaborate and play. If you are interested in working with young people using the ISTA pedagogy, please contact annedrouet@cdnis.edu.hk ◾

www.ista-hongkong.com @istaacademyhongkong www.ista.co.uk

All photos in this article provided by ISTA Arts Academy Hong Kong

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CASE STUDY

Geneva, Switzerland

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BY PETE HARRIS LINDOP

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CASE STUDY

An email that starts a journey taking artists and educators to Jordan to work with displaced young people. In this article Pete Harris Lindop reflects on how this experience has changed him.

The email reads ‘Staging our stories - handson training for working with refugees'. I have spent twenty five years searching for a way of uniting my passion for theatre-making with the desire to enable young people to be their boldest selves. Instinctively I sense something in this event will deepen my journey and provide the personal, creative nourishment through exploration of unknown territory that I suddenly realise I have been craving.

'For teachers and educational artists'.

A host of doubts creep into my mind: ‘What do they want us to do?’ ‘How do I stage the stories of displaced young people when I know nothing about who they are or what has happened to them?’ ‘What will our common theatrical vocabulary be?’

Weeks later I board the plane with a nagging fear that I will be given a group of displaced young people who then give me their stories like fragile, newborn children and then the entire ISTA team, the other artists as well as the young people themselves, watch as I spectacularly fail to deliver the creative goods necessary to honour these lives.

Laurie-Carroll Bérubé, a hugely-experienced colleague who is also travelling to the workshop from Geneva, tells me: 'The golden rule when working with anyone who has been displaced, is never ask them directly about what has happened to them.' I feel more out of my depth than ever.

‘How do I stage the stories of displaced young people when I know nothing about who they are or what has happened to them?’ www.ista.co.uk

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CASE STUDY

Day One

I am thrilled to see Sophie Galton and Dinos Aristidou who quickly release joy and play from us all before challenging us to share stories in response to the prompt: 'How I got here today'.

'Here'… is this to Jordan? To this room? This course? This moment in our lives?

and search for purpose in what we say to each other. Time speeds up and we have known each other for years… yet we have only been together for 30 minutes. We explore further prompts: 'I Was Told/Now I know' and discover structures within our memories, how to communicate who we have become and how shaping our stories enables us to tell them. And within an hour, we have discovered through play the essence of the entire workshop: The uniqueness of my story, yet how it enables me to discover what I have in common with those around me; how to tell stories through play; what happens when my memories are authentically listened to.

And so we are now listening to each other intensely, trying to make sense of this deceptively simple question. We all plunge into the bank of meaningful stories that is memory

This building is where the Jordanian branch of Amala, the organisation collaborating with ISTA, runs its courses: The first high school courses for displaced 16-25 year olds. They are intended

We gather in a cold, narrow room. There are 10 teachers from across the globe and we are told the students will arrive tomorrow. The energy is different from previous training courses – it is calmer, gentler and somehow seems kinder than I expected.

‘We all plunge into the bank of meaningful stories that is memory, and search for purpose in what we say to each other.’

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CASE STUDY

for young people who are otherwise unable to attend school. We meet Lamis, a Jordanian Palestinian woman who runs the centre. Tomorrow we will be joined by a group of up to twenty young students who have expressed an interest in working with us. There are eleven million people in Jordan; nearly one million are refugees and half of those are under 17.

WE GIVE SPACE FOR THE STUDENTS TO DISCOVER THE STORIES FROM THEIR LIVES THAT THEY WANT TO TELL, AND EXPLORE HOW THEY WANT TO TELL THEM. We continue to prepare for the next day, beginning to understand something more about our aims. We play collaborative partner games, many of which are familiar but Dinos and Sophie focus on how we can embody the act of ‘active listening’: Copying games, leading our partners, silently creating images.

We speak and move through each other’s voices and bodies. We reflect together: It seems we are to be neither teachers nor artists but rather to be facilitators, enablers, fellow participants and audience.

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Day Two The students arrive. There are now thirty of us. Dinos and Sophie galvanise us into collaborative play and we teachers are able to enjoy watching the new participants respond with overwhelming joy to the exercises. Dinos uses his reflection cards and I notice that the subsequent conversations quickly create a foundation of empathy for the entire project, removing barriers between teachers and students.

By coincidence, the prompt is 'Facing a challenge'. Partnered with Arafat, a student, I immediately become conscious that my 'challenges' are likely to be mundane when compared to his. Yet after our exchange, he grins and says: 'That’s so interesting! You and I have a lot in common!' I am struck by how these young people want to present themselves, not as refugees but as their complete selves.

Throughout the day we make images and explore what seems like hundreds of different ways we can share our memories.

It emerges that as well as enabling us to share, Dinos is setting up ways of 26

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deconstructing stories in order to understand how to tell them. He also offers a range of theatrical frameworks and ideas which they can use to tell their stories expressively.

Our roles as teachers are turned upside down as we do our best to support without imposing our ideas or stifling the students' enthusiasm. We give space for the students to discover the stories from their lives that they want to tell and to explore how they want to tell them. A (paraphrased) warning from Mike Alfreds rings in my mind throughout the day: LIVE HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT BLOCK CURRENTS OF CREATIVE 1 ENERGY!

Day Three We arrive and quickly begin to focus on the stories from yesterday.

Four presentational frameworks are offered and explored. Working in groups, we ask ourselves how to authentically present the story of another person as if it was ours. I realise that the telling of another person’s REFERENCE 1. Alfreds, Mike. Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor. Nick Hern Books, 2007. www.ista.co.uk

CASE STUDY

story is a form of advocacy which integrates the act of listening into the preparation of the telling.

We explore how we can live in each other’s stories and emphasise the presence and authenticity of the teller, rather than worrying about the 'best' theatrical way of performing it. The students then spend time alone in groups choosing and staging their stories.

The sharing that takes place that afternoon is one of the most extraordinary and poetic theatrical events I have experienced. The students have beautifully combined the techniques that they have been offered but have made them their own. We hear stories of displacement, of flight from conflict zones, of the loss of a loved one. They use movement, rap, multilingualism, choreography, chorus and image to communicate their memories of moments that transformed them. We all know how fortunate we are to witness this.

Who am I becoming now?

After days exploring stories of transformation, how have I transformed?

Who am I becoming now? We say our goodbyes with the unspoken acknowledgement that we had been lucky enough to touch the edge of a world of profound humanity. We search in the theatre for the truth of the individual and

here have been blessed to collaborate with a group of young people who seemed untainted by cynicism, hungry to share their humanity, their vulnerability, with others. I fly home elated by the rediscovery of stories as so much more than entertainment. Here we had experienced the sharing of ourselves through story as a moment of intimacy, of direct and sudden understanding of another being, as vulnerable and necessary an exchange as an embrace, a smile or touch.

‘How wonderful, how marvellous it is to be heard!’

I urge myself to remember to listen, listen, listen to those around me. I think of Chekov’s short story Anguish,2 about the poor, bereaved cab driver Iona and his desperate, futile searching for someone to talk to about the death of his son and how at the end, his horse is the only audience that will listen to him.

Chekov was training to become a doctor when he wrote it; here was someone who understood the healing potential of sharing our stories with others. As a teacher I marvel at the extraordinary ability for Dinos and Sophie to consistently enable the artist in us all with such apparent simplicity and how deftly they navigate moments where they guide and then quickly get out of the way to enable the young people to express themselves. How wonderful, how marvellous it is to be heard!◾

REFERENCE 2. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich and Cathy Popkin. 'Anguish.' Anton Chekhov's Selected Stories: Texts of the Stories, Comparison of Translations, Life and Letters, Criticism, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2014. www.ista.co.uk

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PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES

GET OUT OF THE WAY

India

BY LAKSHMANA KP AND RUDY

Introducing Jangama Collective and Guild of the Goat and their work exploring the self and the world we live in. Here Lakshmana and Rudy reflect on a project, ‘Song of the Ghetto’, which saw them collaborate together.

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1. By Rudy for Guild of the Goat In 2016 I began work on a play called Criminal Tribes Act.1 It started out as an investigation into an oppressive piece of colonial legislation of the same name. The play, however, quickly transformed into a long, hard look at myself and my place in the millenia old, homegrown system of oppression – the Indian Caste system — a system that the British merely 1 exploited using legislation such as the Criminal Tribes Act; an insidious system that continues to thrive even today.

The reason why our piece became so powerfully self-reflexive was rather simple (and shameful) – of the 3 of us collaborating www.ista.co.uk

PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES

to devise the piece, 2 of us were born privileged caste Hindus and the third was born a Dalit. Where I spoke of the legacy of centuries of British colonisation, Chandru spoke of the continuing legacy of millenia of colonisation by the privileged caste Hindus – by people like myself. I say shameful because for close to thirty five years of my life I had managed to live without ever even considering this. I thought of myself as a reasonably aware citizen of the world and surrounded myself with like-minded people who frequently made space in thought and conversation for the vital issues that confronted our world – climate change, gender, racism, decolonisation – but rarely (if ever) about caste and certainly never our complicity in it. And the reason I had never been forced to confront this was very simple – up until this moment, I had never interacted in any real way - as an equal - with anyone who did not come from the tiny band of privilege within which I had lived my entire life.

I went to a school in India much like the ones I imagine ISTA works with; I finished a BA at Delhi University followed by an MA in the United Kingdom; I returned to India in 2010 and have since been working professionally as a theatre practitioner. How was it possible that in all this time, the 400 million plus Indians who make up the most oppressed castes just hadn’t figured in my consciousness?

Once again, the answer was simple – ‘because of a project of unseeing that operates at every level.’ 2 People from these oppressed castes are almost entirely

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excluded from schools like mine (because of prohibitively high fees as well as social gatekeeping). Their stories were also absent in what I studied at school, in the news, the films I watched, the books I chose to read, the theatre I did or indeed among the people I chose to work with or call my friends. It is entirely possible in India to be born into a privileged caste and live your entire life without ever having to encounter anyone outside of that privilege, except for the people working to service your every need.

‘Their stories were also absent in what I studied at school, in the news, the films I watched, the books I chose to read, the theatre I did, or indeed among the people I chose to work with or call my friends.’

Guild of the Goat is endeavouring to change that. As privileged class/caste theatre practitioners, throughout our careers, Amba and I have had easy access to capital – economic and social. As a result we have

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PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES

been able to create the work that we wanted without hindrance, perform it at premiere venues and have audiences willing to turn up and pay to watch our work. We now realise that our successes are, in large part, a direct result of this privilege. In addition, the people we work with as well as our audiences have almost entirely belonged to the tiny circle of privilege within which we have so comfortably existed. We want to change that.

One way of course, is to make a concerted effort to make our work more accessible (cheap/free admission, performing in non-elite spaces etc.). Far more important however, we believe, is to get out of the way. How can we use the economic and social capital that we have at our disposal to facilitate the creation of work by artists and practitioners who come from the most marginalised backgrounds? How can we help make mainstream the people and the stories that have been actively excluded and obscured from our cultural experiences?

Song of the Ghetto – a project conceived and executed entirely by our friends and colleagues at Jangama Collective (supported by Guild of the Goat) – is the beginning of our journey to help support that change.

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‘Slowly they started to share stories and songs of their desires, rage, injustice, pain, love, happiness.’ www.ista.co.uk

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2. By Lakshmana KP, as told to him by Chandru for Jangama Collective.

I met Santhosh for the first time when he was playing the role of Dr B. R. Ambedkar in 4 a play called Baba Saheb Ambedkar produced

by Janamadata.5 I was playing the role of his assistant Nanak Chand Rattu.

Almost 10 years later in 2021, I came across a story in the newspaper and on television 6 about Untouchables (Dalits) of Dindagur entering the temple in their village. This is the village Santosh was from and he was at the forefront of this temple entry movement.

I had been there several times and now the whole village was becoming a burning ground. An Untouchable entering a temple is a crime, a sin, according to Hindu scriptures held so dear by privileged caste Hindus.

I was scared because I knew what Santhosh was doing could be life threatening for him but at the same time, I was extremely proud because he was doing what I was not able to in my own village. I continued to follow the

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case and after a lot of struggle, Santhosh and his community managed to enter the temple with legal and police support. But the story does not end there. This act by the Dalit community of Dindagur – an exercising of their constitutional right – left the privileged caste Hindus enraged. As retribution they boycotted the untouchable community by denying them work, not talking to them, even preventing their children from playing together.

When I spoke with Santhosh on the phone, I could clearly hear in his voice the trauma that he and his community had to go through. I shared this with the members of my group – 7 Jangama Collective. We spoke to Santosh and expressed our solidarity toward his cause. We also felt that perhaps there was something we could offer. Utilising our skills and training as theatre practitioners, we wondered if we might be able to engage in a cultural intervention, creating space for the

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community to heal and gain their confidence again. I shared this whole story and the idea with my friends at Guild of the Goat and in March 2022, I went to Dindagur, just to witness and listen.

Over the course of my time in Dindagur, spending day and night there, I met people from all age groups – from small kids to the oldest men and women of the community in their seventies and eighties. I would go to their houses in the morning, chit-chat with them about their life and their work and request them to come for the theatre workshop in the evening at the community centre in the Dalit ghetto. People started to gather there every evening and at first we just had a lot of fun playing together. Slowly they started to share stories and songs of their desires, rage, injustice, pain, love, happiness. I could see them grow larger, beyond their given identities, like their caste or gender. Being one among them, coming from a similar caste background myself, I realised how we just never hear any of these stories in mainstream theatre forums.

Slowly, over the course of a month and a half, I helped shape these stories, songs, poetry into a performance. Timmayya, one of 32

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‘How can we use the economic and social capital that we have at our disposal to facilitate the creation of work by artists and practitioners who come from the most marginalised backgrounds.’ the elders in the group, knew many songs from the DSS 8 anti-caste movement in Karnataka.

He had been a part of the movement and learnt many of these songs of resistance. He would share and teach these songs to the whole group and eventually these songs became the structural spine of the performance.

The privileged castes in the village boycotted the performance but we streamed it live on Facebook and noticed that they secretly logged on to watch it from their homes. Their children certainly were drawn by the magic of the performance and would come and watch.

We played multiple shows in Dindagur as well as the neighbouring villages and in Bangalore.

This was the beginning of the Song of the Ghetto project. Over the course of the next couple of years we hope to replicate this project in many more villages across Karnataka. If you wish to support the Song of the Ghetto in any way, please do get in touch with us.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ABOUT SONG OF THE GHETTO PROJECT www.ista.co.uk

PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES Jangama Collective is a Bangalore based group of theatre artists with diverse cultural backgrounds who believe in creating cultural and political awareness, choosing theatre as their way of expression. As an extension of this, the group has engaged itself in creative processes like education, literature, publishing, cinema and social struggles.

Jangama Collective on Facebook Guild of the Goat is a theatre company founded

by Amba Suhasini K Jhala and Rudy. We create work that we hope makes both you and us question ourselves and this world that we inhabit. We also hope to facilitate the creation of work by diverse practitioners reaching ever more diverse audiences.

Guild of the Goat on Instagram Chandrashekara Kempaiah is a Bangalore based theatre actor and theatre maker. He is a graduate of Ninasam Theatre Institute, Heggodu, Karnataka after which he received his MA from Bangalore University.

His appearances include Japanese playwright Shogo Ohta’s ‘The Water Station’ (director Sankar Venkateswaran, Kyoto, 2016) which was presented at Kyoto Experiment: Kyoto International Performing arts festival, solo performance 'Udal Uravu' (director Sankar Venkateswaran, Kochi, 2017) and 'Indian Rope Trick' (director Sankar Venkateswaran, Kyoto, 2020). He has performed in various venues and festivals around the world including Zurcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich, Switzerland), Theatrefestival SPIELART (Munich, Germany), ZOUKAK Sidewalk (Beirut, Lebanon), Theater Commons Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan) and National Arts Festival (Makhanda, South Africa). He has also acted in a number of Kannada films, one of which 'Mahasamparka' (director Santosh G.) received Best Short Film award at Bangalore International Short Film Festival in 2017. ◾ www.ista.co.uk

REFERENCES 1. Criminal Tribes act is directed by Sankar Venkateswaran, performed by Chandrashekara Kempaiah (Chandru) and Rudy. The play is written and devised by Chandru, Rudy and Sankar.

2. Quoted from Criminal Tribes act.

3. Lakshmana is a Jangaman Collective member and was invaluable in helping to conceive of the project.

4. The play was written by Mukund Rao and directed by Ganesh M. 5. A theatre collective based in Heggodu, Shivamogga 6. Dindagur is a village in the Hassan district of Karnataka.

7. Jangama Collective is a Bangalore-based group of theatre artists with diverse cultural backgrounds choosing theatre as their way of expression.

8. DSS - Dalit Sangharsh Samiti is an anti-caste organisation founded in Karnataka in the 1970s.

Their stated goal is to 'emancipate and free the Dalits from socio-economic and cultural exploitation through non-violent means.'

'DSS’s strong support and vision for tens of thousands of Dalit students across the state enabling them to spearhead the struggles for reservation, for hostels, for amenities, and for employment opportunities. This work singularly led to the never before seen emergence of a new class of educated Dalits in Karnataka.'

(Reject caste, Reject sect, Give life to humanity! — The Dalit Sangharsh Samiti by Ashwini KP for dalithistorymonth.medium.com) SCENE

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CALL TO ACTION

BY ALEX SOULSBY THAILAND www.ista.co.uk

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CALL TO ACTION

Alex Soulsby is a creative education specialist and the Creative Director for Prem International School and their Artist Residency Thailand programme.

Here he argues that regular engagement with the Arts is key to nurturing the skills required to tackle the increasingly complex challenges we face as a species.

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So with very few international exceptions, it seems like the pandemic is over and it’s back to normal for educators. Masks gone, testing over, lock down threats a thing of the past and faceto-face learning in place for the vast majority of students and teachers. Zoom has all but been pushed to one side and for the fortunate, the main visible legacy is an ongoing battle with post lockdown waistlines, dietary habits and our relationship with the local gym.

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CALL TO ACTION It’s true that not everybody was prone to developing a ‘pandemic paunch’ during Covid restrictions. For many, Covid helped us recognise that nurturing a love of exercise (for example) is particularly useful in coping with lockdowns.

Other than the obvious benefits exercise and sport provides, engagement with sport in schools is about more than producing potential athletes. Nelson Mandela said that: 'Sport has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand.’

That broader philosophical message combined with the knowledge that our quality of life is improved through regular exercise, is understood by most contemporary educators but that wasn’t always the case.

I remember my PE teachers yelling in an attempt to make us run faster on a track or be more aggressive on a field. My physical education at school was borne out of a lack of imagination and there was little or no focus on engendering a love of exercise. Moreover, there was no sense that in addition to having transferable skills, like many subjects, PE also had transferable benefits. During Covid-19 many of us had to delve deep into our own tool kits in order to find ways to cope, often evaluating where we might fall short and where we may need to grow or adapt. With the world still facing so many challenges and with humanity racing to find ways to rise to address climate change, the cost of living and the impact of regional conflicts, I wonder how our schools can better serve some of these needs and current priorities.

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Throughout some of the darkest times in history, making art and having a creative outlet have been beacons of light that punched through some of mankind’s most difficult moments.

In a recent conversation with the philosopher, author and broadcaster Nigel Warburton, we set about identifying the key ‘post pandemic skills’ that we felt would best equip humanity if and when we find ourselves in a similar situation again. Critical thinking, an altruistic attitude and a deeper understanding of the role of the arts in times of crisis were the 3 areas that we settled on.

To be more specific, the transferable skills of identifying fake news and information, prioritising the needs of others and understanding how to engage meaningfully with the arts as a way to express and seek understanding are likely what will help us all navigate the next crisis. No, binge watching Netflix was not what we were referencing.

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CALL TO ACTION

‘DURING COVID19, MANY OF US HAD TO DELVE DEEP INTO OUR OWN TOOL-KITS IN ORDER TO FIND WAYS TO COPE, OFTEN EVALUATING WHERE WE MIGHT FALL SHORT AND WHERE WE MAY NEED TO GROW OR ADAPT.’ 38

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Throughout some of the darkest times in history, making art and having a creative outlet have been beacons of light that punched through some of humankind’s most difficult moments. Just as we don’t all exercise to become competitive athletes, spending time making art and being creative in one way or another isn’t just about producing professional writers, musicians, painters or actors. When we are thinking and creating through the arts we are nurturing our ‘whole selves’, developing our ‘inner worlds, getting a better sense of who we are and a better understanding of how we connect with others.

But if we can easily make the case for finding a love of exercise through sports engagement, is there not a similar case to be made for prioritising the role of the arts in schools simply because of the wide ranging and essential benefits they provide for our young people?

Asked last year what schools need to prioritise post pandemic, Jonothan Neelands, Professor of Creative Education at Warwick University, United Kingdom, responded: ’Compassion, empathy, tolerance, highly interpersonal skills and respect for difference should be central tenets.’ More importantly he emphasised that the development of these skills cannot be achieved through

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CALL TO ACTION

‘Could it be that regular engagement with the arts are key to nurturing the skills required to tackle the increasingly complex challenges we face as a species?’ the basics of literacy and numeracy alone. I would argue that if this is the case, then it is the Arts that need to take centre stage in schools so as to develop the types of human beings that can both recover and thrive in a post pandemic world. I am not making the case that our schools need to focus on populating the world with athletes and artists (although it might not be a bad idea) but as we look back at this crisis, we need to think carefully about what we want our ‘new normal’ to look like.

We should be mindful that it is through being makers, audience members and aspiring artists that we develop essential skills and habits, the central tenets that Neelands describes.

One of the vital questions that schools should be asking themselves right now is this; ‘If we are not going to prioritise developing the skills that Warburton and Neelands point to via centralising the Arts in our education systems,

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then what alternative tools are better suited?’

Perhaps more importantly, we should all be asking just how great are the risks and consequences of treating an Arts education in 2023 the same way as my physical education was treated in 1991? Could it be that regular engagement with the Arts is key to nurturing the skills required to tackle the increasingly complex challenges we face as a species?

Quite possibly. And are many educational leaders simply ignoring the wealth of evidence that supports the case for centralising them in schools? Almost definitely.

So for those of us who do understand the transformative and empowering nature of the Arts in our schools and the vital skills they engender in children and young people, simply put, what are we going to do about it? ◾

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PROFILES

PLAYFUL ACTIVISM

BY TOBY PEACH United Kingdom 40

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How much power do you have to change your world?

What power do the arts have to help facilitate that?

Can play be a tool for change? www.ista.co.uk

PROFILES: CONEY

Over the past 6 years, Coney has been evolving how we work with young people and discovering what our offer is to the young people in our local borough, Tower Hamlets, London. We’ve made projects that have taken place in the streets, online during the pandemic and outside car industry gala dinners, all of these focused on listening to the passions of our young people, what they want to change in the world and giving them the tools to speak to those who they want to reach. This practice we now call Playful Activism.​ We introduce this practice through our Young Coneys Training Programme, our local youth programme – a free workshop series for Year 5 classes focusing on youth empowerment and social change, in partnership with six primary www.ista.co.uk

schools across Tower Hamlets.

The programme explores, over three Levels, how we can use art as a tool to impact others through the act of giving a ‘gift’. We begin with focusing on a space where they may feel they have more agency, the classroom in Level 1, before moving into looking at making something to impact the whole school in Level 2. In Level 3 they move away from the comfort of their school and look at how we can influence their wider community with a piece of art.

With the young people who finish this programme we develop new pieces of work that can often be seen as pieces of Playful Activism, looking to spark change through play. Here are three examples of Playful Activism: SCENE

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PROFILES: CONEY

CODENAME: VIOLET

Photo by Greenpeace

A special project in collaboration with Greenpeace to create a playful intervention at a car industry gala.

Created with the Young Coneys, we turned up as Junior Doctors who played a series of games with guests to spark a conversation on air pollution in the United Kingdom. More on this project, and a great video, can be found here.

CODENAME: PANCAKE A phone adventure for families to play on their walk home from school, exploring what the neighbourhood looks like to 10 year olds. Connecting the 2 primary schools, which the young people we were working with go to and covering the changes the young people wanted to see.

CODENAME: PADDINGTON An adventure map where families head out to explore the green space of Weavers Fields, to find signals coming through from 2050 from people who were 10 in 2022, with messages about the changes they have seen in the future and how we can act now to stop them happening.

Young Coney's Logo

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PROFILES: CONEY

We also use this practice in our wider engagement with young people and in 2020-2021, Coney partnered with the Barbican, Harlow Playhouse and HOME on the Barbican Box initiative, to make a playful educational resource for schools in Manchester and Harlow.

The Playful Activism Box is a portable box filled with the ingredients for making and creating original artistic work, inspired by Coney’s Playful Activism practice.

Coney’s box is a portal to a Secret Agency.

Membership of this offers students the opportunity to be upskilled in making the art they want to make, using their unique superpowers. These skills are used to codevise a playful intervention in schools, all about the issues and experiences the students are passionate about. Our approach focuses on encouraging young people to care for others, their school environments, and themselves. The process is focused around the creation of a ‘gift’, a piece of art for a specific audience to have a designed impact on them, exploring how our art can influence systems in our worlds.

We created a digital platform where the students could interact with the support of their teachers. Inside the mysterious box (for which you had to find secret codewords to unlock) is a variety of games and playful interactions for young people to respond to and explore. Teachers and artists worked together to develop ways to deliver the project with impact, in a way that worked for their schools.

This original concept was focused on exploring mental health and wellbeing with students and we are currently developing a new model with Greenpeace exploring Playful Climate Activism.

‘Our mission is to spark change through play…’ www.ista.co.uk

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PROFILES: CONEY

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‘The playful activism of Coney not only remains within the space of the workshop but makes the connection with the outside world’

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PROFILES: CONEY

A deeper exploration of the methodology behind Playful Activism Elvira Crois, Arts education researcher and friend of Coney, writes on Coney’s practice of social change through play:

Unravelling Tacit Participation Strategies of Arts Education via Game Mechanics

by Elvira Crois (VUB) & Free De Backer (VUB) Today, we want to tell you about playful activism – playful activism as a type of Arts education.

We will focus on the practice of a British theatre collective named Coney.

This theatre collective develops participatory and game-based work and actively uses the term ‘playful activism’ to talk about some of their work.

By looking at their practice, we unravel the ways in which they use game mechanics (or the mechanisms of game rules) to incite a sense of agency in their participants and how such sense of agency contributes to a sense of belonging.

Playful activism is a specific type of creative activism.

It is activism that uses play as a tool to explore social change.

Not via playful messaging, but by inviting audiences to participate and play.

They devise activities that invite audiences to engage with

Playful activism brings together

societal issues, each other, and their environment.

(1) methodologies of play and (2) expertise in participatory performance for the purpose of social change.

Thus, it is not simply about ‘playfulness’, which is an attitude that refers to the infusion of characteristics of play into non-play activities (Sicart 2014, 22).

Such playfulness can, for example, be found in messaging developed through a playful approach or playful tactics in a protest. www.ista.co.uk

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PROFILES: CONEY

Playful activism is about ‘play’, which is an activity and refers to the actions performed within a game context.

Considering play as an activity, playful activism refers to games and play settings that are used for activist purposes.

These can, for example, be participatory performances or arts educational workshops.

The term ‘playful activism’ is most notably used by the British theatre collective Coney.

Both in their work with adults and children, they use strategies from participatory performance to allow audiences to explore themes ranging from climate change, such as their upcoming project with Greenpeace, to surrogacy, e.g. the game The Surrogacy Act (2021) (Mees 2011).

A recent addition to Coney’s repertoire is the Barbican Box, for which Coney collaborated with the Barbican to develop a remote arts educational intervention for schools.

To get a sense of their work, it is useful to look at a video of the project:

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

The Barbican Box is a first good example of how Coney uses game mechanics to activate participants.

Game mechanics are the mechanisms of a game, drawn up from the rules, that make a variety of actions possible.

In a way, we could look

at the dynamics as the dynamics

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between rules and its game mechanisms and the actions of the participants between strategy and tactics.

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PROFILES: CONEY

The strategy is the general game plan and the tactics are the mobile actions that move on, with, or against the general playfield of strategy.

The play activities devised by Coney are systems, i.e. systems that set boundaries (or horizons of participation) that frame action, delineate action but also give rise to action.

Their work invites participants to step into a play frame and probe their agency at this micro scale their agency, which is

the ability to take action, the ability to choose and the subsequent outcome of choice (Breel 2017).

Teachers and artists worked together to develop ways to deliver the project with impact, in a way that worked for their schools.

As you have seen in the video, the playful activism of Coney not only remains within the space of the workshop but makes the connection with the outside world via ‘gifting’.

In other words, they make the connection between

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the micro play world and the societal world at large.

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PROFILES: CONEY

The participants are prompted to explore their local environment via a reconnaissance mission via which they get a sense of how different people and different ecologies are connected to each other and affect each other and impact each other.

Then, using their mundane superpowers, the players develop a gift for (someone of) their local community or school.

The players are awakened to possibilities beyond themselves and learn how their agency – even on a micro level – can impact their surroundings.

At an even more minute, nano scale, Coney uses a simple game to awaken people’s agency via game mechanics.

This is present in the way, for example, Toby Peach – associate director of Coney – shows players of a game what it is to change game mechanics.

According to Toby, when learning to change the world of a play space, players are imbued with a sense of agency.

This can be explained by means of the game Roast the Aubergine.

In this game, the participants sit on chairs placed in a circle.

One person sits in the middle of the circle, on a stool.

The person in the middle is ‘the aubergine in the oven’.

The people sitting around are ‘the cooking team’.

The aim is to roast the aubergine (i.e. the person in the middle); This is possible by heating up the oven to 200 degrees.

The cooking team heats up the oven by swapping seats.

The aubergine tries to get out of the oven by trying to occupy an empty chair of the swapping participants.

If the aubergine succeeds in sitting on a chair in the circle, they become part of the cooking team.

The person who lost their chair becomes the aubergine.

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© Elvira Crois

PROFILES: CONEY

© Elvira Crois

So, how do changing the game mechanics come into play here?

After playing a first round, Toby would ask the players: “What makes a game fun?

What makes this game fun?

Which rules are present that contribute to the fun?

Can we invent a new rule that possibly makes this game even more fun?”

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PROFILES: CONEY

He focuses on how the game mechanics impact

one’s experience and the modes of conduct between players.

Then, the players decide together on a new rule and try the game with the new rule.

Such a new rule could be: ‘If one participant lifts their butt, everyone of the cooking team needs to leave their chair and find a new chair to sit on’.

This means that when someone from the cooking team accidently lifts their butt, the aubergine has more chance to become part of the cooking team.

It could also mean that if someone from the cooking team wants to help the aubergine, they could lift their butt intentionally.

After playing the game with the new rules, Toby would ask the players again how they experienced the game and what it means for the group dynamics to have different rules.

Thus, Toby makes explicit how – otherwise tacit – rules impact modes of conduct.

The participants are thus not only invited to develop their own tactics within the rules – such as making sure they have eye contact with another player before changing seats.

They are equally invited to reflect upon and create their own game mechanics.

Throughout the play activity, players become familiar with the game mechanics of a frame, with the possibilities it offers as well as its limits.

Via this process of getting acquainted, players can absorb what makes sense to them, imagine their own principles, and apply the change they want to see.

Coney invites the participants to reclaim the frame as a space of possibility.

They offer a context for experiment ‘where one can practise at low risk, where the pace can be slowed down, and where iterations and variations of actions can be tried’ (Crois 2022).

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PROFILES: CONEY

By realising that they can play with the game mechanics, the players learn about the ways in which such rules affect modes of conduct.

They learn about the impact.

They learn about agency, i.e. agency within – about the tactics they use within the horizon of participation to win – but also agency by moving the strategy – about how their tactics can be embedded in the game mechanics and move the horizon of participation – They also learn about ‘contributory justice’ (Mills et al. 2016), which is about what a person is allowed to contribute or actually gets to do and which recognizes that people who have a greater sense of agency will contribute more easily to their surrounding world (Breel 2017; Goessling et al. 2021; Ploof and Hochtritt 2018).

Thus, Coney supports agency by finding meaningful action within play and through play.

They focus on agency on the micro scale of the play world with the intention to trigger the feeling within the players that they can replicate this in the outer World, to trigger the feeling of agency in their own social setting, to incite the possibility of contributory justice in their social setting, and to improve their overall sense of belonging.

REFERENCES 1. Breel, Astrid. 2017. ‘Conducting Creative Agency; the Aesthetics and Ethics of Participatory Performance’. PhD thesis, Kent: University of Kent.

2. Crois, Elvira. 2022. ‘Worldmaking: Crafting Cultures With and For Young People’. Online Assitej Magazine, 2022. https://magazine.assitejonline.org/2021-22/worldmaking-crafting-cultures-with-and-for-young-people/.

3. Goessling, Kristen P., Dana E. Wright, Amanda Claudia Wager, and Marit Dewhurst. 2021. Engaging Youth in Critical Arts Pedagogies and Creative Research for Social Justice. New York: Routledge.

4. Mees, Annette, ed. 2011. ‘Art Heist, 2010: An Interactive Adventure by Coney’. In Museums at Play: Games, Interaction and Learning, 84–94. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc. 5. Mills, Martin, Glenda McGregor, Aspa Baroutsis, Kitty Te Riele, and Debra Hayes. 2016. ‘Alternative Education and Social Justice: Considering Issues of Affective and Contributive Justice’. Critical Studies in Education 57 (1): 100–115.

6. Ploof, John, and Lisa Hochtritt. 2018. ‘Practicing Social Justice Art Education: Reclaiming Our Agency Through Collective Curriculum’. Art Education 71 (1): 38–44.

7. Sicart, Miguel. 2014. Play Matters. Playful Thinking. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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PROFILES: CONEY

CONEY Coney are a collection of makers creating interactive theatre, games and adventures where people can choose to take a meaningful part. Our mission is to spark change through play, always following the principles of adventure, curiosity, and loveliness. Our work takes place anywhere that people gather, in theatres, schools, museums, on the streets and online.

Everything we do is inspired by the belief that the world can be a magical place where ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Collaboration and dialogue are at the heart of our work: with audiences, peers, partners, and a network of makers. We’re more like a building-less theatre building than a theatre company, drawing teams from a wider network, and landing across the country and the world – using pervasive digital technology to meet people wherever they connect.

For the last few years, we have created projects for a broad array of partners, from schools across the UK to arts and heritage

www.coneyhq.org

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organisations (Barbican, The National Trust), NGOs (Greenpeace, Teenage Cancer Trust), universities (Bath Spa, Birkbeck), research institutions (UKRI, NERC), local authorities and front-line services (City of London Corporation, Wandsworth Probation).

Toby Peach is an Associate Director at Coney, where he leads the Young People & Families programme. He makes work that lands worldwide; in schools, in heritage spaces & in digital spaces.

Elvira Crois is a postdoctoral researcher in arts education at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Their research focuses on aesthetics of audience participation, performer training, and participatory strategies for social change.

Free De Backer is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research and teaching focus on arts and cultural education, and on participation in various learning environments at different ages. ◾ All images are courtesy of Coney

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A C A D E M I C

T H E O R E T I C A L

IF ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE...

THEN A THEATRE COMPANY CAN BE A MODEL FOR SOCIETY

BY ROSEE RIGGS www.ista.co.uk

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ACADEMIC / THEORETICAL

In this article Professor Rosee Riggs examines the power structures that suppress creative potential and the strength of the ensemble.

When I was a young director there were almost no women as role models in the Germanspeaking theatre world. Indeed there was very little diversity on or beyond the stage. Theatres were governed by older, white men who often misused their power to get what they wanted

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by terrorising people into compliance. There was little recourse against insults, threats and sexual harassment.

Luckily now we are gradually inching our way towards more inclusivity. Too slowly, but nevertheless awareness is growing among younger generations which is encouraging. Of course there is still much more to be done. Not only should theatre become an arena more representative of the broader society in terms of casting and administrative staff, we also

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ACADEMIC / THEORETICAL

need new stories to encapsulate differing and

consciously asked myself what I could do to

various human experiences.

contribute to a culture where everyone is valued just as they are and at their own stage of

It is plain to see that we need new models of

personal and artistic development. How to

working together to produce good work. As a

model a space where everyone’s creative ideas

microcosm of society, wouldn’t we also

are equally valuable, even if they don’t

potentially be modelling a better world? One of

necessarily prove equally useful for the project

the central problems of human history has

in the end. The important thing is to empower

been the perception of the relationship

everyone to make a contribution. After all,

between the individual and the group. In our

being

western

productive is fundamental to the practice of

world

in

particular,

we

have

internalised the competitive, win-lose model.

liberated

to

become

creatively

every art form.

‘I consciously asked myself what I could do to contribute to a culture where everyone is valued.’

The results are capitalism, colonialism, wars

As a Professor of Acting at the famous Max

over resources, ambition for power and its

Reinhardt Seminar, which is the Institute for

misuse, exploitation and sadly, old fashioned

Acting and Directing at the University of Music

'dominion-over’

and

and Performing Arts in Vienna, my primary task

teaching. This can bring with it an over

has been to teach our 1st year students the

emphasis on ‘me, me, me’, which we find

basics of acting technique and building

strenuous and increasingly isolating. It also

dramatic scenes. I decided to make a strong

means many people’s creative potential gets

ensemble

lost in the race to the top of the hierarchical

constantly present while the students honed

construct.

their acting and rehearsal skills.

So when alongside my theatre work I started

Being able to lead an exercise alone is not yet

teaching directing and acting many years ago, I

teaching. You have to have a clear roadmap to

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models

of

directing

ethos

the

guiding

principle,

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ACADEMIC / THEORETICAL empower students to unlock the full dramatic potential of the scenes they’ll be playing. So each exercise needs to lead to a reflection with the students on what they have experienced by doing the exercise and what practical use they can put it to. Exercises invariably have multiple components and I find that if I approach an exercise anew every time I do it, I often discover new layers of potential to discuss with the students.

For the scope of this article, I focus on the theme of the optimal relationship between the individual and the group. Only when an actor can release the need to continually check up on their own output are they able to attend fully to their partners on the stage and the group. In turn, they will develop their acting skills and grow immeasurably in expression. This has added value for the directors at theatre schools where they take acting classes together with the actors because it also models an optimal division of labour between director and actor.

Let’s take the exercise known as ‘The orchestra’ as an example.

You may have even played this in kindergarten.

The players sit in a semicircle and each has an ‘instrument’, some examples of which may be cooking pots and wooden spoons, whistles, harmonica, rattles, triangles, indeed anything which makes a sound. One person is the conductor with a small, improvised baton of some sort.

The conductor lets each individual show what their sound contribution will be. Out of these individual contributions the conductor will ‘compose’ a piece of music by inviting the players to play their sound, sometimes alone and sometimes along with other members of the ‘orchestra’.

There is also a variation (for a later phase if some of your ‘orchestra’ members are shy, or not actors); if the conductor invites someone to stand, then they don’t play their ‘instrument’ but instead sing a note or series of notes.

These are some of the things I have been able to draw from this exercise, together with the input from my students: The first offers tend to be what initially springs to mind, but as you repeat the exercise the offers tend to become more interesting and often more extreme. So the players feel invited to not always be content with the first thing which comes to mind but to investigate further and become creative.

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ACADEMIC / THEORETICAL One reason that the first offers tend to be

Once you’re all in this flow together, there is

relatively tame or thin is that people

no

concentrate on themselves which makes the

contributions. See and be seen, hear and be

space around them very small. Take my

heard, enjoy discovering together what can

motto ‘acting is giving’ and open your focus

happen. You don’t have to be the best, your

to your fellow players, the conductor and

sound doesn’t have to be perfect and not all

the audience. This widening of your

sounds have to harmonise. They all just need

attention will automatically make your offer

to find the right place.

longer

a

place

for

rating

the

more expansive and in turn increase the radiance of your expression. Last but not

This brings us to the task of the conductor.

least, opening your focus is relaxing for the

(After each piece of music, I ask the

psyche (as opposed to being tight with

conductor to choose a title for it. This is

nerves and fear). You’ll naturally breathe

great fun.) The conductor will often reflect

more deeply and start to enjoy the process.

that the piece flows more easily and sounds more interesting and attractive if instead of

Once you’ve opened up to your fellow

aiming for a preconceived outcome, they

players, the conductor and the audience,

truly embrace what is on offer - just as it is -

you will realise that there is no place to be

and find an opportunity to include it.

on ‘standby’ as you’re all creating this piece together.

You’ll

develop

an

authentic

curiosity for other people’s contributions and that in turn will produce heightened concentration (tension, in the good sense) on the stage. That is a prerequisite for keeping the audience enchanted.

At that point, you will realise that it would break that immersion in the piece if you chose to comment on your offer or someone else’s, whether out of embarrassment, lack of concentration or any other reason.

People would be disappointed at the distraction and catapulted out of the enchantment.

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'...we are slowly inching our way towards more inclusivity.'

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ACADEMIC / THEORETICAL

In my opinion, this is an optimal division of labour for directors and actors: the directors offer structure, define the what, celebrate the players and find the optimal place for them; the actors can offer their contributions and attention to detail without anyone prescribing how they do this, as long as it serves the story you all want to tell together.

Through my research into the social as well as the technical aspects of an exercise I have found many to have application in other contexts, including training for business managers. Indeed for any kind of company that wishes to look into honing their team-building, teamwork and leadership skills, in addition to confident and personable presentation skills.

After all, if we can hold space for each other on the boards of a stage then we can do this in the wider world, can’t we? ◾ © Rosee Riggs, March 2023. All rights reserved.

Rosee is currently writing a book about rehearsal processes for creativity and richness of storytelling on the stage. If you would like to submit a request to her for a workshop, please write her at

Only when an actor can release the need to continually check up on their own output, are they able to attend fully to their partners on the stage and the group.

rosee@act-acting-acting.com

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Interview

MIKE PASTERNAK Global Teacher, Global Learner I was introduced to Global Teacher, Global Learner by Graham Pike and David Selby.

Graham and David came to our school in the 1980’s to run a professional development workshop when they were in the process of developing their book on the theory and practice of Global education.

Geneva, Switzerland Mike, an early member of ISTA, is an IB Theatre Teacher Trainer, Curriculum Developer, Examiner, ex-IB Principal examiner, ex-IB Deputy Chief Examiner, Chief examiner, IB Examining Board group 6 the Arts Rep and IB Workshop Session Observer and has been a member of working groups for the development of both the IB Theatre and IB Literature and Performance programmes.

We met to discuss the development of and attributes of the ‘global learner’ here are the highlights of our conversation: 60

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We got talking and at this particular moment, the head of English and I were working on a class project about human global issues. David and Graham asked us if we would write this up and it was then put in the Global education textbook ‘Global Teacher, Global Learner’.

About a year afterwards David invited me to become a research fellow at the Centre for Global Education, University of York, England.

The work in York was based around the development of interactive teaching and learning approaches in Global education. My practical research focus was using techniques from the Arts and applying them across a range of National Curriculum cross-curricular themes and dimensions. The text was a handbook of activities developing David and Graham's hypothesis of interdependency across the dimensions of time, space and www.ista.co.uk

INTERVIEW

issues which were represented by a triangular model and at the centre of this base shape was the human dimension. This model resonated with the creative arts work we had been exploring in Geneva with input from the many NGOs based there.

realistic perspective on world issues, problems and prospects, and an awareness of the relationships between an individual' s enlightened self-interest and the concerns of people elsewhere in the world’ The American Forum 2004 This is where one can see a link to the ISTA developing philosophy as an academic affirmation of the germinal concept of Ensemble began to take shape and form.

The Global Learner and the role of the arts in developing young people

This approach to Global education was heavily influenced by the work of Robert Hanvey and his research paper An Attainable Global Perspective written in the 1970s and well ahead of its time. This seminal document also develops the concept of interdependence and interrelatedness as applied to five dimensions including perspective consciousness; state of the planet awareness; cross-cultural awareness; knowledge of global dynamics and awareness of human choices based on

The learning outcomes of an Arts education is not just for students who might go into a theatre or arts career but for everyone and they are profound.

One of the ways that communities have strengthened and grown is through stories, through rituals. Rituals which became theatre, rituals which became dance, rituals which we now know as the Arts.

‘… the study of nations, cultures, and civilizations, including our own pluralistic society and the societies of other peoples, with a focus on understanding how these are all interconnected and how they change, and on the individual's responsibility in this process. It provides the individual with a www.ista.co.uk

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When we tell a story to someone, we use the ‘Mythic voice’ of oral tradition. This is the voice that has been used for generations before us and upon which the credibility of the storyteller rests. So, when I stand up in class as a storyteller-theatre teacher to spin a saga or tell a tale or share an experience I am bestowed with the ‘Mythic voice’.

In this situation I am using the techniques and experience of all those bards, storytellers and artists who have preceded us using creative endeavour to communicate critical information and values. So Art, whether it's visual art, whether it's music, whether it's dance, whether it's film, even chatGPT, all of these communicative devices are the means by which tradition bearers pass knowledge, ethos and information onto the young artists.

WE WERE LOOKING AT INTERACTIVE LEARNING METHODOLOGIES. When the young person first comes into an Arts programme they come in as an open learner. If a programme is structured properly and nourished with challenging ideas then that young person becomes an art student.

As experience grows and the student-artist is nurtured, they then become an emerging-

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artist, and finally after a series of journey inward-journey outward encounters an independent artist in their own right emerges.

Being an empowered independent artist means that you think back, in that interdependent way - we're looking for rhizomatic links across families, communities, nations all the time. We are looking for how things are linked up and how experiences are related to one another. And when we tell our story, how we tell our story in art, in theatre for example, by putting it on stage, invites and entices an investigative and reflective mind.

When responding to the question ‘What is art?’ I always use the idea of the sort of crack in the wall here - I'll look at the crack in the wall and say, ‘Oh my, this building's falling down’. But if I take a frame and I put it over the crack then, when people look at this creation, they begin to search for meaning.

They begin this search for understanding, in the ISTA case, theatre is the frame which brings focus and evokes the search for meaning.

It's a really powerful image. It's so visceral.

And that's when young people begin to do two things: As artists, they begin to create the frame.

As human beings, they begin to interpret the crack in the wall.

We don't do it for them, they do it on their own. What we're doing is providing pathways towards being an artist when you can't teach anyone to be an artist. We can teach the craft, but the art of being an artist is

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INTERVIEW

Theatre is the frame. something which you must find within yourself. And we do that by creating pathways, creating different pathways that young people can use to get there. The teacher must not come between the learner and the raw materials. If you have the teacher in that role then the teacher becomes an instructor rather than a mentor or guide. We have to move the teacher out of the direct line of contact in the creative moment but charged to put in learning lenses of some sort.

Our lenses at ISTA are Theatre and the Arts to find this pathway to becoming a global learner. www.ista.co.uk

In my mind [and practice] there are three mechanisms which underpin the process of becoming a global learner. This triple M approach considers methodology, materials and maintenance. The methodology entails using creative arts techniques which empower the emerging artist rather than instructing a passive learner. Materials such as myths, legends and stories are the ‘stuff’ which communicates the human condition in all its glory and with all its challenges. And, finally maintenance is the sustained engagement with the Arts which nourishes and stimulates the global learner over time. ◾

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SPOTLIGHT United Kingdom

JANE COULSTON Looking at my recent work through the lens of the Global Learner and how theatre is brought alive for young people instantly made me think of my recent commission from Wakehurst at Kew. www.ista.co.uk

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This 2 week event connected the natural environment at Wakehurst Kew Gardens to natural phenomena in Ethiopia, Mexico, Columbia and the Caucasus region.

My company (Beyond Repair Entertainment) does a lot of work in unusual spaces and they approached me to create dance works that responded to the stimuli and installations. The aim was to connect audiences to the natural world all around us asking questions like: ‘What is under our feet?’ ‘What roles do trees have in terms of our wellbeing?’ (food, medicine, material) and ‘What is hidden in nature?’ It is also a way for audiences to connect to the pure resilience of nature and think about how we can mirror that in our own lives.

These questions were a great starting point to get audiences thinking more and looking deeper into their environment but particularly for young people. What better

way to connect with your world and natural environment than to get closer to it, listen to it and engage with it in a different way?

After a site visit and a look at the installations I began to create a response to the different spaces, particularly focusing on how we can engage these audiences in the environment in an authentic way. The world of theatre and the natural world connect seamlessly, so we can be the living breathing interpretation of the gardens and inspire through life and movement.

Essentially though I also wanted it to be fun and memorable.

With that in mind I began to focus on the spaces that I felt naturally called out to have movement bring them to life, therefore bridging the environment or installation with the movement itself for the audience to connect with. Something human and abstract.

‘The aim was to connect audiences to the natural world all around us.’

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SPOTLIGHT

The first movement vignette took place in the paddock and was a duet that focused on counterbalance, the idea of having roots that connected through the ground and spread underneath us.

Allowing us, like a tree, to be able to move dynamically yet stay rooted and stable. It was accompanied by drummers that responded to the movement and was different every time, like the sound of a tree moving. This particular piece was a great way to get younger audiences engaged, the dancers took on light and fun personas of woodland nymphs that live in the space and come out to play periodically. Young audiences would be swept along the journey by these playful movers and allowed audiences of any age to engage at any level.

The second was in the Iris Delle with a butterfly that represented the colours and wildlife of the space whilst responding to a Mexican soundscape by artist Augustine Leudar. Where this soundscape was very abstract and unpredictable with sounds ranging from animal roars to the rainfall and movement of the trees, our dancer was in her tranquil environment in the calm and safety of the Iris Delle. The idea being two environments connecting and coexisting in time but not impacting each other directly - more complimenting each other and not competing to be seen or heard.

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‘We absorb what we see, hear and touch in our own unique way… nature nourishes us in a very real way.’

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SPOTLIGHT The third was a dance trio at the mansion pond alongside a violinist playing Waltz after Lasse in Lyby, which is a piece of music that has a circular quality like the space, the pond and the ebb and flow of everything around us. The piece was predominantly a solo with a tree like performer that had welcomed guests to the event on arrival. Her role was bringing everyone together, with the idea of

consuming and digesting the piece as a collective, like the title of the project ‘Nourish’. We absorb what we see, hear and touch in our own unique way but nature nourishes us in a very real way too. This piece also developed into a trio with our dancers from the paddock and took the counterbalance and grounding element to the air, connecting ground to sky.

‘This particular piece was a great way to get younger audiences engaged.’

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SPOTLIGHT My company and I work a lot with body art and recycling costumes to create eye catching and memorable experiences for theatre and non theatre audiences. These performances were surprises for the guests and whilst they knew the general feel of the event, the performances were there to surprise and delight them. Our performers roamed immersively on arrival and brought guests on a journey from start to finish at sunset.

Our artists based all the face and body art work (using only ethically sourced and biodegradable products) on the surroundings and installations at Kew. There was also an opportunity for all audience members to have some of the artwork too and join in with the movement in a relaxed and partially improvised finale at the end of each event.

This was particularly popular with the younger audiences, fully engaging them in the experience.

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SPOTLIGHT

‘Our performers roamed immersively on arrival and brought guests on a journey from start to finish at sunset. ‘

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This is how we believe we give young learners the opportunity to connect with the arts at a young age and hopefully give them a long term connection with arts for life. This commission was a true blessing for he whole BRE team and felt nourishing in every sense.

The event was also on the BBC news with an interview with myself and the curator from Wakehurst, another example of how this kind of work can really connect with every type of audience and connect the world of theatre in so many shows and forms. ◾

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SPOTLIGHT

www.beyondrepairentertainment.com

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All images are courtesy of Beyond Repair Entertainment’s Media Dept.

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D I V E R S I T Y ,

E Q U I T Y

&

I N C L U S I O N

Perseverance and the Arts

by Nadia Albina

Image sourced from Broadway World, accessed 1st May, 2023

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United Kingdom

Nadia Albina is an actor and advocate of greater representation for disabled performers within the industry.

We met recently on Zoom, Nadia accompanied by her 8 month old daughter, to discuss her work and how conversations are developing around disability in the Arts.

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D I V E R S I T Y , E Q U I T Y & I N C L U S I O N

Helen: Please introduce yourself and what you've been working on

‘WE MADE SHOWS THAT WERE QUITE MARMITE YOU EITHER LOVED THEM OR HATED THEM!’

Nadia: Hello, my name is Nadia Albina. I'm an actor and this week I've been working on an audio book for Penguin by a young writer, Isabella Hamad. I feel a real connection there as, like Isabella, I'm half Palestinian.

Helen: What project are you most proud to have worked on?

Nadia: The project that I'm most proud to have worked on I did 10 years ago this year, which is a project called Secret Theatre. I'm most proud of it because it was in a real crunch time in my career. It was 2013 (I had graduated from school in 2000) and where the industry was back then with diversity, it would have taken me 10 years to get anything mainstream. I'm most proud of it because it attempted to do things differently, it attempted to make theatre differently and tell stories in a different way. It was stripping it back to basics. I really stretched myself on this project, it was very challenging.

We made shows that were quite ‘Marmite’ - you either loved them or hated them! They were meant to provoke.

Helen: I remember Secret Theatre and saw a couple of the shows. They elicited such an interesting response from people, there didn't seem to be a middle ground of people’s opinion. Audiences were either completely on board with what it was trying to do or really had a problem with it, which is kind of great, isn't it?

Nadia: For me, that's why you go to the theatre, it’s to have a response. It should affect you. You should be thinking about it a few days, weeks later. It shouldn't just pass over you like ‘well that was nice’. I do feel a cultural responsibility to have that impact.

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D I V E R S I T Y ,

Helen: How have conversations changed around disability in the Arts since you first started out?

Nadia: They've changed drastically. My first mainstream job was in 2013 and post the 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games, there was a real urgency to challenge artistic directors and casting.

I think casting directors have always been championing disabled artists, from my knowledge and experience, but I feel like that time really made everyone in the industry think, ‘OK, we do have to represent people differently on stage, we do have to look at the way we make things on television to reflect the society that we're living in’.

People started making a lot of noise and slowly but surely disabled people started getting work.

Liz Carr got a job on Silent Witness for example and it started a snowball effect. I think the industry started to realise that people want this, people will see different people on screen and stage. And pressure was now there to cast people who are wheelchair users if the script asks for one. These parts are now ‘ring fenced’ which I think is really positive. The conversation has moved on hugely since I first started and continues to evolve.

E Q U I T Y

&

I N C L U S I O N

A friend of mine who has an arm exactly like mine, was in The Crucible at the National, she was understudy for Abigail. She went on a couple of times and there was no need to explain it. Audience members are accepting that people look different. And that's to be embraced.

Helen: What do you think the perceived challenges are to casting deaf and disabled artists in general facing work that doesn't focus on their disability?

Nadia: I think there is a real desire to want to diversify but I don't think the infrastructure is there yet. For example, when you get a job as a disabled actor, you are like ‘brilliant!’ but… no one's thought about the access. How do I get onto set? How do I get a wheelchair up and down from my trailer? It will continue to evolve, of course, because people have different needs. And actors are feeling much more confident to say ‘well, that's not gonna work for me. I need this, I need that’.

Helen: This issue is about the ‘global learner’ and the role that the Arts can play in helping develop young people in terms of their confidence, their compassion and their resilience, which is pretty key in this world.

What advice would you give young people who are considering a career in the Arts?

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D I V E R S I T Y ,

E Q U I T Y

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I N C L U S I O N

Nadia: Perseverance. To persevere is one of the greatest challenges in this industry, because you can get very disheartened very quickly.

But, if you believe that this is the thing that makes you happiest and you cannot see yourself doing anything else, then you just have to persevere. Make it the centre of what you do.

If I wasn't working, I would watch things - plays, Netflix etc. and so many people these days are making their own work, which is hugely encouraging because you can have more control over your career and expression.

When I speak to people in drama schools now I tell students that you have to become a producer and a writer and a director, as well as being an actor. Expand your skill set as much as you can. Perseverance really is the key, it's what has kept me going. You have to keep knocking on doors, reading things, being inspired by things and not letting go. Whether it's the Arts or not, it's all applicable, it's transferable to any passion. ◾

IT ATTEMPTED TO MAKE THEATRE DIFFERENTLY AND TELL STORIES IN A DIFFERENT WAY.

Image - James Pardon // BBC (https://www.digitalspy.com/t v/a40873498/doctor-whomore-disabled-representation/)

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P R A C T I C A L

I D E A S

F O R

P R I M A R Y ,

M I D D L E

&

H I G H

S C H O O L

STORIES AS STARTING POINTS

BY KATE FRIEND

Switzerland

With lesson ideas, plans and inspiration also provided by Nita Dewse and Katie Meadows from Bangkok Patana School. First published in a 2015 issue of Scene, these lesson plans explore the magic of storytelling.

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PRACTICAL IDEAS

‘Some beautiful moments of theatre are instinctively created.’

Having written this article many years ago (the two year old is now ten - he still loves sharks!), it has been interesting to realise how much storytelling has become the heart of so many of my explorations with young people. From the Ramayana, to European folktales, to our current Year 7 musical, an adaptation of the Anansi stories from Ghana.

As a teacher, I find the universal truths and archetypal characters and situations found in stories can help students connect with a range of unfamiliar cultures, encouraging them to develop insights into our shared common humanity.

I have a 2 year old son and his capacity to be entranced by stories amazes me. Admittedly, most of these are centered around fire engines, sharks and dinosaurs and acted out (by me) with a ragtag collection of props and hand puppets but this can happily gobble our time. After a decade spent teaching secondary students I have spent the past year working with primary children and again, our work has centered on

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stories. I spend a good portion of my day transforming into a host of bizarre storytellers: pirate, child thief, enchanted fox, depressed troll. It’s great fun!

It was a real revelation to me how magical my students found simple storytelling and how invested they became in the characters’ lives.

I’ve had 5 year olds burst into tears when Kay rejects Gerda in The Snow Queen; 8 year olds bring in their homemade detective kits to help track down the thief who had stolen the pirate’s treasure and 11 year olds vote to be allowed to continue the lesson into lunchtime so they could keep telling ghost stories.

I know every Drama teacher has a stockpile of wonderful stories for drama stimuli but I thought I would share 3 with you here and include some lesson ideas that have worked for me and my colleagues. My stories are: The Snow Queen for primary students The Ramayana for middle school students The Tongue Cut Sparrow for IB Diploma students

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PRACTICAL IDEAS

THE SNOW QUEEN FOR PRIMARY STUDENTS Of course all primary students are well versed in Frozen lore and some, I’ve discovered, will even offer to come to class wearing their very own Elsa/Anna costume.

However, I found they really enjoyed the original story (by Hans Christian Andersen) of the friendship between Kay and Gerda and Gerda’s journey to rescue her old friend who is under the enchantment of the evil Snow Queen.

Below is a selection of possible exploration activities that work well for Year 1/ 2 students (aged 5-7): When people look in the magic mirror they see everything distorted and ugly – experiment with creating beautiful/ugly images. Working in pairs, one person can be 'real' and the other person can be their “distorted” mirror self.

Explore Kai and Gerda’s friendship; show key moments from their childhood together: A trick they played on someone, their favourite game, a moment one of them rescued the other etc.

The Snow Queen’s garden is full of frozen animals who she has enchanted. Create these statues and work out backstories for the animals. (Grandmother’s Footsteps can also be used here – the animals have to creep up on the Queen but must freeze when she turns to face them).

Create the Snow Queen’s castle using physical theatre.

Groups create the following: Ice Bridge, Frozen Forest, Gateway to the Castle, Ice Throne. - Stage Gerda’s rescue of Kay. How do they escape the Snow Queen? Students present alternative solutions.

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THE RAMAYANA FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS This is such an awesome drama stimuli – it’s a tale full of demons, monkey warriors, enchantment and banishment. In fact we loved it so much, we used it as the starting point for our ISTA middle school festival in 2014.

See the British Library website for a useful summary of this epic tale: www.bl.uk/learning/cult/inside/corner/ramayana/synopsis.html When exploring the story with middle school students, we begin by asking them to experiment with the striking visual images the story conjures. So here is a lesson plan which asks the students to tell the story using cloth to create images.

RAMAYANA LESSON PLAN FOR EXPLORATION OF STORYTELLING AIM/S: To consolidate learning of the basic plot of The Ramayana.

To use image work in a literal way to tell the story.

RESOURCES: A selection of long pieces of fabric in a variety of bold colours.

WARM UP Give groups of 3 a piece of cloth.

Using the cloth create the following quick-fire images: Mountain, skyscrapers, baby, forest, river, house, hut, chair, table, throne (give groups 10-20 seconds to create each image to prevent lengthy discussion).

FLIPPED HOMEWORK Students will have been expected to complete homework prior to this lesson on the plot of The Ramayana. Use “truffling method” to see what the class has learnt about The Ramayana story.

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PRACTICAL IDEAS

IMAGE WORK

MIDDLE SCHOOL

LITERAL/STORYTELLING In 2-3s with cloth make the following: House, wedding, fire.

Groups present images and as a class discuss how many of the images are the same or similar. They are a literal representation of the object or event.

Discuss the secret to the most powerful images.

DEMONSTRATION Select a group of students to demonstrate a still image moment from The Ramayana story that can be interpreted using the cloth e.g.: The king’s favourite royal archers stepped forwards; they took a golden arrow and put it to the golden flames, raised their bows to the heavens and fired.” or “Ravana’s evil servant, Maricha, disguises himself as a golden deer and tempts Rama and Lakshman away from Sita.”

Underline the above phrases from the story on the whiteboard using the overhead projector.

MAIN TASK Students should work in groups of 4-5.

Each group will be allotted a section of the story to work with.

Each group should highlight key phrases or words that they are going to use as a basis for their still image work.

Each group will create 3 still images using cloth from these highlighted sections but they must show them in chronological order.

10 minutes to prepare.

Add transitions — demonstrate a good transition – everyone knowing exactly where they are going next and getting there in the most economical way. Also demonstrate “dynamic stillness” – frozen with energy.

Give them another 10 minutes to work on this and polish.

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MIDDLE SCHOOL

PRESENT The groups will perform in chronological order. The whole class is going to present in one go without stopping. Each group must be ready to walk up on stage quietly as soon as the group before them has finished. Remind students that they need to remember at least one literal image that they like and say why it worked.

Play either of the following tracks to accompany the performances: Willy Schwarz’s Egypt Bombay Dreams’ Bombay Awakes Some beautiful moments of theatre are instinctively created.

‘I spend a good portion of my day transforming into a host of bizarre storytellers: pirate, child thief, enchanted fox, depressed troll. It’s great fun!’

PLENARY Truffling around a circle. Get students in the audience to pick out key dramatic moments and say why they worked as pieces of theatre.

Which images were literal storytelling ones?

Which were the most poetic or metaphorical in that they had a lot of different interpretations or were interesting/thoughtful in some way?

Alternative exploration ideas The Ramayana is one of the key tales presented by Wayang Kulit (Balinese Shadow Puppetry). Students can make their own Ramayana puppets and present sections of the story combining shadow puppetry with projections.

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PRACTICAL IDEAS

THE TONGUE CUT SPARROW FOR IB DIPLOMA STUDENTS This is a Japanese folk tale which we used as a starting point for an IB Diploma World Puppetry unit.

Students had been studying a range of puppetry focusing on Handspring and Bunraku and their task was to use some of the key elements of these forms of puppetry to tell this story.

THE TONGUE CUT SPARROW ‘Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman. The old man, who had a kind heart, kept a young sparrow which he tenderly nurtured. But the dame was a cross-grained old thing; and one day when the sparrow had pecked at some paste with which she was going to starch her linen, she flew into a great rage and cut the sparrow's tongue and let it loose.

When the old man came home from the hills and found that the bird had flown he asked what had become of it; so the old woman answered that she had cut its tongue and let it go because it had stolen her starching-paste. Now the old man hearing this cruel tale was sorely grieved and thought to himself: "Alas! Where can my bird be gone? Poor thing! Poor little tongue cut sparrow! Where is your home now?"

And he wandered far and wide seeking for his pet and crying: "Mr. Sparrow! Mr. Sparrow! Where are you living?"

One day at the foot of a certain mountain the old man fell in with the lost bird and when they had congratulated one another on their mutual safety, the sparrow led the old man to his home and, having introduced him to his wife and chicks, set before him all sorts of dainties and entertained him hospitably. www.ista.co.uk

"Please partake of our humble fare," said the sparrow. “Poor as it is, you are very welcome."

"What a polite sparrow!" answered the old man who remained for a long time as the sparrow's guest and was daily feasted right royally. At last the old man said that he must take his leave and return home; and the bird, offering him two wicker baskets, begged him to carry them with him as a parting present. One of the baskets was heavy and the other was light so the old man, saying that as he was feeble and stricken in years he would only accept the light one, shouldered it and trudged off home, leaving the sparrow family disconsolate at parting from him.

When the old man got home, the dame grew very angry and began to scold him saying: "Well, and pray where have you been this many a day? A pretty thing, indeed, to be gadding about at your time of life!"

"Oh!" replied he. "I have been on a visit to the sparrows and when I came away, they gave me this wicker basket as a parting gift."

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greedy as she was cross saw all the riches displayed before her, she changed her scolding strain and could not contain herself for joy.

"I'll go and call upon the sparrows too," said she, "and get a pretty present." So she asked the old man the way to the sparrows' house and set forth on her journey.

Following his direction, she at last met the tongue-cut sparrow and exclaimed: "Well met! Well met, Mr. Sparrow! I have been looking forward to the pleasure of seeing you." So she tried to flatter and cajole the sparrow by soft speeches.

IB DP THEATRE The bird could not but invite the dame to its home but it took no pains to feast her and said nothing about a parting gift. She, however, was not to be put off; so she asked for something to carry away with her in remembrance of her visit. The sparrow accordingly produced two baskets as before, and the greedy old woman, choosing the heavier of the two, carried it off with her. But when she opened the basket to see what was inside all sorts of hobgoblins and elves sprang out of it and began to torment her.

But the old man adopted a son and his family grew rich and prosperous. What a happy old man!’

Tales of Old Japan by A. B. Mitford, London: Macmillan and Company, 1871, vol. 1, pp. 249-250.

IB DIPLOMA PUPPETRY TASK INCLUDED Detailed research and presentations on world puppetry traditions.

Practical exploration of key elements of puppetry such as breath, focus, tension.

Practical exploration of Bunraku.

Practical exploration of War Horse puppets.

Group discussion about how to interpret The Tongue Cut Sparrow story.

Designing, making and experimenting with own puppets.

Planning for performance, consideration of how to use narration, sound, music, lighting to help tell the story.

Devising and performing to an invited primary audience.

...it’s a tale full of demons, monkey warriors, enchantment and banishment.

CONCLUSION So, here are just 3 of the many stories we draw upon to inspire our work. We loved exploring these with our students so I hope they can provide inspiration to some more ISTA members out there. ◾

Leading a puppetry workshop with primary students.

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YOUNG VOICES

Geneva, Switzerland

GRIMM AND GRIMMER

By Madeleine Behan, Isabella Bruins and Isaac Blank

3 middle school students from the International School of Geneva reflect on a recent Year 10 project which saw 6 Grimm stories explored and brought to life.

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YOUNG VOICES

The Grimm and Grimmer production was a Year 10, 48 student-led production of 6 different Grimm stories.

Each group of approximately 8 students used various devising techniques to create the work as the teachers took a more supportive approach in helping them shape their pieces.

The concept for the piece was a surreal world of books, i.e. stories. Stories that surrounded us and reached out to us.

The world of the play became more expressionistic and gender fluid, to represent that time in our childhood where we could play without social restrictions. The following reflections are based on the ISTA Global learner: Creative, collaborative, community minded, compassionate and connection.

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'Theatre is a community minded experience, it is a shared event.'

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Madeleine Behan Theatre is a community minded experience, it is a shared event. In my eyes being community minded means to be curious, generous and empathetic. But in the world of theatre I believe that it signifies much more than that. Community minded theatre students learn the ability to participate and become more open minded to trying new ideas, cooperating with new people and looking at situations from new perspectives.

Before working in the production of Grimm and Grimmer, I didn’t think of how different my mindset would be when the production was finished; not only my mindset for theatre work but much beyond that, in other group projects for different classes and even in my daily life. Having the opportunity of working with a small company of students for so long made me realise the importance of collaborating with different people. We often tend to create an image of a person before genuinely getting to know them, even if we may not mean to.

While I worked with my theatre group to assemble all of our many ideas together to create the vision we had, I was able to see them each in a new light and even found myself inspired by them and by their unique and individual creativity that I hadn’t noticed before. This made me realise how important it is to truly listen to everyone and make sure they feel heard and comfortable to share their ideas, as it is one of the most vital parts of building a

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YOUNG VOICES

‘...WORKING ON THE PRODUCTION OF GRIMM AND GRIMMER HAS MADE ME FEEL LIKE PART OF A COMMUNITY.’

group of people that are able to work together as an ensemble. As I previously said, not only has collaborating in the production of Grimm and Grimmer pushed me to become a more community minded theatre student but it has also helped me become a more community minded person in general.

I’ve felt capable of taking more initiative in other classes and group projects by communicating more effectively with my peers and feeling more comfortable with sharing my opinions. But most importantly, working in the production of Grimm and Grimmer has made me feel like part of a community. Somehow I feel that the students who took part in the production automatically created a connection with each other. We’ve all had a shared experience, something we can all collectively relate to and it creates a sense of belonging for each of us.

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Isabella Bruins Throughout the school year theatre had been a space of comfort and one which allowed me to disconnect from the rest of my school and social life. It was a space in which I could drop all of my worries and work on a clean slate. However as the year went by I found that theatre meant a whole lot more to me than that and most of it is thanks to the connections I was able to form through the collaborative process I went through.

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YOUNG VOICES Theatre distinguishes itself from any other form of art or piece of work because theatre is not only about the end result, the play performers can proudly present to the audience but it is equally, even more importantly, about the challenging and yet rewarding process to get to the end. At the start of the course when I was placed in the group I would be working with until the show, I realised how little I knew about the classmates around me. As weeks went by I found out that I had formed connections with all of them and I started to see elements in our show which belonged to each of us. Collaboration is crucial in the production of a performance because each and every mind works differently and I often found that the most unlikely of my collaborators came up with the most surprising and fascinating ideas.

I began to love theatre in a different way, not for the show we were working on but for the precious memories and relationships I was able to forge with the

‘The concept for the piece was a surreal world of books…’ in search of a better life.’

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people around me. And yes, working collaboratively did come with its struggles, however, those struggles gave us the motivation to persist and keep going until the performance. They made the end result so much greater and more valuable because we knew that the journey had been difficult and yet we managed to create an outstanding play.

If I were to restart this project I would most certainly change my initial mindset. I started off thinking about all the problems we would encounter as a group, instead of picturing the many ways we would overcome those problems and all the successes we could celebrate together. I have realised that because of theatre I look at the world and the wonderful people around me differently. I have found a way to appreciate everyone’s ideas, no matter how small and irrelevant they may seem.

Because when an idea seems utterly meaningless, it simply means it's more difficult to find the idea’s true value. And by learning to accept every idea through collaboration, I form friendships and treasured connections in the most unlikely of people. www.ista.co.uk

YOUNG VOICES

Isaac Blank As a theatre learner, the power of feeling connected and interconnected for me is a vital part about building a theatre piece as well as being able to rely on your company members. Once you and your company members feel interconnected as well as connected, putting ideas and improvements through will be easier as you develop your piece. ‘A relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else’, is what a connection should feel like.

This bond between person, thing or idea should strengthen you as an individual as well as your group because your fellow company members use these skills to help them develop good and healthy relationships outside of the theatre.

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‘Theatre is not only about the end result… it is equally, even more importantly, about the challenging and yet rewarding process to get to the end.’

Brené Brown’s definition of connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard as well as valued; when they can give and receive without judgement and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship. In my opinion Brené Brown’s definition is what a theatre company as a whole should look like; everyone’s voice is being heard, you are sharing your energetic and positive energy, everyone is being seen and valued as a unique individual with their own opinions. When their ideas are put forward it can be without a second thought about being judged for their idea and all of this should contribute to strengthening and enhancing relationships within the vast and beautiful world. All of this powerful energy propels us forward to create magnificent things, to boost our communication skills to a new level, to be able to relate better with one another and to live our lives to the fullest. ◾

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PATHWAYS

5 MINUTES WITH...

DESTA HAILE United Kingdom

Tell us about yourself

What kind of work do you do?

My name is Desta Haile. I'm British-Eritrean, born in Bangkok and grew up in Barbados, France, the Côte d'Ivoire, Jordan, the U.K. and Brussels, later living in Brazil, Turkey and the Philippines. I'm a writer, musician, and as part of my job as Deputy Director for the Royal African Society, I help organise the biggest African film and literature festivals (Film Africa and Africa Writes) in London, which is where I live.

I have always worked in education, performing arts, and social justice. From interning with the Theatre of the Oppressed and Search for Common Ground in my early twenties to the consulting with Malala Fund today... those three elements are always the common denominator.

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PATHWAYS

What role did ISTA play in your journey?

ISTA has been a major blessing. I attended as a student... a TAPS in 2001 I think, where I first had the honour of meeting Dinos, and then an ISTA in Budapest one very cold winter. Then, my absolute favourite teacher at school, Tim Williams, at the International School of Brussels, suggested I apply to be an Ensemble Leader with ISTA. I got my first festival in 2004, teaching in Kuala Lumpur, and haven't really stopped since. I've really got Tim to thank for that-- he had such a positive impact on my life. He also picked up a flyer for an Afro-Cuban dance class he thought I'd be interested in, outside of school, and that led to my first big professional music work with Zap Mama, so I am eternally grateful to him! ISTA has introduced me to so many wonderful people and taken me to so many incredible places. My last ISTA festival, in Belgrade, marked my 80th country visited.

By now I've worked with thousands of young people around the world, which has been a wonderful and transformative experience.

What is the value of arts experiences in the world of work & life?

Huge, huge value! The connection, the confidence, the communication skills.

Learning how to listen, how to research, and how to open our minds to different ideas, languages, and cultures-- these are things that benefit us in life no matter what we do or where we live. The way young people are able to devise and create with people they have just met, with such respect and vibrancy, joy, and curiosity at each ISTA www.ista.co.uk

festival is inspiring. Not many educational or professional experiences can compare, but if they are able to take even a grain of that ISTA approach forward into their schools/workplaces later, then it is so worth it.

What advice do you have for young people today?

Make your own way. If you want to learn about something, get in touch with the people doing it, offer to volunteer or apply for an internship.

The best learning I did was never at school.

Travel as widely as possible -- that's an education in itself. ◾

‘The way young people are able to devise and create with people they have just met, with such respect and vibrancy, joy, and curiosity at each ISTA festival is inspiring.’

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FAQs

FAQs CATEGORY 3: STAGING PLAYTEXTS What is a Category 3 workshop?

The Cat 3 workshop is designed to provide a forum for experienced educators to build on and enhance their professional development portfolios.

Participants will engage in an in-depth investigation into particular syllabus areas.

Educators choose Category 3 training to go more deeply into areas they enjoy and to deepen their understanding and mastery of a particular area or subject.

These workshops are for you if your situation is similar to any of the following…

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS About IB DP Theatre Category 3 training: Staging Playtexts

Since 2006 ISTA has been the global provider for DP Theatre workshops in all regions – delivering Category 1, 2 and 3 DP Theatre workshops. And in 2016 we expanded it to also include IB DP Film.

I have been teaching the DP Theatre course for years and am very comfortable delivering the core components, designing the course and working with the assessment criteria.

I do not currently need any PD on delivering the course itself.

I would love an “injection” of new ideas to make me a stronger Theatre educator and better practitioner.

Who can take a Cat 3 workshop?

Category 3 workshops are open to all teachers.

You DO NOT need to have attended a Category 1 or Category 2 to attend a Category 3.

You DO NOT need to be an IB teacher to attend a Category 3.

ISTA rotates the different Category 3 offerings each year, in each region.

Our workshops are open to ALL teachers of IB DP Theatre and Film and are NOT exclusive to ISTA members.

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FAQs WHAT WILL THE STAGING PLAYTEXTS TRAINING COVER?

FAQs

This workshop provides a forum for DP theatre teachers to focus on directing and designing play texts, internal assessment, the staging play texts syllabus area and the production proposal assessment task.

Participants engage in practical activities to deepen their understanding of the concepts behind the internal assessment component of the Production Proposal and its requirements.

The workshop addresses key areas regarding teaching and the exploration and staging of play texts, as well as presenting new ideas regarding how to best prepare students for the production proposal assessment task. Student samples will be used both to help understand how the criteria are applied and to demonstrate particular features of staging play texts.

Participants also practically examine a range of play texts and their staging. Educators collaboratively generate useful resources, engage with new approaches and develop appropriate materials in a manner that supports the IB mission statement, the learner profile and other core areas of the Diploma Programme.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ABOUT IB DP THEATRE CATEGORIES

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CONTRIBUTORS

NADIA ALBINA I trained at LAMDA after completing a 3 year joint honours degree in English and drama at Queen Mary College , London. My postgraduate degree at LAMDA was a brilliant experience and I have built a career in theatre, television and film steadily over almost 20 years. I am an advocate of greater representation for disabled performers within the industry.

JANE COULSTON Jane is a Dance and movement specialist. Having studied at Trinity Laban and enjoying a broad career as a dancer in the UK and US, Jane went on to found her own company Beyond Repair Entertainment. With the company Jane creates bespoke performances with movement, Black Light Theatre and circus at the heart of it for a broad range of events including Glastonbury festival and commissions from The BBC, The Durrells Conservation Trust, The FA, and The NFL amongst others.

Jane has been an artist for ISTA since 2015 after finding it through The American School in London where she founded their dance program. She is proud to be a part of this very special international community of talented creatives and has a passion for arts education.

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CONTRIBUTORS

ANNE DROUET Anne’s ISTA pedagogy has been informed through collaborating with a myriad of inspirational artists throughout her 25 year career in international Arts education. Through crazy drama games to learning to compose (even if it’s for the first time), she loves helping students to look within and express their deepest feelings and wishes.

Anne is currently the Visual and Performing Arts Director at the Canadian International School of Hong Kong where she also runs the ISTA Performing Arts Academy. As an ISTA Honorary Life Member, Anne helps to develop creative partnerships for ISTA.

KATE FRIEND I am a teacher, playwright and director of youth theatre. I have worked as a freelance youth theatre director and have taught Drama to both Primary and Secondary students in the UK, Germany, Thailand and Switzerland, where I currently teach Theatre at the International School of Geneva. I am an experienced IB Theatre teacher and examiner but I also enjoy the playfulness of younger students and love working on devising projects with them.

I am passionate about theatre as a force for personal and social change: Brecht is my hero and Brechtian theory is often my starting point when helping students develop original work in response to the world around them.

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CONTRIBUTORS

GUILD OF THE GOAT Guild of the Goat is a theatre company founded by Amba Suhasini K Jhala and Rudy. We create work that we hope makes both you and us question ourselves and this world that we inhabit. We also hope to facilitate the creation of work by diverse practitioners reaching ever more diverse audiences.

DESTA HAILE Desta Haile is a multilingual British-Eritrean writer, educator, and consultant with a background in intercultural communication, social justice and the performing arts. She interned with the Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro, and has delivered workshops around the world for ISTA since 2004.

As a musician, she composed the UNESCO Green Citizens campaign song and worked with artists like Zap Mama, Baloji, and Filho do Zua. Desta is the Deputy Director of the Royal African Society, based in London, which coordinates two festivals: Film Africa and Africa Writes.

Twitter/Instagram - @destahaile

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CONTRIBUTORS

PETE HARRIS LINDOP Pete is a theatre teacher, director, educator and occasional children's playwright. He freelanced in the UK and Europe between 1996 2013, working for the Royal National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, National Youth Music Theatre, Open Air Theatre (Regent’s Park), Welsh National Youth Opera and the Young Vic Theatre.

He has also taught at various UK drama schools, was Head of Actor Training at Guildford School of Acting, as well as Head of Drama at Thomas’s Fulham. Since 2016 he has taught at the International School of Geneva.

JANGAMA COLLECTIVE Jangama Collective is a Bangalore based group of theatre artists with diverse cultural backgrounds who believe in creating cultural and political awareness, choosing theatre as their way of expression. As an extension of this, the group has engaged itself in creative processes like education, literature, publishing, cinema and social struggles.

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CHANDRASHEKARA KEMPAIAH Chandrashekara Kempaiah is a Bangalore based theatre actor and theatre maker. He is a graduate of Ninasam Theatre Institute, Heggodu, Karnataka after which he received his MA from Bangalore University. His appearances include Japanese playwright Shogo Ohta’s ‘The Water Station’ (director Sankar Venkateswaran, Kyoto, 2016) which was presented at Kyoto Experiment: Kyoto International Performing arts festival, solo performance 'Udal Uravu' (director Sankar Venkateswaran, Kochi, 2017) and 'Indian Rope Trick' (director Sankar Venkateswaran, Kyoto, 2020). He has performed in various venues and festivals around the world including Zurcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich, Switzerland), Theatrefestival SPIELART (Munich, Germany), ZOUKAK Sidewalk (Beirut, Lebanon), Theater Commons Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan) and National Arts Festival (Makhanda, South Africa). He has also acted in a number of Kannada films, one of which 'Mahasamparka' (director Santosh G.) received Best Short Film award at Bangalore International Short Film Festival in 2017.

MIKE PASTERNAK Mike Pasternak was Chairperson of the PA dept. Ecolint, La Châtaigneraie campus, Switzerland from 1973-2010. He has taught in the UK and Canadian state system and Research Fellowship in Teacher Education at the CGE, University of York, UK specialising in the development of the Arts in Interactive teaching and learning approaches across a range of disciplines.

He has been actively involved with ISTA since 1978 [Board of Trustees 1983, Executive Secretary 1985, President 1998 and HLM present]. Mike has worked with ISTA as an Ensemble leader at both HS and MS Festivals throughout the world; as a workshop leader on ‘The Stratford Experience’ and IB TAPS; and, as co-Director for the ISTA Travelling Troupe. Mike has been involved in a series of ISTA developments including IB TAPS, Performance Appreciation and Teacher Enrichment programmes in the Arts.

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CONTRIBUTORS

TOBY PEACH I’m Associate Director of our Young People & Families programme here at Coney. This means I am normally found working with our resident group of young makers, the Young Coneys, or making bits for young people that are landing in places we are collaborating with.

I’ve had the pleasure of making pieces that have landed in National Trust grounds, inside Alexandra Palace and arrived in mysterious boxes in schools across the United Kingdom..

ROSEE RIGGS Rosee Riggs studied Modern languages, French and German at the University of Bristol, UK. She started her theatre life as a puppeteer at the Little Angel Marionette Theatre in Islington, London. After winning an Arts Council Bursary, she spent time at the famous Drak theatre in Hradec Králové, then at the Foundation of Acting class at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

In 1985 Rosee worked as an assistant to Peter Zadek, then Artistic Director of the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Rosee has taught theatre directing from 1999 to 2005 at the Ernst Busch theatre school, also founded by Max Reinhardt, and renowned for its accomplished alumni. In 2005, she became a Professor of Acting and the Foundation of Acting course at the Max Reinhardt seminar in Vienna.

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ALEX SOULSBY Alex is a seasoned Creative Education specialist, with over two decades of expertise in managing and evolving 'arts integration' and creativity development initiatives in diverse educational settings.

His global experience includes spearheading National Arts campaigns in the UK and serving as a strategic consultant to International Schools and Children's Arts Organizations. Committed to fostering creativity within educational settings, Alex is a passionate advocate for the transformative work undertaken by ISTA and the wider impact that arts engagement has on the lives of children and young people.

If you are interested in writing an article for Scene please contact our Editor, Helen

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YOUNG VOICES CONTRIBUTORS

MADELEINE BEHAN My name is Madeleine Behan and I am 15 years old. I currently live in Switzerland but I have had the privilege of growing up in many different countries. I previously lived in Bangladesh, the United States and Nigeria. I have been going to the International School of Geneva, La Châtaigneraie for 5 and a half years and I am now in Year 10 doing the IGCSE programme.

From an early age I was always very interested in theatre and performing. I feel so lucky to be part of such an amazing theatre department at my school and I am very eager and excited to explore my love for theatre even more.

ISAAC BLANK My name is Isaac Blank, I am 15 years old. I go to the International School of Geneva, La Châtaigneraie. I have started the IGCSE course.

I enjoy creating memories that will last a lifetime during theatre. When I graduate school, I will take the path of the hospitality industry.

ISABELLA BRUINS My name is Isabella Bruins and I am 15 years old. I grew up in Switzerland and am currently in the International school of Geneva.

I am passionate about theatre and I have grown attached to not only the course but equally to the wonderful community which encompasses it.

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