Questions and Answers from a Professional Assistant Artistic Director, Pavlar Beier From the Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah

1.    Do you enjoy your job and what does it entail?

Yes, i really enjoy my job.  There’s so much diversity in what my day will be like from one day to the next.  We have three strands of work in the company, our Residency Programme, where we work with schools more than once during a project, our Touring Programme where we take one-off participatory show to a school and finally, the Theatre Academy for young people aged 10-16 at the Carriageworks in Leeds.
In the Residency Programme I am often co-deviser and performer in the projects and also director when the teachers are involved in delivering the sessions alongside me.
In the Touring Programme I am often script editor and performer with the directing usually being done by Anthony, our Artistic Director.
I am not generally involved in he Theatre Academy strand of the company although I have on occasion run a workshop session with the young people who meet ever Saturday afternoon.

2.    How has technology influenced your work?

Technology doesn’t really influence the actual delivery of our work as we like to keep props and set simple, letting the children and young people stretch their own imagination-particularly in the residency work we do in primary schools.  Of course we rely very much on computers for accessing information during our research into new work, storing our database and communicating with schools when selling the work.  We are in the process of re-designing our website which is something we intend to make more use off when communicating with audiences.

3.    How do you connect with different communities and audiences?

Intellectually and emotionally, we connect with our audiences by tailoring our work to suit our audience.  We don’t start from that point, but its very much part of the creative process.  We begin from a point where we look for a story we are interested in.  We explore that story and then we look at how it would work for a particular age group.

Physically, we connect with our audiences through our selling by advertising at events such as The Store (an event organised by Artforms, Education Leeds, where companies and artists set up a stall for a day and teachers come and see what’s on offer), phoning schools as part of a large selling campaign and word of mouth from current or past audiences. 

4.    What has been you favourite project and how long did it take?

It’s hard to say what has been my favourite project as I always enjoy something from everything we do.  I have particularly enjoyed the different versions of a participatory show called ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ because of how it has developed over the years.  We have toured it to high schools in a few different guises- twice with the teachers who first devised it and performed it with Anthony and then twice as a Blahs tour with professional actors- we also took it to a children and young peoples theatre festival in Germany were I performed some of my role in German which was a great challenge for me personally and a really exciting opportunity.

Raft began its life back in 2006 as a touring piece but is now more of a showcase piece that we only bring out for festivals and conferences as a good example of our work.  Each time we put it back together we find new moments in it that get re-worked so it is a bit like a living organism!

5.    What creative process do you use?

As I mentioned above, we tend to begin with a story or sometimes even a picture and the story behind it, which evokes an interest for us.  We begin to explore what those stories mean to us and why they are interesting- what is the hook that pulls us in.  Only after we have begun to develop an idea do we then look at how the piece could link o the criteria that schools might be interested in connecting with it.  Having said that, we also sometimes create work from a stimulus that teachers approach us with.  Or example, a school asked us recently to create a piece of particapatory drama based on the circus as that was their topic next term, so we looked for a story that would be specifically relevant to that topic.

One of the first exercises we do when entering a new process is to ask ourselves ‘Who would I like to meet?’ in the story.  Then we set up improvised scenes where we meet the characters and ask ourselves, ‘where are they, what are they doing and when are they?’-at what point in the story do we meet them?  This is a really great was to explore peripheral characters or even characters whom we have invented within the context of the story.

6.    Are there any age groups that are more difficult than others?

I don’t think that any age group is particularly more difficult, rather they present different challenges for us.  Much of our work is very transferable and pieces that we make for younger children would be just as accessible for older children, but the difference is in how much we challenge them during the drama.  We have to be in tune with our target audience in order to understand just how far and how deep we can go on a certain line of questioning.  Because what we do relies on the children’s responses to add detail to the story, if we have underestimated or overestimated how much they will take on, we are always ready to adapt our questioning on the spot to try and keep in line with where the children are at.  Children and young people of any age can be difficult to work with if they’re not interested in what you are doing with them.  That is the real challenge- to find something they are interested in so they engage you with you and want to join you in what you’re doing.

7.    Is there a hierarchy of roles within the company?

Anthony Haddon is the Artistic Director of the company and he is answerable to our board of five directors.  Myself as Assistant Artistic Director, Maureen McGough who is our General Manager and Cas Bulmer who is our Tour Co-ordinator/Administrator are all answerable to Anthony.

Anthony has overall control over the direction the company will go artistically, I am involved in the decision making when it comes to planning the layout of the artistic programme and Maureen is in charge of the financial side to the company, while Cas is at the forefront of our contact with schools.

8.    Do you use song and music?

Depending on the piece, yes we sometimes use music.  In our last tour Rumpus we had two actors and a musician who performed the two pieces to reception and Yr 1 children.  And in one of our residency pieces, Silas Marner, we have singing as a soundtrack at one point.  It is easy to forget just how powerful music can be in assisting the telling of a story by the emotion and the atmosphere it can evoke.  We are always open to incorporating music in our work where relevant.

9.    Have you ever tried to act and direct in your own production?

In our Residency Programme, a lot of the time I am acting in a piece and directing myself.  Sometimes I work with primary school teachers where I direct them in to a piece of participatory drama that they will be acting with me.  Occasionally, I direct a freelance actor in a piece of residency work alongside myself too.

In our Touring Programme I am more often in an acting role being directed by Anthony.

10.                       How do you fund your productions?

We recieve core funding from the Arts Council and the local authority as well as a certain amount of lottery funding.  We also submit bids to separate funding bodies for individual projects and we charge schools for the work we do with them.

11.                       How did you first get into TiE?

My degree at university was called Communication Arts: Specialism Drama and covered quite a broad scope of drama and theatre practices.  One of my final modules was Theatre in the Community.  I was really interested in making theatre for an intended audience who would be involved in the final performance in some way.  I was very fortunate that a lecturer of mine saw potential in me and took me under her wing when I graduated, getting me involved in youth arts projects and finally introducing me to the world of TiE.  It wasn’t of course down to her that I got involved in the work I did, but she encouraged me and pointed potential opportunities out to me.

12.                       What is the most challenging thing involved in TiE?

To continue pushing the quality of the work higher and higher- we are always looking at ‘raising the bar’ of Theatre in Education.

13.                       How long have you been working in TiE?

I graduated from university in 2001 and got my first professional acting job with the Blahs in 2002 on a TiE programme based on the story of Silas Marner.  I then worked as a freelance performer for four years working with theatre companies such as Tell Tale Hearts (children’s theatre) and Faceless (street theatre) as well as other TiE companies such as Alive and Kicking and Yorkshire Women Theatre.  In 2006 I became a full-time member of the Blahs as Theatre In Education Co-ordinator and then as Assistant Artistic Director in January 2011.

14.                       How long does it take to create a piece of TiE?

This can vary depending on how much time you actually have for a project.  Often, the budget we have for a project will determine how long we will have to initially develop a piece, but we like to come back to stories we have created again and again so that we revisit them and re-look at them to take them further.  The story of Silas Marner I mentioned above has been going since 1999 and has been toured as a show, as a four part participatory drama and now lives on as a two part participatory drama where teachers are involved in telling/acting the story alongside us.  This means that we are constantly finding new detail in the story even after all these years.

15.                       What styles of theatre do you use in your productions?

Our work is very influenced by Brecht in that we break down the fourth wall between the actor and the audience.  Other influences are object theatre and puppetry combined with live performers, image theatre of Boal and theatre conventions created by Dorothy Heathcote that come from her asking open questions which allow the audience to draw on their own knowledge and interpretation.

16.                       What styles of theatre do you create?

We create participatory theatre which combines all of the above.  We set out to work with small audiences so that we can make contact with all of them.  We want a genuine conversation with our audience within the structure of the story.

17.                       Is your work scripted or improvised?

The work we create is scripted.  If we are devising new work, these scripts are partially developed from improvised scenes we have been playing with in the rehearsal room and partially written by one or two members of the company.  In the past, in our touring work, we have devised and toured a show then commissioned a playwright to rework the piece and then we have retoured it.  As I mentioned in my answer to question 6, there are sometimes moments for improvisation in our work due to the nature of us placing so much importance on the participants’ responses.  We always try and work all the possible responses we might get while we’re rehearsing so that we’re prepares with an ‘improvised’ response ourselves.  Of course, we can’t always predict every possible answer and are often taken by surprise so still have to think on our feet!

18.                       Do you have a timeline for your rehearsals?

With a touring show using professional actors, we generally have three weeks rehearsal for a seven week tour.  This means that w have generous amount of time to work through a play in sections and then run the whole thing together towards the end of the rehearsal period.  However, in the residency work, I often have one day to take a teacher through a four session drama project we will be running together from start to finish so structuring a plan I advance for exactly what you will cover hour by hour in those sessions is really important- and sticking to time slots for each session is imperative too!

19.                       Are any age groups more difficult to perform to than others?

As I’ve said before, it all comes down to whether you can engage your audience well enough in the first place.  Sometimes older children and adults come into a performance with pre-conceived ideas of what to expect and if they haven’t had positive experiences of theatre or if they are particularly self-conscious, then they might be more hesitant and even reluctant to participate, but if you can grab their interest and simultaneously make them feel at ease, that usually subsides as they get caught up in the story.

20.                       Which age group do you prefer?

The majority of my work within the company is with primary age children and I really enjoy working with them as you can challenge the children in a different way.  Its really fun working with the lower end of the school as the children are so open and playful, but I particularly enjoy seeing older children being so engrossed in a story that they forget to keep up the attitudes they sometimes walk into the room with.  It’s also great that they are at an age where they will challenge what you are telling them or asking of them and you can enter a real dialogue with them.

21.                       Do you think going to young people is better or having young people come to you?

We don’t have children/YP coming to us as our aim is to take theatre into places it’s not usually associated with.  Using space familiar to the children and young people- i.e. their own classroom or school hall- in an imaginative way by transforming it is one of the reasons that we do this.

22.                       What are your responsibilities as an artistic project manager and director?

At present I a leading the Residency Programme within the company and am responsible for most of the teacher CPD programmes we run.  For these smaller scale programmes, I liaise with schools on the content of the work, devising the new material if it is to be a new piece, timetabling with the project and then I rehearse the teachers into the work.  Finally, I perform with the teachers when we deliver the work to the children.  So I am co-ordinator, deviser, director and performer on a lot of these projects (sometimes even a designer and prop-maker if we have a very small budget!).  I also sometimes attend conferences and festival on behalf of the company.

23.                       How many people are involved in each project?

In the Residency Programme it is usually myself and two teachers from each school.  Occasionally we may have a designer who works with us or Anthony might be in a project too.  In the Touring Programme, the teams can range from three to five actors, with Anthony performing as well as directing the show.  Behind the scenes, Cas it the person selling and co-ordinating the tour and Maureen not only works out the budgets for the projects in the first place but also draws up the contacts for each school and chases up payment.

24.                       How do you know when a project was/is successful?

We ask for feedback from schools we have worked with.  With the touring work we have feedback forms which we ask both the teachers and the young people to fill in directly after the show and with the residency work we often have evaluation meetings with the teachers about their experiences of being in a TiE team and also what they saw the children’s experiences to be.  And of course, if someone comes back to us the next year wanting our work again, we know they value it.