Lab Note #4: Shifting Contexts and the Collective In-Breath
Detectorising Site-Specific and Participatory Theatre on the High Street
In Lab Note #1 I set out my intention for the coming months: to support and co-create site-specific participatory theatre for social change, as a way to cultivate kindness, creativity and connection to each other and place. I also shared my plan for how I hoped to research, design and detectorise theatre and performance on the High Street. Through this series of Lab Notes, I promised to document and share my journey with theatre on the High Street. An integral and essential part of our Lab work is to share our learning openly, to work out loud, and to make visible our work in progress.
So here I am, three months into the work, and I’m here to let you know it’s challenging, and it’s not going as I’d originally planned. But, that’s more than ok — it’s an opportunity. Through doing, and then pausing to reflect and assimilate, I’ve discovered much more than if I’d stuck to my timeline and original plan. I’d like to share my learning with you, in the expectation that many of us are in the same place: a place of uncertainty and constant change, but a place of flexibility, creativity, innovation — and hope.
Having spent time finding people and connecting over Curiosity Cuppas in phase one, I now find myself at the edge of phase two, Finding the Stories, and it feels like everything has changed. Phase Two is concerned with ‘Finding the Stories’. As good ancestors we want to share the stories of people and place: the stories of the High Street. When I wrote the original plan, I’d anticipated this phase of the work would begin mid-October. I was also hopeful that, come September, coronavirus would be abating and being with other people in person would be possible again. I was hopeful.
I’d imagined storytelling evenings, where local people would come and sit in a circle, cosy on down with a hot drink, and tell, share and witness stories of the High Street of the past, present and future. The stories of their childhoods, or the legends that had been passed down to them from their elders and generations before us: stories of High Street past.
I’d imagined a group of us conducting Guerrilla Story Gathering experiments, where we’d trawl and examine every nook of the High Street, and we’d uncover hidden stories from cracks in buildings, plaques, old signage, graffiti, dropped shopping lists, to-do lists, and receipts — ‘litter stories’, handwritten adverts in shop windows, statues and memorials.
I’d imagined being with others, sitting in the parklet on our bustling High Street, listening to people’s stories, memories and aspirations. I’d imagined listening to the buzz of the High Street, overhearing snippets of conversations and arguments as people passed by. I’d imagined recording the sounds of the High Street, creating soundscapes of the traffic, the people, the birds, and the weather.
I’d imagined we’d discover an abundance of stories and have a Story Bank full of words, memories and pictures, which would be prime material for dramatic play and devising theatre — gold dust! The stories would provide inspiration for playing, making and showing. I imagined how we’d show and re-tell the High Street’s stories theatrically in performances up and down and around the High Street. I’d imagined how the High Street might react and respond.
And here we are. As I write we’re in national lockdown. Our hope and expectation that, come this time, we would be able to be with others in-person, face-to-face, has been dashed. Things are much worse than they were before. Infection rates are soaring. Tragically, deaths are increasing. We continue to work in uncertainty. Such context demands that plans and timelines have to change. We need to move to our Virtual High Street as our predominant platform. We need to find other ways.
In order to find the stories, I’d crafted and planned two storytelling events: one small physically-distanced yet socially-connected in-person event in The Imaginarium on the High Street, and another event our Virtual High Street via Zoom. It was to be a bringing together of people, and a gathering of stories for our Story Bank. I crafted invitations, based on the learning around invitations in the Curiosity Cuppas:
We’re putting together a new theatre company on the High Street and we’re looking for your stories! We’d like to invite you to one of our story gathering events, where we can all share our stories of the High Street!
With your permission, next year, the theatre company will then use the stories to make theatre and performances up and down the High Street!
The theatre company will make site-specific theatre, which means that the stories we share will come from the place we’re in — the High Street!
But first, we need the stories!
I shared and promoted both events on Facebook and Twitter and they had been shared and liked and retweeted numerous times. Yet no-one signed up.
Our context is loud right now.
As I shared the two storytelling events on social media, the people of Dudley were told they would be joining the rest of the Black Country in Tier 2. The rates of coronavirus were rising and Dudley was moving into high alert. Only a week later, the people of Dudley were reeling from news of a second national lockdown in an effort to control the spread of coronavirus.
Read: Now is not the time to be inviting people to storytelling evenings.
Now is not the time.
We need to pause. Take a collective breath.
And then find another way.
The work I’m doing is part of a social lab. I work with amazing people who are each working on projects that aim to make the High Street a kinder, more creative and connected place. I realised that story gathering is already happening! I’m curious about how I could gather stories for our Story Lab from the stories that have already been collected? An integral part of our work as a Lab is to join the dots. How might my experience relate to the Lab Team’s commonality? Discovering what others in the Lab are doing, and how they are doing it, produces more yields than duplication. How might our work cross-pollinate? How might we share our learning and our resources? Who else outside of the Lab has gathered stories? How do I collect these stories via our Virtual High Street?
What if I put my plan aside? How else can I research, design and detectorise theatre and performance on the High Street?
How might Charles Dickens help?
