First day as a full time freelancer

It's been a very scary thought in the build up, and may well get scary again in the future as at the moment I'm feeling slightly in holiday mode with trips to the Edinburgh Fringe and to France (the latter the genuine holiday) lined up. It might feel more real in September. Today, though, I've felt very able to cope with the idea that from now on I'm employing myself.

It's perhaps because I've had all the nice sides of it today. I started at ten thirty after leisurely eating my breakfast and making real coffee. I had the back door open with the sun shining outside and at one point went for a stroll to pick blackberries. I cooked myself pasta with artichoke hearts and basil and a big glug of olive oil for lunch. I felt motivated, productive, and so able to finish at four o'clock to go for a bike ride and an icecream, knowing I'd got as much done as is sometimes possible in an 8 hour day.

I know from having done it two days a week for the last ten months that it's not always like this. Sometimes it's hard to get into gear when you're at home on your own, and I was lucky that I had people I could email when I had questions I wanted to ask someone. When I'm not earning enough and working away at things that might never get funding and never happen, that's going to be hard. Worrying about paying the rent will be even harder.

For now, I'm not going to stress, but I might do a little planning. I'm going to think about ways I might support myself better and keep myself motivated. I'm going to do some talking to some wise people and appreciate my avenues for advice. I'm going to try and keep getting up in good time, having leisurely breakfasts, and making sure I get out of the house and having exercise on a regular basis. I'm going to try and schedule work time and personal time and not blur the boundaries too much. Most of all, though, I'm going to enjoy it while it feels good, and cross other bridges when I get to them.

camping with a vengeance

Since I've started freelancing I've been trying to create my own luck by being open to opportunity, as I'm sure Oliver Burkeman once suggested. Nearly two months ago now, at the beginning of June, I helped out Field Trip with the first outing of The Campsite, a new venue which is "dedicated to supporting unfeasible ideas and impractical performance work". Commissioned for its first outing and supported brilliantly by the folk at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, as part of the Pulse Fringe Festival 2012,  The Campsite transformed a scrubby, gravelled piece of disused land into a space full of innovative theatre, performance poetry, music, film, and participatory experiences, mostly for audiences of 1 to 6 people.

My involvement with the project came about like tripping over someone's guy rope, getting your knees muddy, but discovering that this tent has wonderful things and people inside, and being welcomed in for a beer. (I imagine, because this has never actually happened to me while camping. Yet). To continue the metaphor, while you're there you do end up having to help pump up the airbed, but there is pizza, coffee and a never ending supply of pastries and you have a wonderful if knackering time - and actually, a lot of that isn't a metaphor.


The guy rope, in real life, was a plea from Laura and Tom, the directors of Field Trip, on Twitter, for someone to help them pick up a caravan. They're friends of a friend (Nick White-White, who plays Frolly like a grown up and is also a theatre maker); I have a car with a tow bar, wasn't doing anything that weekend and offered to help. Several weeks later Field Trip had ended up buying my uncle and aunt's caravan (who have been enthusiastic in theory but somewhat bemused and possibly sceptical about how theatre in a caravan actually works) and I was sat in an office in Southwark with Tom. On one side was a splendid view of the London Eye, on the other, a completely bewildering wall full of names, times, and vans. 

 Most of what I did at that point was sit there and make reassuring noises. Tom seemed to find it vaguely comforting. And two weeks later there was a real live venue with an awful lot of artists, over 500 theatrical experiences, and nearly 14 hours of theatre, all over just a day and a half.


The Campsite had a mix of timed performances, most inside vans but some across the whole site. Then we also had durational performances which were very short so audience members could queue. It was sometimes difficult to know how to pace the issuing of tickets and to predict who might turn up when. I mention this because I found it really interesting just afterwards to read Hide & Seek's blog about Sandpit, which has a similar way of working but was trialling a drop in only version of Sandpit in June because:

'...there’s a problem with this system, which is: not everyone can turn up at 6:30. Not everyone knows which games they want to play, based on a 20-word description in a programme. Some people come at 8 and the games they’re interested in are all booked out; some people don’t even know what’s going on, they just wander past and have a look and want to get involved.' - Holly, Hide & Seek

The best bits were when people weren't that worried about seeing a particular artist or even knowing what they were signing up for, but found themselves surprised, shocked, amused and charmed in quick succession by a series of small scale personal encounters and then settled down with a drink, hot or cold, in a comfy campchair and watched Charlie Carroll's Campfire Sessions or the unforgettable special version of Ghostbusters. More detail and snippets of everything that happened can be found on The Campsite's Tumblr site here.

 The moral of this story for me is that it's definitely a good idea not to be so careful you don't have happy accidents. The caravan, now christened Margaret (aka the Princess, of course) is back in its new home at the Albany Theatre, Deptford, in a tiny nettled corner between a container and the wall, full of camping chairs, signage, and other bits and pieces. The vans have gone off to their respective parts of the UK. And recently I was back staring at that wall, as we planned what might come next.

Opening up the shop

A Guardian Careers article today about networking made reference to a piece of research by a man called Brian Uzzi, professor of management and organisations at the Kellogg School of Management near Chicago. It's a piece of research on Broadway musicals which I read about some years ago and which has really stuck in my head ever since. Now it's come up in the press again just as I'm trying to write a blog piece about collaboration.

Essentially, the conclusion of the research was that the ideal team to create a successful Broadway musical (measured on both critical response and commercial success) is made up of both people who know each other well and have worked together before and people who are new. The success of the team had more effect than the individuals involved. The networks of people who work together on such projects are small, which can be beneficial (presumably as you are not reinventing the wheel on working practices and knowing who does what well) but only up to a point: keeping a totally closed shop means that you are not allowing in new ways of working or challenges to your assumptions. This reduces the potential for creativity and innovation, as you're less likely to come up with something that hasn't been done before.

I've been to quite a few networking events in the last couple of months and the theme of bringing people together, collaboration, strength in numbers, space to share and get feedback, seems huge in the theatre world at the moment, both for small and larger companies. It's not all cosy: there are varying and I suspect often individually mixed motivations. Some are selfish, some are driven by necessity, some are genuinely about wanting to share and collaborate. Individual artists and small companies feel they need funding, support, space, feedback and some of their administrative burdens eased. But for me this shows that both large and small organisations should also be looking at how they keep introducing new voices into their creative process as well as just the practical reasons for collaboration.

I don't find networking easy, and much of the advice - back to the Guardian Careers article, and another producer's blog I'm enjoying, What Producers Do - says don't "cold" network, start with the people you know. It's right that not to feel sleazy and to make the most valuable connections there needs to be some kind of meaningful connection rather than just being out there to get what you can from people. However, for a start, what if you don't know many people in the industry? To be fair, both those sources talk then about what Guardian Careers calls "weak ties" - the friends of friends and the acquaintances. But even then, if you're focusing on those you know and their networks, you may be limiting the possibilities hugely by widening the numbers but not widening the type of people you meet: like attracts like. It's important to make the effort to reach out, too.

Deep in the tectonic plates of my own personal theatre sphere, things are creaking, and there is that slight humming in the air which makes it feel as though progress, though hard to see perhaps, is being made again after the set back earlier this year. There are two projects I'm hoping to make happen with one of my very good friends. Our relationship started as a work colleagues, moved to friendship, and now is beginning to encompass both again. One project is a multi-media theatre piece, the other a development project for emerging artists. We had a meeting about the latter last night and though it's ambitious, it feels coherent and, just about, possible.

Definitely part of the strength of our relationship is our shared understanding. We can be totally honest about what's working and what isn't, and I find her an absolutely invaluable collaborator. I'm better at making things happen than coming up with ideas, and I really struggle with devising projects on my own. I've learnt the hard way that sitting trying to write a project proposal by myself, even in the draft stages, whether my idea or someone else's, just doesn't get me anywhere. It's partly because I get bogged down in my own head and find it hard to gain clarity without talking things through; it's also because I can only get so far with the more creative elements of a project and need someone artistic to be contributing. One reason why I'm definitely a producer not a director!

Still, we both also definitely recognise that we'll need to bring other people in and also that what we do is made richer by the fact that we both also work on other projects and with other teams. It's one reason why the freelance role does suit creatives even though income and work is then potentially less reliable: you need to be able to get inspiration from lots of different sources, experience different approaches and working methods and therefore keep being able to question and challenge yourself.

So, to cut a long story short, this is part of what one of our projects is aiming to achieve. We'd like to open up access to the industry to those who don't already have the money, resources or connections to get ahead and who therefore may be far less likely to be able to succeed however much individual talent they possess. We'd also like to offer the chance for more experienced established artists to shake up and refresh their practice by working with someone new who might have different ideas, not just creatively but practically. We'd like to bring together people from different art forms and allow ideas to start from and go to different places. I'm really excited about it. If I make it happen, though, it won't be on my own.

Theatre: Ages and Stages

On Saturday I attended the Ages and Stages conference, on intergenerational and more loosely community theatre. It was run by London Bubble, at the Canada Water Library.

[NOTE: I suspect this post will be of little interest to anyone who doesn't already work in or at least know of the field, but just in case: it's generally defined in the UK as something like (and this was how Jonathan Petheridge, Creative Director of London Bubble, described the theme of the day) "open theatre making that involves people" - ie non-paid non-professionals participate in creating a piece of theatre. There is a distinction normally made, again in the UK, between "amateur" theatre or "am-dram" and "community theatre". It's by no means absolute, but normally the former is theatre made entirely by non-professionals as a hobby, whereas community theatre is usually led by professionals. It's also often, though not exclusively, made with a group of people who are targeted to take part because of where they live or who they are, and/or takes a particular theme or issue for its subject. This is all very complicated because it's different elsewhere, for example in the US, and it used to be different here: it used to mean theatre for different communities as much as with them.]

It was a real joy to hear such an interesting bunch of people talk about what they think community theatre's all about, including people I've found really interesting in the past - Lyn Gardner, Rosemary Lee, Helen Nicholson, who all lived up to expectation - and many others I've not come across before, not least people who've participated themselves. It also gave me a chance to re-examine my own thoughts: in the last nine years I've worked for five quite different arts organisations, I've completed an MA in Applied Drama and now for the first time ever (and this feels a significant milestone for me) I've started thinking about my own projects and how I'd like to shape them, as opposed to working to the ethos of an established organisation. Of course I chose those organisations because I thought I'd like how they worked, and I've learnt an awful lot from each, but it's different to be making it up for yourself.

I ended up with about ten pages of notes at the conference (as the really interesting PhD student next to me said, "I can't write fast enough") and feel the need to process all that thinking and listening somehow, so here are some - only some of many - of the things which particularly resonated or threw up questions for me, not just about community theatre. Not conclusions, so much, as really just a list of thoughts, and as Helen Nicholson said, offered up humbly - and I hope I haven't misquoted anyone too appallingly.

Definitions

Many people minded the term "community theatre" and mainly in relation to the possibility they might be then called "community theatre makers" rather than just "theatre makers". Why? Because it feels derogatory? No one would think that by saying Frantic Assembly, for example, made "physical theatre" that that meant they weren't still "theatre makers".

There was a nice feeling of inclusiveness though about the different kinds of practice that took place - and, albeit with some wariness about artists hopping on the bandwagon without really looking after the people they worked with (a good analogy was made by someone, I'm afraid I forget who, about some artists using people for inspiration and material without giving them any power, like you'd use 'a tube of yellow paint') - about the other practices which overlap with community theatre, like participatory theatre. Maybe still not enough with amateur theatre - yes, it's a different thing, but I don't think the line is quite as clear as some may think. I hope the RSC Open Stages project will have its intended impact on this.

Profile and awareness

Community theatre is definitely gaining in profile, respect and status - I've sensed this and it felt confirmed at this conference.

Lyn Gardner talked about social media's role in this in the context of papers like the Guardian reviewing community theatre. Increasingly, she said, it has a place in mainstream theatre criticism but this must be seen in the context of a "much broader changing cultural landscape where expertise is being questioned." She made the point that, for example, tweeters now often pre-empt newspapers at breaking news, meaning that papers now have to reexamine their function - and so do theatres. "For many years our dominant theatre culture was theatre made for but now theatre's place is at best questioned and at worst under siege. For or with is a big question now whether you're a theatre or a newspaper". I don't think I'd made this link before with why this change might be taking place, and it's a fascinating one.

Participants

I liked the four panels - artists, commentators, participants, and finally one called 'not just the once' though this one seemed to digress into more general chat about very location based community theatre. Perhaps because everyone seemed to agree that infrastructure and longevity was useful, interestingly (I don't disagree at all but would have expected more of a debate about it).

Should you select your participants in community theatre? Opinion was divided. Few thought auditioning in a traditional way was the right approach, most accepted the idea of having criteria if it worked for a particular show (of age, for example, or location) or picking a group which would be able to work well together. Making judgement calls as to whether projects are right for some people, however, was something not everyone thought directors should do (even if limitations on numbers meant some form of selection was required). Does involving everyone limit the kind of productions you can do, or how far you can go with your actors?

In general I think I go with Rosemary Lee's approach: if possible everyone should get to do something but not everyone can do everything. It can be unfair on the individual and on the group. I can see this is tricky though: it relies on the selector's values and could easily be used as an excuse not to involve people who are more challenging to work with than others.

It was great, having said all this, to have participants there, because all too often (and I think I'm very guilty of this) we think as producers and artists why a project is good (not necessarily just for us, for others too, but in a slightly worthy way maybe) and not why people might actually want to do this themselves, what their motivations were. We forget they are equal partners in the relationship, and I'm very aware most of my thoughts from the day are inevitably very much from my perspective not theirs.

Quality

One of my favourite comments was from Helen Nicholson who pointed out some of the things people say (or have said in the past) about what makes great art are ridiculous - for example that it's "humanising". "How can you be more human?" She said we need to keep trying to be more precise at describing what makes things good - not at measuring it better, but at interpreting what's really happening.

Rosemary Lee said that it wasn't skill or training she was looking for in her cast members - that people "unmasked" were beautiful, and training could interfere with this. Dancers who were like racehorses were harder for audience members to emphasise with.

"Unmasked" became quite a buzzword for the day, I'm not sure that everyone used it in quite the same sense. I think there is something more to being "unmasked" on stage than just lack of training - as Rosemary went on to explain, a lot of her initial exercises are about making people feel comfortable in themselves and 'at home'  - dropping the self-consciousness and 'front' that we all put on.

Why does this matter? I think maybe because community theatre is about engaging people with the whole of the process including as audience members. A lot of traditional mainstream theatre (or ballet etc) is very much about watching and admiring. We want to see people do things we know we couldn't ever do. In watching community theatre we are meant to not just watch but engage, to think "that could be me". Much of it is presented to people who may not be friends and family but are likely to be from the local area or know about the subject matter personally. As Louise Owen said, a great deal of it is about people having their culture recognised, sharing values in a society where cultural participation can be fraught (her word, one I liked!)

I got the sense that many people felt an audience made up of friends and family of the participants was somehow invalid, or not the 'right' audience. I'm not sure why: presumably if community theatre has recruited well, the people in it will be a good representation of the community, and hence family and friends will be too. And maybe not likely to come to the theatre otherwise? Many thought 'new' audiences were important: at the other end of the spectrum, some thought that Guardian readers were not the 'right' audience because of this. This is still under quality, by the way, because I think it all has meaning in terms of how the quality a play is judged by its audience and what they're looking for.

Critics and Criticism

So, speaking of judgement and the Guardian… this all still comes under the quality question really but I feel the need to separate it. There seemed to be an agreement between some at one point during the day that community theatre practitioners not only wanted their work reviewed in places like the Guardian, but that they were happy that that would mean they were reviewed on the basis of the product alone, not the process. They thought their work should 'stand up' as a piece of theatre without needing to know it was created with a community. Even after Lyn Gardner admitted - well nay, insisted - that people should be aware that critics are reviewing a commodity. Others said that they weren't aspiring to the hegemonic values of mainstream theatre and therefore didn't want to be judged by them. I have to admit, my response to the former was "really? Really?" Yet I'm not sure I totally agree with the latter, either - the good reviewers, like Lyn, try and break away from hegemonic values, and I think that's quite old fashioned. You can't have it both ways - to want to be in the mainstream but be protected from what that means. I think I have several problems here which I'm not sure I've totally resolved for myself.

Some projects are clearly of a very high quality, and rightly get reviewed, and get good reviews. To me this is a positive thing. I think community productions should be reviewed - and not just reviewed but critiqued in other ways too. If they're aiming for artistic quality - and most artists agreed they were - they deserve that recognition.

However, to state the obvious: reviews can also be bad, and they're public. If a community production is bad, it's probably not the participants' fault (they're not in it because of their existing skill levels so it's been up to the director, and possibly writer too, to help them achieve their potential and craft a play which works with who they are) yet if they get a bad review they'll feel it's because they've not done well. Should those people be put in that position if that's not what they've signed up for? Does it depend on how and to what they were signed up?

A few people said that it was important that a play was good so that the participants would be able to feel proud of what they'd achieved. I'm not sure I agree with that either. I think participants tend to be proud of what they've achieved if they've enjoyed making it, or if they've been challenged and felt they personally rose to the occasion, or for many other reasons and combinations of reasons few of which involve an unbiased view of the play and whether it was any good or not.

Some of community theatre isn't very good, either. Of course lots of theatre generally isn't very good (as was said) but I have to be honest and say I do think less community theatre would stand up to the particular kind of standards of professional critics than many other forms of theatre - quite apart from anything else it's much harder, because you are balancing all sorts of priorities, and have limits like time, and how hard you can work your cast. Which is not to say, I hasten to add (again) that there isn't some fantastic community theatre out there which is at least as good as anything professional, or that there isn't much else of equal or higher value in those productions. 

Finally

...and I have to get up very early in the morning, and I'm desperate to read Lyn Gardner's comments but haven't yet because I wanted to write this first, so this really is finally…

This should probably really go under quality but I couldn't decide quite where to put it in the order and I do think it's really key.

Rosemary Lee said something about how important it was to celebrate individuals and what they could do. This doesn't mean not working as an ensemble, or not trying to equalise all your performers (also important) but there is a difference between this and using people en-masse or in unison - she pointed out the similarity with this and the way extremist political movements use people (Hitler's rallies? The Beijing Olympics?)

I think this links to the "unmasked" thing and is key to what makes some community theatre really great - yes in some ways the same rules apply to all theatre and what makes it excellent, but there is something in here about using "real" people which feels different. A reason why, perhaps, casting and selection should still be done carefully in community theatre so you're not shoving someone into a role which isn't right for them, which anyone could do and it wouldn't make much difference, but finding a way in which you can use everyone's natural talents to create a character which is uniquely their own. It's replicable: companies like Quarantine use real people to do this too, and it's key to clowning - the Lecoq school of clowning, anyway, and probably many great actors. But - at risk of going a bit arty - it's something about being real and present on stage, which it's easy to get wrong, but which I think is one of the things which community theatre has the potential to do really brilliantly that other theatre often can't. People, unmasked, real, and the beauty in that.

It was a fascinating and inspiring day.

Having a lovely time at the theatre, darling

So, here we are the day before Christmas, and I haven't done anything on my list since the Rivoli Ballroom, but it's not because I've been sat inside my house refusing to enjoy anything that London has to offer. Apart from the run up to Christmas taking up time in itself (especially when it comes with various obligations which are too insanely traditional to be believed, including choir robes, candles, trebles singing 'Once in Royal David's City' and having a handy bottle of brandy in my pocket for carol singing round the streets) this month has largely been about theatre. And I am ENJOYING what London (and the locality) has to offer theatrically wise. I think I'm subconsciously forgetting that all this costs actual real money, unlike my halcyon days working at the country's best attended regional theatre where seeing something different every week came for free, and I'm just booking in for things left right and centre. In fact, I haven't even yet seen half of the theatre I've planned, but I have been thinking about, talking about, dreaming about and practically eating theatre for breakfast.

Taking my cousin's older son, who is nearly three, to two different but equally excellent children's shows has been a real pleasure - he is very sweet when watching a show. He narrows his eyes slightly and watches intently but with a considering look, and asks pertinent questions if he doesn't quite understand what's going on. We could all hang on to a bit of that mindset. I'm hoping I can carve a role for myself in the family generally as the cool aunt / first cousin once removed (if we're going to be accurate) who takes the next generation to amazing theatrical events. Even my cousin's six month old enjoyed himself.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens to theatre as they grow up. For the last few years there has been a huge push from those arts organisations who might be seen as elitist - mostly big building based companies creating theatre in traditional forms such as 'straight' theatre, opera, ballet - to change their image, and hopefully their actual working methods too, while equally some of the smaller independents as well as education, youth and community theatre have all gained status within the theatrical world. However there is also a divide between those latter kinds of theatre and "popular" theatre: the musicals, mostly. The theatre I find most interesting is exploring and testing those divides: what makes theatre high quality, accessible, enjoyable, challenging, entertaining? Is it possible or even desirable for it to do all those things at once? It's not a new question I know.

I think the most exciting thing for me right now is that I'm finally in a position where I might be able to start exploring some of this for myself, rather than through the policies of the companies who employ me, and for real rather than through academic papers. I've learnt a hell of a lot and continue to through the people I work for, and I realised the other day through both a session at Devoted and Disgruntled and the Improbable Mentoring Fete that the journey as an independent producer, which I've been finding so bemusing as a prospect, might not be so different. Find the people and the theatre that interests you, see what you might have in common, try and work with them if you can, and see where that takes you. It's enormously exciting, though not a little scary too. It might well not work, but I've been on wild goose chases before and survived. So, this Christmas, for me, it's "here's to the occasional wild goose." May we all enjoy the chase.