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January 2024

A COMMUNITY WORKING IN ISOLATION
A woman is standing in front of someone who has their back to the camera. She is laughing at something. Behind her is a variety of props.

I’ve been facilitating workshops since 1996, when I tentatively stepped into a room in a school on a Saturday morning to face a small group of nervous young children - what was I thinking! Everything I planned to do was done in 10 minutes and I genuinely don’t remember how I got through the following hour. But I do remember getting through it - and even (heaven forbid), enjoying it! The group stayed with me too and we joked and laughed and played for a term.


I didn’t know it then, but I had found my vocation. The vocation itself didn’t really know what it was yet either. I wasn’t a drama teacher - no! I’d trained as an ‘actor’! I only took this Saturday morning job to pay the bills in-between my ‘proper’ industry work. What I didn’t realise was that this ‘in-between work’ would be the thing to develop and challenge me creativity in ways that my ‘proper acting work’ didn’t. It would also make me feel both a part of the cultural industries, and apart from them as well.


Facilitating (as it’s now known), was finding its feet as a practice to be defined. I had been introduced to the Drama Process work of Dorothy Heathcote in a module at my drama school in 1991, and eight years after my first ever workshop, I was lucky enough to work alongside Cecily O’Neill on a 2-week school’s project. I remember discussing terminology with her then (and we continue to discuss it even now), as the term Applied Theatre was emerging and being offered as a specialist course of study.


Just Muddle Through


In 2005 I was honoured to be invited to observe Dorothy Heathcote in action as she worked with a group of emerging facilitators. I vividly remember her quiet manner and the phenomenal depth she was able to achieve in the work, and a year later when I met her again, I was lucky enough to speak with her. I had just launched my own company and was about to start my first official project, when I asked her for any advice. “Just muddle through” she said, “Just muddle through”, then she smiled and squeezed my arm. I left with the biggest smile on my face, confident that I could do this - mistakes and all - and just like my first ever workshop, and regardless of how much experience I have gained since then, I still think I am (like so many facilitators), just muddling through.


It’s the nature of the business. We work in isolation. Delivering workshops to support a show taking place (but not part of the show’s ‘official’ company), or in schools to support the curriculum, or in community settings to promote health & wellbeing, or part of an ongoing after-school or weekend drama group - the list goes on … and yet the opportunity to share practice with other facilitators is often not there. Facilitators employ a vast array of techniques to ‘create’ in a short space of time, often with a group they’ve just met, who have various experiences and who often come with baggage and/or expectations towards drama - and yet, if it goes badly, or something happens that was unexpected, there’s often no network to discuss or disseminate it with. There’s no one there to even celebrate with if it goes well. The group leaves, you pack up your props, you go home … or you get ready to do it all again!


We are a community of facilitators, working in isolation.


We are all muddling through on our own and it is vital that we establish our networks to celebrate and commiserate and develop the work we do. We also need the industry to understand and cherish and respect the work we do (in isolation) too. We are (I believe), the beating heart of the ‘official’ industry. We are the front door into a world that is often locked or unknown or considered forbidden or inaccessible. We provide the key.


So, I relish the opportunities over the next 12 months, to share practice and further develop my own network. Here’s to the journey ahead to re-invigorate my own practice as I continue to stand up for a facilitators rightful place in the industry.


Books I'm reading this month:


House of Games: Making Theatre from Everyday Life

by Chris Johnston

The Drama Teacher's Survival Guide


Yorumlar


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