Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The area of community which our group found most interesting was the older generation, there
were many reasons for this, one of them being that we felt strongly about bridging the gap between
the older and the young through similar interests in ideas and to represent this in a performative
way. From this the group developed upon exploring the relationship between to technology and
members of the community aged over sixty. The ideas for the workshop began to manifest as it
seemed to be particularly current is the news it was reported that as there had been accounts in the
news about an elderly woman that had committed suicide as she felt that she couldn't keep up with
technological advancements. The mirror reports: Anne, the 89-year-old woman who took her own
life rather than live in digital-barmy Britain (Routledge, 2014, para.2). This situated the project
very close to our hearts and seemed to not only be important but necessary to the community. In
James Thompson and Richard Schechner's view: community theatre supports self-esteem,
builds confidence, manages anger, heals sociopsycholoical wounds, creates new approaches
to learning, promotes participatory community development, and/or can operate constructively
in the face of all kinds of traumatic experiences. (2004, p.12). Through this, the workshop would
aim to use theatre within the community as a catalyst to utilise interdisciplinary techniques to
enlighten and educate people over sixty. Paul Sermon (1966-) would our main focus for such aims.
Stephen Wilson gives insight into Sermon's work by stating that it provides an environment for the
investigation of several cultural themes raised by telecommunication, such as the meaning the
physical body in a world dominated by virtual representation (2002 , p.520). Sermon's work was
an important part to the process as in implemented various forms of interactive performance while
challenging the topics relevant to the group further centering it within the community. This essay
will explore the process undergone when challenging these issues and will reveal our discoveries of
the process, specifically whether the older generation view technological advancements within a
dystopian or utopian context. Laura, Sanisha and I decided to establish a company name in order to
situate the the group of 6 into a company dynamic, in addition to this Les Essif's expresses that the
name [is] very important to our identity, focus, morale (2006, p.102). The group decided upon The
Silver Surfer Players as it resembles the groups motives well, while adding a light element of
comedic value too. We believe this name made the working process a more fun and enjoyable
experience which would be a creative benefit to the group and increase the approached to playing
with new ideas.
With an established company name and group ethos. Seeing as [a]pplied theatre works overtly
either to reassert or to undermine socio-political norms (Prendergast, & Saxton, 2009, p.8), Laura,
Sanisha and I decided together that we wanted to enter into a project to which the participants
attended by their own will and with a personal willingness to perform. Tim Prentki states that [t]he
terms which the outsider enters the chosen community may well determine the response offered by
participants to the proposed project or workshop (2009, p.181). Being that the nature of the process
relied heavily on the opinions of the older generation we decided that it was imperative to approach
a group who were keen to explore our intervention into the community, as Prentki continues that
intervention is implicated in issues of power and the right to speak on behalf of others (2009,
p.181). And it was through this the group wished only to include members of the community who
were independently involved in the project in order to avoid these predetermined inequalities
(2009, p.181) within the groups process. Therefore the work produced could be held in the hands of
the community and sculpted through their pure personal input. After contacting many community
centres and arranging meetings with already situated arts groups, we were instructed to contact the
Greenwich Court Retirement Home. The community there was already interested in the arts, as they
had previously been involved in university projects, and thankfully they were very interested in
experimenting with different forms of practice. This was helpful to us as it showed that the group
could be transported to our performance space. Schechner and Thompson state that [s]ocial theatre
is not or at least in our view, ought not to be limited to taking performance practices to
nontheatrical space, as a meeting of two distinct unrelated wholes: theatre and social work.
(2004, p.12). With this in mind we recognised that, in order to truly immerse the older group in
performative technology we would have to integrate them within a performance space. This would
therefore combine the elements of technological performance, integrate the older generation with
us,and include the groups personal input on technology.
To establish a connection with the group at Greenwich Court, my peers and I found it necessary to
first build a personal relationship with them. We achieved this by meeting them at their homes to
have a talk about their past experiences with technology. The company Age Exchange, who work
with the connection between the older community and art, were a helpful source for us as they gave
us an insight into how we could approach the group in a way which is beneficial to them. On the
Age Exchange website they comment that Age Exchange works with older people to improve
their quality of life by valuing their reminiscences (Mission and aims, 2012). It was from this that
our group understood that the small community of older people would appreciate sharing their past
experience with us. And so we decided to set up regular meetings in which we would discuss the
groups personal relationship with technology and their previous affiliations with it. Not only could
we therefore have personal accounts of their experiences but also shape the preparation of the
workshop around their ideas. We realised the way in which our whole group began and ended the
workshop was important to entering and leaving the space in the right mind set, Pretra Kuppers
states that [d]uring an arts workshop, people usually experience a different attention to the world, a
different pace, a different way of being with others. Find a way to release participants back into the
'normal' world. (2007, p.129). We were therefore able to apply these discussions and came to the
understanding that we would meet to converse at the beginning and end of the workshop in order to
immerse and detach ourselves from the working environment, which reciprocally gave an account
of our experiences.
In order to use applied theatrical techniques in an interdisciplinary context we decided to present a
range of practitioners that would influence the creation of the workshop process and further the
groups aims to critique the technological world. We began researching practitioners who themselves
dealt with the use of technology in performance to represent society's position's on such areas. Paul
sermon (1966-) uses technology in the community in a theatrical sense by using interdisciplinary art
installations, as is shown in The Teleporter Zone. The original intention of Semon's The Teleporter
Zone was to encourage outpatients to subconsciously relocate themselves to a different time and
space, helping to remove their thoughts from the confines of the waiting area (2007, p.428). Within
a performative context the group was able to use this idea to immerse The Silver Surfer's into the
performance space. This meant that the audience went from being passive to active. Sermon
comments how the relay of live video images between two sites, [combines] audience participants
within the same telepresent installation (2007), p.428). Therefore the performative context of the
piece means the group transports their awareness (2007, p.427) to a heightened sense of
performativity. As a group we developed this further by using a transaction of gestures in the
Telematic space, the group used this to frame and critique how society is losing human elements
when interacting through media. Through Jean Baudrillard who states [t]he loss of meaning is
directly linked to the dissolving, dissuasive action of information, the media, and mass media.
(1981/1994, p.79). With advances on the idea that the personal gestural communication is being
sidelined by the overuse of mediated technologies. In conjunction with this idea Schechner and
Thompson state that [w]hat the most effective social theatre does is to rub up against and reveal
the performative in the setting, complementing or undermining it, challenging or further
heightening it (2004, p.13). The Silver Surfers were therefore able to critique their view on how
technological performance. The purpose and use of applied theatre in this context was to open up a
dialogue to between the older generation and their views within technology which was mainly
achieve through active performativity. The outcomes for this process were in no way to find a
solution to the questions we were proposing but to experiment and explore ways of representing
benefits and problems that the older generation experience with technology in the modern world.
Bibliography
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation (S. Glaser, Trans.). Michigan: University of
Prentki, T. (2009). Introduction to intervention. In T. Prentki, & S. Preston (Ed.), The applied
theatre reader. pp.181-183). Oxon: Routledge.
Mission and aims. (2012). Retrieved from the Age Exchange website: http://www.ageexchange.org.uk/about_us/index.html
Morelos, R. (1999). Symbols and Power in the theatre theatre of the oppressed. Brisbane:
Queensland University of Technology Press.
Routeledge, P. (2014, April 10). Anne took her own life rather than live in digital-age Britain - a
one-way street to psychosis. The Mirror. Retrieved from http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uknews/paul-routledge-anne-took-life-3398433
Sermon, P. (2007). "The teleporter zone": Interactive media arts in the healthcare context.
Leonardo, 40 (5), 426-431. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20206476
Schechner, R., & Thompson, J. (2004). Why "Social Theatre"? TDR 1988, 48 (3), 11-16. Retrieved
From http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488567
Willson, S. (2002). Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology. Worcester:
Achorn Graphic Services Inc.