So all term there’s been a little spectre that has been
lurking beneath the surface of every Youth Theatre session I’ve run this year between Harrogate Youth Theatre and York Youth Theatre,
getting stronger and stronger as we entered this recent term. Like a force that imposes itself in the corner
of your eye, this power has grown from a casual aside to almost dominating some
games and exercises. The Spectre of the
American Election.
Or, to be frank, mostly Donald Trump as a figure the young
people go to as a boogieman who wants to build walls and dominate
situations. Often, he ends up being
assassinated in the scenes.
I believe that Youth Theatre should unpack current issues
through the use of drama, and so to the best of my ability I wanted to explore
what people in power do to stay in power, or get more of it.
The session with my 16+ group was like a role-playing adventure. Each person had randomly assigned traits
(such as a keen gardener, happily married, born in another country, owns a
football club, history with the military, holds a Doctorate in Sciences) and a
single Secret Objective (put Arts in the spotlight, make sure you are the
Leader, put your country on the world stage).
Then the group did some character work to embody the character, we
allowed 3 leaders to bring together 3 parties, put one group in ‘power) have
them a table, pens, paper and water) and the others stuffed into the corners.
We presented the group with issues, which they had 2-5 minutes
to decide who would issue a statement, and what this could contain. We gave them Marches for Workers Rights, Oil
Spills and Remembrance Day. Instantly
they all fought to make the most worthy statement, creating promises, raising
concerns and trying to outdo the other parties.
We raised the stakes on a refugee crisis, and added in question time
elements. We allowed them to join other
parties and when they made decisions, brought those back to bite them.
But we also tried to keep it fun. Fergus who works with me was the singular
voter of this created country, and read out some invented Polls as the ‘Every
Man’. We also gave 3 bits of breaking
news bitingly reflective of our current leader’s misgiving (an indecent act
with a balloon, caught in riots fighting police for worker’s rights and finally
called the French “cheese
eating surrender monkeys”).
What we found was these young people are all pretty
liberally-minded, and all groups broadly agreed on centrist issues, such as
raising wages, welcoming refugees and not escalating any conflicts. What was fun was not the decisions they made,
but how they presented their decisions, how they wrangled for their own angle
and spotlight.
This was an exercise in drama, each character had an agenda just
like any complex play, everyone is after something with their intentions and back-story
filtering into the current action. It
also meant decisions made in ‘act 1’ affected events later in the ‘play’ (for
instance in an example of one-up-man-ship one group renamed a stadium they
owned ‘Poppy Stadium’ for Remembrance Day, only for us to claim that Nationalists
had used it as a symbol of anti-refugee sentiment). And, finally, it was a theatre lesson in how
devising can work making an immersive world, playing as character for longer
than just a short snippet.
But in terms of understanding elections and parties, the
very intelligent group had a keen sense of the language of politicians. There was a sense that good-must-be-done, as none
of them attempted to really manage with their positions of power, but at the
same time status became central to their decision-making and policies. I think although we positioned this workshop
as a ‘game’, it was inevitable that they different parties would relish in
trying to manoeuvre within the game, a small scale version of the larger was
parties interact with one another.
But a shout-out must go to the members of York Youth Theatre
who threw themselves into the political frame with gusto and, without such commitment,
the game would not have worked so well, or given everyone such enjoyment.
Of course this was an experiment, and one I’d like to try
again. We took some feedback from the
group, and no doubt next week in evaluation we’ll hear more ideas for making
the exercised work.
If you have any thoughts, or want a copy of the workshop
plan, or even want me to visit your Youth Theatre group (or even adult drama
group) to give it a try, drop me a line henrythepoet@btinternet.com
