Thursday 4 December 2008

Community Plays

  • A community participating in the telling of a story
  • A Play that would have a strong narrative
  • A pantomime or Nativity
  • Could perhaps refelcts on key issues rife in that particular community
  • Unification, demonstrates ideas in a safe environment
  • Conflict resolution
  • Diversity
  • The re-imagining of place

The above is what we discussed in class about what a community play is. I believe that the above is mostly true, it's about participation, involvment and unifying a community, brings people together. You can involve different age groups, gender, ability and race. I believe that in putting on a community play that it is important to play something that is relevant in that particular community, perhaps it being about that certain community itself, or the place or an individual that they all relate to and also work through together in order to solve something.

I don't think however, when I was growing up that there were community plays, or if there were, I certainly wasn't involved. I never heard that the whole of Pinewood Park, or Guillemont Fields took part in a show together, nothing like that ever happened. No one really knew their neighbours that well, we knew names and recognised faces but that was about it. There were the kids I knew on my street but I know that our parents weren't friends, they didn't know each other. It makes me think that communities like this, ones that are on middle-ground, that aren't too poor, or aren't too rich are in some points the ones who need some kind of unification, some sense of communicating with the people who are, geographically, the closest to us. When I think about growing up I think that we could have done with that sense of community being brought to us. We needed something that would all bring us together for a certain length of time, even if it wasn't a play but an activity, or a party, just somewhere that we could have this sense of unification. And then perhaps after this happened people would go on with this new sense of community and carry on talking to the people they worked togehter with. I think people need to identify with each other, people don't realise that there could be someone around the corner who was the most similar person to them and could actually turn out to be a friend, but it seems that people didn't take the time to get to know each other or even try to meet each other.

And I suppose there might be problems with creating a community play as you might think you are being completely inclusive when actually, you might turn out to be somewhat exclusive when you didn't expect it. Personally I think I would go out into the community and find out exaclty what they like, dislike, enjoy, hate and perhaps find out if there would be certain abilities or disabilities I could also cater for.

1 comment:

Mark Griffin said...

So much of our theatre is product centred - the play is prepared and offered and the audience take or leave it. The community play offers the chance to build an event slowly around the skills, talents and enthusiasms of the participants. I think it's less about catering more about creating and the more inclusive, the moreinteresting it becomes.