Tikhtak

The LIFT Living Archive Opened! - A lesson for the church

This week I attended the official opening of the Lift Living Archive at Goldsmiths college. The archive moved from Lifts offices over the summer to be housed at Goldsmiths college, who have been encouraging various groups to explore it. The archive covers the work of Lift (London International Theatre Festival) from 1981 to 2001. My own involvement in the archive has been as a researcher for about 6 months as part of my MA placement. That meant delving into boxes, reading reviews and eventually creating an on-line trail on the Lift living archive website called Foreign theatre in a foreign land. (Pic above is Al Kasaba's  "Alive from Palestine,")

Lifts work in bringing top international theatre companies who perform in non traditional settings and with a whole range of creative approaches appealed to me because I could see how the vision of Lift could be applied to the church. Just as Lift celebrate different expressions of theatre both in and outside of the building so the church needs to learn how to flex the same muscle. Read Jonny Bakers take on preaching  "Throwing a grenade into the fruit bowl" for a bit of inspiration on this.

The evening itself was done in a very creative way. There was a room full of tables with people from Lift past and present as well as representatives from the various user groups. I sat with The Magic Me contingency. Magic me is an inter-generational arts organisation which had facilitated a creative writing project called penfriends among pensioners. In the middle of the table was a box from the archive and having put on white glove's we were encourage to explore and talk about the archive. There was a mic on each table to record our conversations. It really felt like a feast of Lifts history. To round things off we were then provided with a real feast and wine to boot.  A thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring evening.

My Research at The Lift Living Archive

Over the past 5 months I have been doing research at LIFT(London International Festival of Theater) as a placement for my MA studies at Goldsmiths college. The LIFT living archive is a record of Lift's work inviting international theater companies to London from 1981 to 2001. As a culmination to this work I have designed an on-line trail comparing two theater productions, Al Kasaba's "Alive from Palestine" production  (2001) and Katona Joszef's Three sisters and The Government Inspector productions from Hungary (1989). Click on Foreign theatre in a foreign land to view the trail

The trail will also be part of a Symposium on Documenting Practices being held this Thursday at the Central School of Speech and Drama. I have copied the splurge on it below.

Documenting Theatre Symposium:

Will sample different approaches to documenting theatre. It questions how and why we document this live art form, and explores the issues, practices and challenges involved. It particularly addresses the use of new technologies in documentation in a digital age. The Exhibition includes material from the National Theatre digital archive, Cameron Mackintosh archive, Rambert archive and the LIFT Living Archive, drawings by Rae Smith for War Horse, technical video storyboards by mesmer, books by Ernst Fischer, rehearsal drawings by Quentin Blake, photographs by Manuel Vason and a range of experimental documentation by Central practitioners.

The Symposium, at 3:00pm on Thursday 6 November, features two round table discussions, with representatives from the V&A's National Video Archive of Performance, the Royal Opera House new media department, the National Theatre Archive, the Musicians' Union and intellectual property law, as well as contributions from theatre practitioners/designers including Rae Smith, Mervyn Millar, Gareth Fry, Gregg Fisher, Sven Ortel and David Harradine. Admission is free

To reserve a place at the Symposium, email cett@cssd.ac.uk or call +44 (0)20 7449 1571
www.cssd.ac.uk
Embassy Theatre and Studio, The Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, Eton Avenue, London NW3 3HY

Open spaces - Ngugi Wa Thiongi

As part of my MA study this term I have elected a course on African Theatre. It asks the big question of What is African Theatre or Literature? Nearly all written books and plays in circulation have been influenced by Europe through colonisation and so are better discribed as EuroAfrican literature. in fact the rich oral traditions of Africa were completely degraded in colonialisation in favour of European literature and languages. One writer Ngugi Wa Thiongi, who himself was educated under this system, has made a stand against this history for some 20 years now by only now writing his plays and literature in Gikuyu a Kenyan language. In his book "Decolonising the mind" he talks about how Theatre in pre colonial Africa was part of the expression of the community. Drama, dance, song retolled stories of heroism or was used in ceremonies and ritual on a daily basis. It also happened, not in buildings but in the open spaces. When Europian nations colonised Africa for fear of revolution any gatherings in open spaces were banned which had a devastating effect on African community life. The education system put people in class rooms and all of this oral tradition was ignored in favour of Shakespeare and other English or European lietrature. On my trip to Sierra Leone last as I waited for the helicopter to take us to Lungi Airport an old man was selling as book about Sierra Leone. I bought it because I had seen nothing like it in the 2 weeks I had been in the country. It was a book about the oral tradtions of Sierra Leone and had been translated into English. At the time I bought it as a keep sake and because I liked the pictures. Now I realise what a gem I bought.

Tikhtak's Creative Toolbox

Last year I decided to create a blog with lots of warm up games, ice breakers and drama exercises to be used with small or large groups. If nothing else it has proved a resource for me and has been a useful place to store new ideas I have been picking up whilst doing my MA in Applied Drama. Check out Tikhtaks Creative Toolbox and feel free to try anything you find useful. I would be very interested to hear how things you have done have worked. You can also click on the link in the sidebar.

LIFT archive at Goldsmiths

The LIFT Archive has officially been moved to Goldsmiths College and I was asked to join a select group of past and present MA students and lecturers to explore how the archive can be accessed by groups in the local community. Perhaps the biggest buzz for all of us was putting on white gloves to look through the files. One of the biggest challenges is to get over the negative ideas of an archive. One good way of thinking  about it is to see the contents of your bag or bedroom like an archive. It is a picture into your life warts and all and in many ways may be quite random. I also continue to work at LIFT  (London International Festival of Theatre) as part of my MA placement to create trails for online users to access the Archive. As part of the MA this year we aill also be creating and delivering some of the community workshops to attract users in the area.

MA placement ast LIFT

As part of my Applied Drama MA at Goldsmiths I am doing a placement at LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre). LIFT have spent the last two decades bringing theatre from different parts of the world to London. They have an archive of all this experience which will conveniently be based at Goldsmiths college and part of my remit is to develop user friendly ways into accessing it and inspiring other user groups to access it too. This will culminate in designing workshops to take into schools, colleges etc LIFT have been committed to staging theatre in very unlikely venues and their philosophy is pretty much summed up by Phakarna, an arts exchange programme from South Africa "Everyone irrespective of age, experience or culture, has equally something to give and gain from each other." I am hoping this placement will also influence my work among young people. Check out my pics of Sultans elephant which came to London a few years ago as part of LIFTS 06 festival.

Goldsmith's Mug

As I am about to come to the end of the teaching contact of my MA in Applied Drama at Goldsmiths I thought I would reward myself with a Goldsmiths mug. It has been great to get to know and work with people who have the same interests and are in the world of taking creative risks. It made a project like Free For All seem like the norm. I have uploaded some photos from our penultimate session and we have a tool-box blog where shared creative ideas are uploaded. This is a nice legacy from the year that I hope will be a useful resource. I of course still have another year to go of the MA as I am part time, but all my contact time from now on will be done through tutorials only.

New Creative-Toolbox drama blog

I have created a Creative-Toolbox blog  where both students and practitioners from the Applied Drama MA at Goldsmiths college can pool icebreakers, warm ups, drama games and devising techniques, which I hope can be a useful bank of resources in workshops and training across numerous fields. As material is used and discovered it will be added and categorised so it can be easily accessed.

Creative project evaluation

This week as part of my MA Applied Drama at Goldsmiths College we looked at creative ways to plan or evaluate a project. It basically involved listing the main stages involved in the project from the initial idea, the theme, terminology, recruitment, people involved etc through to the evaluation and legacy of the project. In the first model we wrote out the stages of the project on big peices of paper and then were invited to transform it into a model or sulpture, decorating it and raising some bits up. We then analysed what we observed together. It was a very affective way of talking about and reflecting on the project creatively and in an indirect non confrontational way as all eyes were on the model and any comments were filtered through it. We also used this technique to plan a project. We split up into smaller groups to do this and once we had built our model other groups came  and had a look giving their observations of what they saw. It was a very revealing exercise and incredible how much we were able to observe from each other projects through just looking at the model. It was also a great way to get excited about the project at it's birth as we scuttled around trying to find materials. Having just finished a big CMS project ourselves Free For All and as we think about a possible new project for 2009 this could prove a useful tool. To see the models we made check out my flickr pics