Malta

Lou Ghirlando
St. James Cavalier, Centre for Creaitivity

Beginnings
In order for Malta to participate in the Opening Doors Festivals, St. James Cavalier needed to start the process of setting up the foundations for a theatre group for actors with learning disabilities. This was a new concept for the team, developed specifically for this project. For St. James Cavalier, it was an important decision to open up the process to as many people as possible across the country without limiting to specific geographical areas or institutions. Thus the group was set up following a nation-wide invitation, and a six-sessions taster period which allowed potential participants to savour the work before committing to the length of the project.

Context
The Maltese participants who joined the group came from a range of backgrounds. Some had some previous artistic experiences, others had none. In all cases it was an important part of the process to allow all participants to find themselves involved in the project on equal footing with the possibility of asserting themselves as individuals with their own strengths. For this, coming together to an art centre that was equally new to them, allowed for the participants to develop a new context that was theirs and shared by all.

Method
The working process has grown from two initial aims: firstly, to facilitate the growth of a group of individuals with different life experiences coming together to create a common artistic process; and secondly, to initiate the development of theatre skills through exploratory and sensory work that needed to be stimulating to all the participants whose needs, disabilities and interests are diverse. For this, some basic principles have been developed that allow for this process:

Open-endedness: this means offering a task instruction that serves as a stimulus, a point of access, without imposing a reaction. For example, asking participants to create a sound in reaction to a word: the word is the common starting point to all, the participants each react to that word differently.
Laddering: a task is created with an objective for a skill that needs to be developed. The task is broken down into accessible steps so that the leap into the imagination, for example, or the emotional level, is not out of reach. For example, in a process leading towards the devising of a performance piece, once small groups have created their own narratives in response to common objects, the group could be invited to identify together as a whole group the common elements in the different narratives, then to discuss the common themes, and then to identify the common emotions.
Flexibility: this involves creating alternative access points in order to reach the objective skill. Thus for example, if the objective is to work on the different walks of characters, it might be necessary to explore different warm-ups first, such as exploring different ‘sizes’ of walks, or the different sounds that can be made through walking differently. Character walks can then be identified after having explored different ways of walking.

Session sample 1
commentary
Duration: 1.5 hours
When:2 months into the process

Welcoming: Sitting in a circle, participants start by saying ‘merhba’, which means ‘welcome’, in a soft whisper, and repeating it in increasing volume.

A circle formation is always used at the beginning of sessions to bring participants together, allowing them to focus in on the session and each other after their days of work or school outside.

Warm-up: Moving into the body
1. Participants are invited to throw an imaginary ball to each other whilst playing with its shapes and sizes.

Performing this task regularly allowed for the participants to increase their skills of playing and imagining as they began to devise little improvisations around what happened to the ball and where it might have rolled to. One participant went out of the studio and improvised a dialogue with the centre’s receptionist asking if they’d seen a large ball roll by, and where it had gone to as it was not possible for them to have missed such a large green ball.

2. The participants are paired and asked to stand back to back with a large exercise ball balanced between their backs. They then need to walk without dropping the ball.

Having worked on this for a few sessions previously, some participants have learnt how to sense each others’ back more and the necessary pressure needed to apply to the ball to prevent it from falling. For some, the process is longer and the first skill of walking backwards is achieved through following the direction of the ball as their partner guides them on.

Body: Exploring different senses.
Whilst blindfold, participants are invited to explore a number of objects provided to them in a bag. They are asked to show that they have identified the objects through performing an action that shows the object.

This was used as an exercise to facilitate the growth of an exploratory attitude that involved different senses. It also served as a way into articulation through movement and mime.

Cool down:
The participants are guided through a stretch to gentle music in the background where they are guided through an imaginative experience of growing out to a tree from a seed. They are asked to take a seed like position on the ground and through slow instruction guided through feeling the imaginary rain and wanting to reach out to it, and growing with it; then absorbing the warmth of the sun, moving to a gentle breeze, then feeling it get stronger and stronger till it calms down again.

This involved participants in an imaginative trip whilst engaging with the body. Some participants engaged solely on the physical level, whilst others indulged in the imagination. This exercise was re-explored several times and can also be used with different images to engage with different movements.

Closure: In a circle, participants shake their bodies and wave, then tighten the circle, shake their bodies again and move in tighter again to once more shake their bodies and wave. This continues until participants are tightly squeezed in a tight hub.

This exercise is always used at the end of sessions in order to bring participants together at the end of the group, allowing them to explode their energy and greet each other before leaving.




Session sample 2
Duration: 2 hours
When: 13 months into the process

Welcoming: Participants are invited to decide how they wish to creatively greet each other. With the participants standing in a circle, each takes their turn at stepping into the centre and creating their own gesture to welcome the group to the day’s session.

One participant offered a suggestion selected from a variety of such exercises developed throughout the previous months.
The movement here is towards empowerment by encouraging participants to offer and lead their own suggestions, which they often choose from exercises already performed together which they sometimes modify.

Warm-up:
Retaining the circle formation, participants are asked to sit whilst one person remains standing up. As soon as the person standing up sits, another person has to stand up. There always has to be one person standing up, but never more than one, so that if two do stand up at the same time they are both ‘out’. The winner is he who is left in the circle last.

This part of the session moves the work into the body and allows participants to increase their concentration into the session.
Participants are really encouraged to concentrate on each other’s body language in order to watch out for who is about to sit or stand and it also encourages them to work on their bodies in order to try to deceive others as to when they are planning to sit or stand. It might be useful to put a time limit for how long participants can remain standing as otherwise some in our group enjoy playing by hogging the standing space!

Participants are asked, in-turn, to run across the space and end their run with a jump, and then to run and end their run with a movement on the floor.

This work continues in bringing participants to explore their physical movement in new and unfamiliar ways as well as getting used to different spatial levels. This has also proven to be a very useful and strong energiser, if energy levels need lifting.

Body: Currently the group are working on devising a piece based on Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant.’ The work developed in phases by listening to the story whilst improvising the sound score with percussion instruments provided, as well as drawing the story board, as well as hot-seating participants in-character. This session involves the participants in listening to the story again and after every few lines, in small groups, each creating a tableaux of the scene narrated.

This is recent work that the group has taken up. We are working on translating the story into dramatic form, whilst allowing our own creative take on it. The development of two important dramatic skills is at the centre of this work: plot and character. This session’s work on tableaux was a chance to embody the story and to allow participants to start visualising the detail of the story as they became the elements, the flowers and animals in the garden, the protagonists (the boy and the giant) and all the other characters that are not given much importance in the story such as the other children and adults who enjoyed the giant’s garden.
Working in small groups has also been a recent development of the group. This has allowed more space to the participants to explore their own images and creative impulses.

Cool-down: In a circle, with music running in the background, participants take their turn at leading the movement of the rest of the group who copy them.

This exercise builds on two skills we have been working on recently. These are free movement in response to music, as well as copying the movement of others. Each participant has their moment to explore their movement, whilst the group move in and out of exploring their own and looking at and copying that of the others.

Closure: In a circle, participants shake their bodies and wave, then tighten the circle, shake their bodies again and move in tighter again to once more shake their bodies and wave. This continues until participants are tightly squeezed in a tight hub.

This has continued as the routine closure signalling the end of the session.


Group Process

At the beginning of the project, the ethic became defined as one where participants would not be selected for the project, but would select themselves. This was done in view of the desire to open up the project to people who perhaps might not yet have experienced drama. Thus a taster period, lasting for three months, was set up whereby participants could come freely to the sessions without committing to their duration. Thirty-two participants applied and therefore two parallel groups of 16 people were formed, each meeting once fortnightly. During this period, the group worked on a process of exposure to stimuli and stimulus-response exercises.
At the end of this period, the participants were then invited to a meeting in which it was explained to them that the taster period had come to an end, and that what would follow would be the building of the theatre group which would meet once weekly. Further to this, half the group would meet separately for another session during the week in preparation for the UK trip, after which the other half of the group would meet separately in preparation for the Belgian trip. The participants had to decide for themselves whether they wanted to continue being a part of this project now that they had a sense of what drama was about. Each was invited to sign a commitment to continue in the project until June 2009 and to travel with the group. Seventeen participants accepted to be a part of the continuation of the project.
In August of 2008, the group as it was to be established met for the first time as a whole, as during the taster period the participants had been meeting as two separate groups. Thus when the group started working in August, some members had not yet met each other. The process unfolded in a series of group building exercises through which dramatic skills began to be nurtured: rhythm, improvisation, coordination, movement and sound were the key skills explored during this stage. The work was focussed around building a theatrical representation for the September Opening Doors festival to be held in Malta, in which all Maltese participants would be involved. Three themes emerged clearly from work-shopping ‘the bag’ i.e. the bag with objects which was shared amongst the three partner countries to serve as a common starting point for artistic work: opening doors, party and garden. The performance structure was kept as a non-verbal representation to respect the international context in which it was to be presented, but also in view of the fact that the group had not yet explored vocal textures. The work concentrated on dramatic presence and entrance, with the participants choreographing a sequence of entry onto the stage, miming opening a door and expressing surprise and joy at finding a party there. The choreography unfolded into a mimed garden party, sharing of gifts and dancing. This was only the beginning of the process on dramatic line, where the narrative sequence was developed to end with a mime of an accident that happens at the party, where one guest slips and is ignored by most other guests except one who helps him up. The performance itself was a learning experience. It was not easy to predict how the participants would react to being on stage in front of an audience. It was incredible to experience the concentration of energy that their understanding of the immediacy of performance brought with it. On the day of the performance, in a technical rehearsal where the time pressures were enormous as we only had a one-hour slot to set up lights, sound, and do a run through, the participants showed their understanding and excitement through maximising the level of their energy and commitment, and supporting and encouraging each other.
Following the September festival, two parallel working processes were set up, mostly in lieu of the fact that the group needed to retain its centrally growing identity, whilst still having individual participants preparing for two different festivals: one to be held in December in Blyth, UK, and the other to be held in Leopoldsburg in April. Thus the group continued to meet as a whole on a weekly basis. It was during this time that core dramatic skills were explored with the aim of laying strong foundations for the growth of the participants as actors. The process took on a deeper level of looking at character development and plot. This journey began with experiments in hot seating and puppet work as a way in for participants to understand the concept of a character as someone who is other than self even when to be represented by self, in a fictional space and time that needs detailed visualising.
Whist this was happening, half the group started to meet for an extra weekly session in preparation for the December festival. There was only a month for this, and therefore the sessions were spent revisiting the September performance, ‘Surprise Funky Friends Disco’, to edit it as a performance for the eight people travelling to the UK. The participants expressed the wish to weave a Christmas theme into this.
January 2009 brought with it an explosion of energy and a burst of creative growth. The first reason for this was the energy with which the UK travellers came back to the sessions after their adventure in Blyth which they keenly shared with the rest of the group. Another reason was the increase in the volunteering support team that allowed for an increase of exercises that could be organised in smaller groups during sessions allowing each participant for more time and guidance in the exploration of creative work. The depth of work accessed during each session grew exponentially at this time as we began to explore the detail and interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant’, which was chosen because of its resonance with many of the interests and energies of the group’s participants.
The growth of this period had a marked effect on those eight participants who were to travel to Belgium and who started meeting for their extra weekly sessions in February. They worked on association exercises with the objects of ‘the bag’ from which they then developed their own story and explored possibilities of mime to this story. In 2 months, these eight actors created a performance: this was the first decisively clear example of a performance created by the group. It brought out the actors’ potentials of narrative development, embodiment of character roles, spatial organisation, shifting energy dynamics, and the learning of their own sequence of movements that could be repeated. The excitement of this achievement could be felt by all.
The challenge now is to bring the group together to develop a coherent performance by all. The challenge of this rests in the fact that half have experienced the possibility of this, whilst the other half haven’t yet. The work on Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant’ will be an exploration of this.



Participants’ growth

The last month has been taken up in engaging with the participants to understand how they feel the project has impacted them and how they would like it to continue now that the project has officially ended under its guise as a Grundtvig project, and therefore needs redefining.
Whilst the group has enjoyed the travelling experience enormously, and no session begins without one participant or another first commenting that they would like to go abroad again, the participants have expressed clearly that they are aware of their growth in creative and theatrical skills. Performing remains a clear goal for many of them. One expressed that if he got to perform in Malta, then going abroad again would not be important anymore. Another said that she wants to perform for a Maltese audience now and another said that she wishes one day to be involved in a TV show. Another participant expressed that the most important skill she learnt was how to focus whilst on stage. Many have expressed their love for dancing, something which they learnt how to do for the first time during the Opening Doors sessions. Another participant expressed how significant it was for her to learn how to clap in our rhythm exercises due to the physical control needed. The creative growth is evident even in the way they involve themselves. One participant in particular has grown enormously since the beginning when he would take very long to settle into the session and would often not wish to take part in activities. Now he enters with a smile and has expressed the importance to him of his involvement in this activity. He enjoyed the painting workshop in Belgium in particular because ‘we were creative.’ Another participant said that she always knew that she had talent but could never express it; she has said that this project has given her the possibility to discover this. She often prepares dances at home and brings them to the session to be incorporated into the performances. Another participant was not sure whether to continue as a committed member of the group after the taster period. After being encouraged to give it some more time before taking a definitive decision, this participant grew in his involvement in the sessions and continues coming regularly to the sessions. His parents now say that he insists to always come and comes very much of his own will.
Thus several of the participants are very aware of their own creative growth within the project, and are asserting this within the group and in their home contexts. What is also interesting is that around the dramatic skills, and dynamics of the group, the participants are also conscious of a broader social impact the project has had for them. This is a dynamic that is very particular to theatre work, and is very much a consequence of the work on interaction that is so much a part of theatrical process. This group has felt this acutely, and perhaps is a reminder to theatre practitioners of the rich social and personal dynamic that theatre creates that can come to be taken for granted.
For many the experience of the project has been very much about coming together with friends. It represents a space for them away from their home context in which they can express themselves. This both in the context of the sessions, as well as travelling together in which social activities were a part of the programme. These are some comments the participants passed about the social experience of the trip abroad: ‘I enjoyed going out with you my friends.’’ ‘I enjoyed it in Belgium, going out with you and eating.’ ‘I enjoyed dancing at the disco in Belgium. I don’t go to the disco here.’ ‘One night I stayed up till 4am chatting with my roommate. It was the first time that I spoke with someone so close.’ And with regards to the sessions they said, ‘I remember Charles and the children who come here, both girls and boys involve me.’ Another said that before she came here she didn’t have friends: ‘At school I didn’t have friends. But here people don’t make fun of me.’ Another said that the important thing for him is that ‘we love each other and perform together.’
With regards to going abroad, some participants have expressed that this has had an impact on their desire to live independently. Whist many often complain about the difficulty of getting to sessions, one participant specifically stated that she would like to learn to come to the sessions alone. Another participant spoke extensively about how important it was for her to meet an English woman who lived independently in a flat of her own. This is what she learnt most from the trip to England: ‘It felt a little like I lived there when we were in England. I felt more independent there than here.’ Another commented that the most important thing for her was learning to pack and carry her own luggage.
The theme of food has been a constant in the sessions of the group: all the group loves to eat! We have often worked on developing improvisation skills through food themes. So it is no surprise that this also comes up as a memory of the trips abroad: ‘I enjoyed the noodles, they were spicy and different.’ Interestingly, however, is that learning experiences emerged also in regard to food: ‘I learnt to be more careful about what I eat’. ‘Mostly I enjoyed eating there. Because I ate more than I usually do, normally I don’t eat much. The food was different, and I had never tasted food like it.’
Those participants who have been present for the evaluation have all expressed their wish to commit further to the project and continue in their creative growth.