Young Voices - An Applied Theatre Method Aiming to Bridge the Gap Between Youth and Adults more

THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Young Voices an Applied Theatre Project Aiming to Bridge the Gap Between Youth and Adults being a Dissertation submitted for the Degree of Masters by Research in Theatre and Performance (MA) in the University of Hull By Panayiota Demetriou, BA (Hons) Drama 2011, October Attestation I understand the nature of plagiarism, and I am aware of the University’s policy on this. I certify that this dissertation reports original work by me during my University project. Signature: Panayiota Demetriou Date: 12/01/12 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FOR DISSERTATION It is a pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible such as my friends and family who provided me the moral support I required and in particular my younger sister Natasha Demetriou who because of her expertise in the disciplines of psychology and sociology supported me in the search for material for the first chapter of this dissertation; my Lecturers and Dr. Maria Chatzichristodoulou who gave me the skill of knowledge to research material during the Research Methods module. Furthermore, I am heartily thankful to Amanda Stuart-Fisher, a Senior Lecturer in applied theatre at Central School of Speech and Drama, even though I was a stranger to her, she kindly allowed me to cite her at the time unpublished material in this very dissertation. In addition, I would like to thank both organisations 4 Youth and Sidewalk, that helped gather young people for this project, and in particular the youth workers Dawn Davis, Mia Geraghty, Gemma England, Gill Kay and Sharon Stone, whose support and collaboration were priceless and without them the project would not have been possible or successful. I also would like to make a special reference to my supervisors Dr. Aristita Albacan, Andrew Head, my Dyslexia Tutor Christine Thompson and Viv Edwards who guided me through this journey, their encouragement, supervision and support from the preliminary to the concluding level enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject. Without their cooperation and knowledge I could not have completed this dissertation. Lastly, I offer my regards to all of those who supported me in any way during the course of this postgraduate degree. Panayiota Demetriou 2 Abstract 1 This dissertation focuses on an applied theatre project, Young Voices that has attempted to develop a method, which inquires how performance forms can facilitate youth inclusion. Issues related to young people have been discussed extensively throughout time and within many disciplines. Stanley Cohen (1972), J.J Arnett (1999), Sharon Nichols and Thomas Good (2004) and Monica Barry (2005), have examined the ‘anxieties’ that are often associated with the perceived image of young people in society and how these may often lead to their social exclusion. This method is to be used by youth workers with their role as ‘intercessors’ between young people and the adults that surround them (i.e. their parents, guardians, teachers); it adopts Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) ethos, uses elements of his Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques and the theory/technique of verbatim theatre. The project’s research process is in the form of applied and verbatim theatre workshops; performance presentation and a performance lecture addressed to youth workers. The method looks at increasing and facilitating communication between various isolated adolescent groups through applied theatre using various ‘Boalian’ workshop techniques and FT to identify the participants ‘oppressions’. It intends at facilitating communication through applied theatre and verbatim theatre between youth and youth workers, by capturing the participants ‘oppressions’ and presenting them to an audience of their peers and youth workers. And it aims at facilitating communication through the combination of applied theatre and verbatim theatre with the attempt of beginning to bridge the gap amongst young people and the adults around them, through a recommended step by suggesting the involvement of the participant’s surrounding adults. The Young Voices method has been developed from the collaboration of several youth groups from around Scarborough and its district. The complete process attempts to assist teenagers in discussing 2 their concerns from their own perspectives towards empowering them and raising awareness about how their opinions should be required for matters that concern them. 3 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION............................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE..............................................................................9 THE PERCEIVED IMAGE YOUTH EXCLUSION..................................................9 OF AND THEIR Introduction to Chapter...........................................................................9 1.1 The Perceived Image of Youth in Society: A Brief Overview Across Times and Disciplines...................................................................................................................9 1.2 The Problem of Youth Inclusion in Various Areas in N. Yorkshire: Meet Filey, Scarborough, Barrowcliff and Ayton..........................................................................20 CHAPTER TWO...........................................................................32 THE METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................32 Introduction to Chapter.........................................................................32 2.1 Young Voices an Applied Theatre Project............................................................33 2.2 Verbatim Theatre in Young Voices – Comparing and Contrasting Verbatim to the ‘Boalian’ Ethos Used..................................................................................................47 CHAPTER THREE.........................................................................55 THE RESEARCH PROCESS DEVELOPMENT METHOD....................................55 AND THE OF THE Introduction to Chapter Three...............................................................55 3.1 The Initial Stage of Young Voices........................................................................56 3.1.1 The Aesthetic Process (AP) of Young Voices.................................................56 3.1.2 The Blank Character (TBC) and Forum Theatre (FT) Workshop Techniques. .59 4 3.2 The Intermediate and Final Stages of Young Voices............................................62 3.2.1 Verbatim Theatre.........................................................................................63 3.2.2 The Performance Lecture.............................................................................67 CHAPTER FOUR..........................................................................75 CONCLUSIONS FINDINGS................................................................................75 AND 4.1 Evaluation.......................................................................................................75 BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................86 FILMOGRAPHY...........................................................................96 ANNEX A......................................................................................I PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY..........................................................................................I SUBCULTURE ANALYSIS........................................................................................III ANNEX B....................................................................................IX TABLE II - TIMETABLE OF THE ENTIRE SERIES OF WORKSHOPS.............................................IX ANNEX C....................................................................................XI DESCRIPTION OF EXERCISES USED DURING THE WORKSHOP PROCESS......................................XI ANNEX D.................................................................................XVII BLANK CHARACTER FORUM THEATRE (FT) TRANSCRIPTS........................................XVII AND ANNEX E...............................................................................XXVIII PERFORMANCE PRESENTATION (PP)....................................................XXVIII The PP Game...................................................................................XXVIII MONOLOGUES.................................................................................XXVIII ANNEX F...............................................................................XXXVI 3 PERFORMANCE LECTURE................................................................................XXXVI Name Game played in the performance lecture..............................XXXVI TBC and FT Debate.................................................................................V The reading of the monologues exercise...............................................VI Discussion..................................................................................................................VI Question Time debate...........................................................................VII QUESTION TIME DEBATE 1 Introduction Young Voices is an applied theatre project, which is workshop based using various Augusto Boal Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques along with verbatim theatre, in order to facilitate an awareness about the problem of youth exclusion. Philip Taylor (2003)1 explains that “applied theatre is a collaborative group art form in which people transform, act, and reflect on the human condition. In applied theatre, people are the instruments of inquiry” (p.30). Young Voices has collaborated with young people from particular areas of North Yorkshire, 13-16 years of age, that attend specific youth centers/clubs in order to gather ‘first hand’ accounts of their own concerns and to voice their ‘oppressions’, by using the workshop process that combines the techniques referred to above. Applied theatre has been described as an inclusive and hybrid term (Prentki and Preston, 2009; Prendergast, 2009). James Thomson (2003)2 has validated this description by maintaining that, “applied theatre is thus used as an inclusive term that aims to develop dialogues between practices that have much to learn from each other” (p.109). However, the interdisciplinary nature of Young Voices goes beyond the act of creating a ‘dialogue’ between techniques and practices, but rather attempts to develop a method, by using this combination, that can be utilised by youth workers to approach youth inclusion. 1 In Applied Theatre: Creating Transformative Encounters in the Community (2003) Taylor shows the use of this practice and provides strategies for using theatre to raise awareness, and implement community change (Taylor, 2003). 2 In Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond (2003), James Thompson explores the practice of theatre in communities, social institutions and with marginalised groups. It examines different ways that theatre has been applied to a range of social issues. This book creates a case for applied theatre as a major area of contemporary theatre practice (Thomson, 2003), 1 Through research it has been revealed that there are issues with the perceived image of young people3. Monica Barry4 (2005) argues that their elders label young people as ‘rebellious and troublesome’ and they are often isolated from mainstream society by the regular limited understanding and growing pessimism of adults. Barry also addresses the fact “that those who are older and more powerful than young people have rights and responsibilities which are not only denied to young people but are also used to further marginalise them” (Barry, 2005, p.1). Young Voices attempts to enhance the local community’s understanding of youth experiences and concerns from their own perspective. Its aim is to deconstruct the negative images of teenagers held by many adults, and to influence a more positive view of youth by attempting to develop a method that can be used by youth workers to begin to bridge the gap between young people and adults. The combination of techniques that are used include, elements of Augusto Boal’s work, such as Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques combined with verbatim theatre. Through the course of the project an attempt to create a method was realised. The research as a whole focuses on how performance methods can facilitate youth inclusion and how the fields of applied theatre and verbatim theatre, when working together can provide an outlet for 3 The reasons and the evidence concerning this will be analysed and discussed in detail in Chapter One – The Perceived Image of Youth and their Exclusion. 4 Dr Monica Barry is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Social Work, prior to that she spent 12 years in the criminal justice, youth justice and child care research field, based at the University of Stirling's Social Work Research Centre. Dr. Barry has undertaken a range of evaluations of community-based criminal justice disposals and other social work services, including: An evaluation of probation and through care in Scotland; intensive probation and diversion from prosecution projects; an assessment of effective approaches to risk assessment in social work; and an evaluation of the pilot projects using electronic monitoring as a condition of bail. She is also involved in developing the concepts of youth transitions and capital in relation to young people's desistance from crime, and has an ESRC grant to pursue this work in 2010-2011 (SCCJR, 2011). Her book Youth Policy and Social Inclusion: Critical Debates with Young People which is used as a reference is this dissertation, emphasizes the problems young people deal with caused by others and questions society’s ability and inclination to be more social inclusive towards young people (Barry, 2005). 2 adolescent expression and a platform to deal with issues that concern them. In 2008 Change of frame with IPSA (identity, performance and social action) of the University of East London, supported by TARA presented their three-year community theatre research project, Suspended Lives. This ESRC research project united theatre and social sciences in the study of the lives and identities of refugees. The project’s aim was to investigate constructions and politics of identity belonging to refugee communities in London. These identity constructions were narrated and performed through interactive community theatre events. To do this the research project used Playback5 and Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre6 (FT). This allowed the participants to reflect on the performance, intervene in it and discover in the performance alternative approaches to social action. The research examined critical circumstances of the refugees' lives since immigrating to Britain; it highlighted encounters between constructions of self, community and society, and explored modes of identity, authorization and defiance involved in the multiplex processes of their settlement in London and integration into British society (Suspended Lives, 2007). Using Forum Theatre (FT) and verbatim theatre techniques the researchers of this study Professor 5“Playback Theatre is created through a unique collaboration between performers and audience. Someone tells a story or moment from their life, chooses actors to play the different roles, then watches as their story is immediately recreated and given artistic shape and coherence…the original Playback Theatre Company came together in 1975” (Playback net, 2011). 6First coined by Augusto Boal a Brazilian theatre director and politician. Boal was a theatre director and politician (16th March 1931 - 2nd May 2009). He is considered the ‘forefather’ of applied theatre, since he developed many applied theatre forms and techniques that are still used to this day. 3 Nira-Yuval Davis7 and Erene Kaptani8, presented real life stories from diverse refugee groups to explore what it is to be a refugee in Britain (Suspended Lives, 2007). Although the Young Voices project may not be collaborating with refugees but instead with young people, the concept of social inclusion concerns young people, as briefly demonstrated above, as much as it concerns refugees. Thus, the Suspended Lives project was an appropriate example to explore in the context of what kinds of methods are used for the general scope of social inclusion. In 2007 Amanda Stuart-Fisher9 produced a verbatim theatre project From the Mouths of Mothers, a collaboration between Big Fish Young Peoples Theatre Company,10 the charity Mosac and herself11. The project told the stories of seven mothers of sexually abused children and included elements of the applied theatre domain. It was influenced by the Cross Government Action Plan of Sexual Violence and Abuse (2007) that stated, “Although around 21% of girls and 11% boys experience some form of child sexual abuse, it is still difficult to report to and prosecute sexual offences” (HM Government 2007: iiiv). These findings shaped the progress of Stuart-Fisher’s verbatim project and informed her decision to concentrate on verbatim theatre strategies (Stuart-Fisher, 2011). The element of applied theatre 7Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London (Nira Yuval Davis, 2011). 8Research Fellow in Identity, Performance and Social Action: Playback and Forum Theatre among refugee at the University of East (Erene Kaptani, 2011). 9Senior lecturer in applied theatre at Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD, 2011). 10“A company that used theatre to address issues relating to social injustice and young people” (StuartFisher, 2011, p.198). 11“A charity that provides support recourses for non-abusing parents and carers of sexually abused children” (Stuart-Fisher, 2011, p.198). 4 practice in Stuart-Fisher’s From the Mouths of Mothers is reflected during the project’s process “where to ensure the play would continue to be rooted in the experiences of the mothers, a reflexive creative approach” (Stuart-Fisher, 2011, p. 199) was taken up allowing the play’s direction to also be informed by the verbatim subjects. She points out that: By adopting this kind of reflexive approach, which incorporates the participation of verbatim subjects themselves in the creative process, is certainly not a new approach to theatre making, and is one that is particularly familiar within applied theatre practices (Stuart-Fisher, 2011, p.199). Fisher’s reflexive approach created a new aspect to the project, a therapeutic potential, which had some form of beneficial outcome to the mothers. Her approach led to a new dynamic relationship between the actors and the verbatim subjects. Stuart-Fisher stated that, “It became clear from my participant observation that the act of identification adopted by the mothers towards the actors had a positive and potentially therapeutic value for them” (p.200). 5 The project examples discussed above demonstrate that combining practices can be successful; they may not have a direct connection to youth although the concept of inclusion is an element that they share, which is an important aspect of this project. The reason these two examples of projects were chosen was not to emphasize or have a direct connection to young people or youth inclusion but to see how applied theatre practices and verbatim theatre can be merged and what methods are used to combine them, which is a key concept of the research and the method developed. Like Young Voices both projects unite applied and verbatim theatre in some way, whether implementing it into their practice fully or partially. For organisation purposes the Young Voices method has its foundations on three main stages: 1) The Initial Stage, which includes the Aesthetic Process (AP), which is a series of workshops where elements of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed12 (TO) method take place towards preparing the participants for Boal’s Forum Theatre (FT) technique, which is also preparatory that gradually leads onto the next stage of the method. 2) The Intermediary Stage, that involves a verbatim process; this is a set of one-to-one interviews with the young people that include questions about their life in general and their ‘oppressions’. After this, each interview that was taken is transformed into a narrative of an anonymous monologue and there is a presentation of the monologues at each youth center/club that I collaborated with. 3) The Final Stage is a suggested step of a community verbatim 12“Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) was born in 1971, in Brazil, under the very young form of Newspaper Theatre , with the specific goal of dealing with local problems – soon, it was used all over the country. Forum Theatre came into being in Peru, in 1973, as part of a Literacy Program; we thought it would be good only for South America– now it is practiced in more than 70 countries. Growing up, TO developed Invisible Theatre in Argentina, as political activity, and Image Theatre to establish dialogue among Indigenous Nations and Spanish descendants, in Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico... Now these forms are being used in all kinds of dialogues” (Theatre of the Oppressed. Org, 2011). 6 performance/installation. The project ends with a performance lecture13 where the attempted development of the method is presented to youth workers in the hope that they will adopt it in future work. The practical research took place over six months (January to June 2011). The first month was spent on preliminary research such as locating youth groups to work with, receiving CRB clearance and receiving clearance from the ethics department at the University of Hull. During the period from February to June 2011 I collaborated with five youth groups, their ages varied from thirteen to sixteen years of age. There were two groups from Filey Youth Centre, one from Barrowcliff and Ayton youth club respectively, and one group from Sidewalk, which is situated in Scarborough. From February to March 2011 I aimed to create a prototype of the method. This was developed with the help of the first Filey group. From March to June 2011 the method was applied to the rest of the youth groups14. Youth clubs were selected on the basis that they were local, in the sense of local community’ and in the context of having similar ‘oppressions’ as to finding a common ground between them. This project looks at developing a method that can benefit young people by facilitating youth inclusion and supporting adults to transform, in order to be more willing to accept youth inclusion. In addtion, to inspire youth workers to use a different and new method for facilitating inclusion. During the course of this study’s practical 13 See Chapter Three – The Research process and The Development of The Method for more details on the performance lecture. 14 More detailed timeline and framework of the project can be found in Annex B. 7 research, I found that many youth workers in the areas that I collaborated with were not aware of the theatre methods that can be used to generate youth inclusion; this is one of the reasons that method is addressed to them. In a community setting, I hope to develop a method especially suited to the location and contents of the piece. The making of the work is intended to have a beneficial effect on the community out of which it has been born. This study that is youth centred, interrogates through a combination of theatre techniques the concept of performance as a tool to promote change. Young Voices intends both to test this idea and to put it into practice. Layout of Dissertation This Dissertation is divided into 4 chapters: Chapter One – The Perceived Image of Youth and their Exclusion contains two subchapters that relate to the problem of youth exclusion and the issue of the perceived image of youth. The first examines theories that focus on this concept from diverse discourses and the second concentrates on this problem locally as well as providing background information on the locations that the project has focused on. Chapter Two – The Methodology explains the concepts and theories used to create the Young Voices method. This chapter is divided into two subchapters, in which each aim to explain the conceptual strategies used to consider the development of the method. The first explores the theory of the applied theatre techniques used; the second examines the concept of verbatim theatre and it compares and contrasts the verbatim theory to the ‘Boalian’ ethos adopted. Chapter Three - The Research Process and the Development of the 8 Method contextualises the complete projects’ research process in detail and explains each stage of the method by referring to the theories discussed in Chapter Two. Chapter Four – Conclusions and Findings discusses the observations gathered during the process of the method; it also evaluates the findings of the whole project. There are 6 Annexes that are used as accompanying detail to specific text that is provided in each chapter. Annex A contains an example of a psychological study and an analysis of subcultures that are specifically relevant to information found in Chapter One. Annex B contains a timetable that follows the entire course of the project; this is referred to in Chapter Two. Annex C includes all exercise descriptions used in the Young Voices method, which are mentioned in Chapter Three. Annex D contains several transcripts that were gathered during workshops and are used in Chapter Three. Annex E includes information about the performance presentations and several teenage and adult monologues, which are relevant to Chapter Three. And Annex F contains information and material given in the performance lecture, as well as a CD-ROM with the presentation slideshow and a DVD copy of the performance lecture, that is used to refer back to Chapters Two and Three. 2 Chapter One The Perceived Image of Youth and their Exclusion Introduction to Chapter This Chapter aims at exploring the issues that encouraged the research and that designate Young Voices as an important project. It is divided into three subchapters, 1.1 The Perceived Image of Youth in Society: a Brief Overview Across Times and Disciplines, that contextualizes the issue about the perceived image of youth, through theories from various disciplines. 1.2 The Problem of Youth Exclusion in Various Areas in N. Yorkshire: Meet Filey, Scarborough, Barrowcliff and Ayton, provides background knowledge regarding the locations of where the project took place. This structure was not only chosen for organization purposes but for the reader to comprehend why the problem of the perceived image of youth is so important to this research project and the attempt to develop this specific method. 1.1 The Perceived Image of Youth in Society: A Brief Overview Across Times and Disciplines This study investigates how performance can facilitate youth inclusion. To fully comprehend the research project it is vital that the issues that make the research important, such as the 3 inclusion/exclusion of youth within a social context are examined. In this subchapter, I will attempt to contextualize the hypothesis that initiated this study. The problem associated with youth has been extensively discussed within many disciplines, therefore to define and explain this issue the study draws on theories from a diversity of domains such as Philosophy, Literature, Psychology, Cultural Studies, Sociology and Education. To contextualize the ‘anxiety’ that is associated with the perceived image of young people we shall begin with the discipline of literature. At the very beginning of Scene 3, Act 3 in William Shakespeare’s, The Winter’s Tale (1610-11), the Shepherd, an older man delivers a soliloquy that concerns the youth of his time. I would that there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that would sleep out the rest…for there is nothing in between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting…(1610-1611, Act III – Scene III, Stanza 1553-1557). This old age lament could be familiar to a view regarding youth expressed throughout the 20th and 21st century, seeing that there has long been a ‘moral panic’15 around adolescence discussed in sociology and psychology, associating it with soaring levels of antisocial, anomalous and criminal behaviour in the UK 16. The 15 A Term used by Stanley Cohen in Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The creation of the Mods and Rockers (1972) to describe the intensity of a feeling, such as anxiety, expressed in a society about an issue that threats social values (Cohen, 1972). 16 A statistical picture of youth in the United Kingdom states that “in 2007 the total number of juveniles aged 10-17 sentenced in the courts of England and Wales amounted to 97,387” (Penal Affairs Panel, 2009). 4 perceived image of youth has a negative impact on young people’s lives; they have been seen as ‘folk devils’17 in the past and in present days they are initialized by institutions, such as the media and government, as ‘The NEETS Group’18. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (2008) explained that there is a “general climate of intolerance and negative public attitudes toward adolescents” in the UK (The United Nations Committee, 2008). Even so, policies connected with anti-social behaviour habitually focus on young people; for example the Scottish Government Framework on preventing anti-social behaviour makes over 100 references to young people (The Scottish Government, 2009). This generates a general image of this age group and it leads to their exclusion 19. In Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The creation of the Mods and Rockers (1972)20, Stanley Cohen demonstrates that, the main reason many young people are excluded from society is the suspicion that is created by the media when they intensify and amplify negative ‘happenings’ related to young people (Cohen, 1972). There is no doubt that 17 A Term used by Stanley Cohen in Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The creation of the Mods and Rockers (1972) to describe the people that disrupt the social order. Cohen’s argument is that the mass media transform different groups, whose actions they perceive as delinquent into folk devils or scapegoats in order to amplify concerns about deviant behaviour in society as a whole (Cohen, 1972). 18 An abbreviation coined by the government and the mass media in meaning ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’. It includes young people who are NEET for a short time while experimenting with numerous opportunities (House of Commons, 2010).“They are often considered a threat to British society and economy… Many of them are socially excluded, marginalized and lacking any purpose in life” (The Maranatha Community, 2008). 19 “By the end of 2005 11% of 16-18 year olds were excluded from education and any privileges, or activities mainstream youth attend” (Prolific and other Priority Offenders, 2009). 20 Although published in 1972, Stanley Cohen’s book still ranks amongst the most influential works “in defining the contours of a discipline and field of research. Cohen's book established the themes that made British criminology a unique intellectual endeavour and beyond the disciplinary remit of criminology” (Karsted, 2010). 5 juvenile delinquency exists and that youth offenders commit disproportionate amounts of violence. Although, research from the University of Albany suggests that the print media “paints a distorted picture of youth gangs; one that is skewed toward a stereotypical image that receives constant reinforcement in media accounts” (Esban; Tusinski, 2007). It is well known in psychology that adolescence is a time of change and identity struggle; in Current Thinking In Adolescent Psychology (1969), David L. Lehman writes that the fundamental task of adolescence is ‘ego-identity’ or ‘self-definition’ and the need for selfknowledge becomes the quest of the teenager (Lehman, 1969). Douvan and Adelson, in The Adolescent experience (1966), maintain that: Identity does not begin in adolescence. The child has been formulating and reformulating identities throughout his life…At adolescence, however, the commitment to an identity becomes critical. During this period, the youngster must synthesize earlier identifications with personal qualities and relate them to social opportunities and the social ideals. Who the child is to be is influenced (and in some cases determined) by what the environment permits and encourages (Douvan; Adelson, 1966). The development of an identity is a process fraught quite often with confusion and frustration. This will be analysed further in order to define the context of my own research project, which aims to address 6 the issues surrounding the public’s perceptions of youth. As millennial wisdom shows through Philosophy: Aristotle stated that youth “are heated by nature as drunken man by wine” (Aristotle, 300 B.C). Socrates characterized youth as inclined to “contradict their parents” and “tyrannize their teachers” (Patty; Johnson, 1953). In Modern Philosophy Jean-Jacques Rousseau relied on a tempestuous metaphor in describing adolescence: “As the roaring of the waves precedes the tempest, so the murmur of rising passions announces the tumultuous change…Keep your hand upon the helm,” he warned parents, “or all is lost” (Rousseau, 1762/1962). In 21st century literature the author Anne Rice wrote in her book The Tale of the Body Thief (1992), “The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect” (Rice, 1992). Youth culture has always suffered from the resentful criticism of their elders. Nowhere is this more evident than in the vast amount of writing in the scholarly domain, that has been produced from young people’s organisation of their social life and their supposedly ‘fierce’ moral values. This has resulted in the definition of youth as a social problem and the growth of this dispute has involved many theories from a diversity of social science disciplines (Brake, 1980). In America's Teenagers--Myths and Realities: Media Images, Schooling, and the Social Costs of Careless Indifference (2004), 7 Sharon Nichols and Thomas Good point out that “teenagers’ ‘bad behaviour’ is often viewed as inevitable and unchangeable, youth tend to be treated not as an investment worth nurturing but as a group to be feared and punished for bad things they do or will do” (Nichols; Good, 2004). This statement might be prevalent for America’s youth, although an online article on the BBC about a study of the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests that British teenagers are among the most badly behaved in Europe (Easton, 2006). As demonstrated above the pejorative perceptions of youth can be traced back as far as the Ancient Greek era but young people are still devalued by society. According to J.J. Arnett in Adolescent Storm and Stress Reconsidered (1999): Studies that have investigated perceptions of Storm and Stress inquire about people’s perceptions of adolescence in general. People’s responses endorsing the storm and stress indicate simply that they see storm and stress as characteristic of adolescence taken as a group, not that is it characteristic of all adolescents without exception (Arnett, 1999). It is important to note at this point that not all young people experience their teenage years as described by the ‘Storm and Stress’21 theory, “the idea that adolescence is a period of life that is difficult…three key elements: Conflict with Parents, mood disruptions and risk behaviour” (Arnett, 1999). However, disciplines such as 21 An idea firstly introduced by Granville Stanley Hall (1844 – 1924), pioneering American psychologist and educator who focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory (Beins, 1999). 8 psychology, sociology and education claim that adolescence is the period where this thought is more likely to occur than other ages. Because this seems to be an important stage in a person’s life it is crucial for young people to feel included (Corey; Corrie, 2006). In Those Who Can Teach, Teach (2007), Kevin Ryan and James Cooper suggest, “Teenagers often satisfy their needs for belonging, power and fun by forming cliques or groups that share common characteristics and reflect status among their peers” (Ryan; Cooper, 2007). Subcultures manifest in forms of such cliques22. The Sunday School Movement23 accelerated the creation of youth cultures and subcultures in Britain (Danecy, 2003). In Forever Young: The TeenAging of Modern Culture (2003), Marcel Danecy explains that the term ‘adolescens’ was dominant during the Middle Ages when referring to any prepubescent boy who moved away from his family farm to work independently in a trade. After the Sunday School Movement and the Industrial Revolution education became a necessity for all children and young people and the children that 22 For Subculture Analysis see Annex A. 23 “A movement that was conceived initially for the benefit of poor and working children. It laid the foundation for the possibility of mass education” (Danecy, 2003). In 1875, the Supreme Court decided that public money would be used as educational funds. This predestined daily gatherings of young people, developing their own identities and culture (Owens, 2011). “The extension of education to 14/16 years led to young people seeing themselves as ‘different’ i.e. going through a ‘special phase’ in their development” (Owens, 2011). This resulted to the growth of particular types of youth cultures that mirrored the ‘special importance’ that society labels this period in their lives. Prior to WWII, young people from Western culture had extremely little independence and not much influence (Owens, 2011). The notion of the ‘teenager’ emerged in post war Britain but derives from the US (Owens, 2011). 9 stayed in school after puberty were named ‘adolescents’24 (Danecy, 2003). Danesy claims that: The notion of adolescence has not only provided a rationalization for keeping sexually mature children ‘on hold’ it has also been a godsend for the economy and the media-entertainment industries. The image of the teenager as a rebellious figure-sexually mature- but emotionally and socially childish, has been a source for limitless capital for book and magazine publishers, recording companies, Hollywood, and television since at least the 1950’s. As a consequence the notion of adolescence has become itself mythologized by the media. (Danecy, 2003). In the teenage world, trends are rapidly established as a ‘cultural norm’, which dictate style, fashion and taste in music, “Juvenile aesthetics are the aesthetics for all” (Danecy, 2003). The trends of young people drive fashion, music, films and literature. Companies adapted to this by formulating marketing strategies and creating magazines. Rapidly a mass of fashion stores, discos, and other commodities were developed, all targeting the teenager. A new world for young people was promised through the companies’ advertising, which could be experienced through the consumption of their products and services. The evolution of ‘capitalist culture’ and leisure industries has signified that adolescents have access to the cultural 24 It is said that the emergence of the teenager occurred from the return of soldiers who started families, the affluence and women in work, that emerged from the general standards of living increasing, including pay. Therefore, women also started to work, which provided families with a dual income. Thus, young people were not obliged to give all of their wages to their parents and for the first time had disposable income, which gave them the opportunity to spend their income freely and being young before they had to undertake countless responsibilities (Owens, 2011). 10 resources they require towards engaging in ‘symbolic creativity’ in their leisure time. Consequently, the media and consumer industries participated in creating an identity for teenagers (Owens, R. 2011). Monica Barry argues that much of the theoretical literature in the last decade on young people is focused on ‘troubled’ and ‘problem’ youth, how to manage and correct their risk behaviour and how to integrate them into the status quo25. Paradoxically, teenager’s distinction from adults is merely exacerbated by the perceived need to incorporate them into society, rather than acknowledging and resolving this issue (Barry, 2005). Psychology stresses that trying on diverse personalities is a natural part of maturing and discovering oneself. Thus, joining a subculture or a clique is a method of exploring what life would be like with a personality that incorporated the values and common decisions that individuals have in that subculture. Carl Gustav Jung the founder of analytical psychology noted that during each stage that a person experiences in their life, their behaviour patterns change due to both internal and external decisions. These decisions may be conscious or not. In the course of adolescence, individuals discover who they want to be, and how they want to act. This process involves experimenting with several concepts-of-self, and deciding if the result is suitable or 25 See Annex A, for an example of a psychological study conducted by Silvia Knobloch – Westerwick of the Ohio State University and Matthias Hastall of the Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen in Germany, that suggests that adults and elders prefer to read negative news, rather than positive news, about young people. 11 unpleasant, and how their abilities enable them to succeed or not succeed with that persona (Jung, 1991). However, what I have not yet addressed in this chapter is the impact that exclusion might have on a young person in terms of their lifestyle; it may lead to ‘risk behaviour’. Arnett (1999) explains that ‘risk behaviour’ is manifested when adolescents cause disruptions of the social order, and employ behaviour that produces the probability for harm to themselves and/or the people around them. When relating this concept to the statistical patterns of youth offenders given above, it can be suggested that crimes committed are due to this age group feeling excluded. A similar idea to this could be that in the teenagers’ search for inclusiveness, self-knowledge and an external family of their peers, they endeavour to ‘fit in’ by being unlawful (Ryan; Cooper, 2007). Some factors that may create negative, harmful youth behaviour and may have an impact on the development of their identity could be: the venue that a teenager spends a large percentage of time at, socializing with a certain group, the economic and geographic location and the mass media press that the individual has a liking to (Ryan; Cooper, 2007). Therefore, if a teenager’s identity is proclaimed and summarized by the statements, labels and figures previously discussed, then it may be suggested that the ‘stereotypical’ view of youth that seems to hold control over the public’s perceptions of youth, does not allow young people 12 necessary time and space, to explore and experience or even have their voice heard without being unfairly judged. A poll of over 1,000 young people and a summary of research evidence in the UK show that despite progress, children and young people still do not feel they are being listened to by public services on matters that affect their lives26 (The National Participation Forum, 2010). Youth policy is one of the important factors to young people’s social inclusion. Barry (2005) states that: Several major governmental policy initiatives in recent years have focused on attempting to combat social exclusion (although not necessarily by implication to promote social inclusion) and on improving services and opportunities for children and young people (p.2). The report of the Policy Action Team on Young People, Policy Action Team (PAT) 12: Young People (2000) in the UK, concentrated on how the Government could improve co-ordination of policies that affect children and young people and improve amenities for young people and how these could assist with preventing their social exclusion. This policy recommended the creation of a Youth Unit. The report revealed that children and families in danger of coming across severe 26 In 1991, the UK Government ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), guaranteeing all children and young people the right to express their views freely in all matters that affect them. “We want children and young people to feel they can freely express themselves but also that this expression can have an influence on decisions that affect their lives and can bring about change” (The National Participation Forum, 2010). Nonetheless in spite of several attempts difficulties remain. All sectors of society need to promote greater participation of children and young people. This means every organisation working with children or, just as importantly, making decisions about their lives should look at how they can involve children and young people to create services whose users champion them (The National Participation Forum, 2010). 13 problems can be acknowledged immediately through known risk factors, and that effective interventions can improve their outlooks. It discussed that for better local organisation in recognising the necessities of young people there should be change of resources into prevention activities, both to advantage parents and children to deal with their difficulties before they become acute; and to promote effective interventions for children and young people that are most at risk. There is a specific importance in instituting procedures to improve the life possibilities of young people who are most deprived (Youth Policy, 2001). Following the endorsement of the PAT 12 report Bridging the Gap, on 16-18 year-olds who are not in education, employment or training (the NEETS group), schemes are being developed to encourage young people from disadvantaged homes to remain in education or training. These schemes include Educational Allowances for 16-18s and the ConneXions Service, which provides personal advisors for 13-19 year olds. These improvements will be associated with the new Skill for Life strategy, which is part of the Lifelong Learning programme (Youth Policies, 2001). These policy initiatives have concentrated on attempting to fight social exclusion rather than promoting social inclusion. Another vital key towards young people’s social inclusion is “a move towards non-discriminatory practises and attitudes of society, particularly towards young people” (Barry, 2005, p.2). The 14 combination of a strong youth inclusive policy and as Barry pointed out, ‘important changes in attitudes and practices’, could make way for young people to experience a better recognition and respect within society. Monica Barry also argues: Young people experience the gaze deprivation – the ‘gaze upwards’because of their age, and hence, status in the social hierarchy. Likewise many adults may perceive young people ‘unfairly advantaged’the gaze downwards… Young people are seen as new comers to the adult world of potential power and influence. They are the perceived threat to an already precarious status quo and are therefore often scapegoated as a result (Barry, 2005, p.2). In addition, adults often label young people as ‘rebellious and troublesome’; this does not lead towards young people’s social inclusion but to their isolation from mainstream society. This is due to the regular limited understanding and growing pessimism of their elders (Barry, 2005). This signifies that the youth policies are still overlooked. This subchapter has given statements from multiple disciplines that demonstrate adolescence being overshadowed by a ‘typical’ image, which creates a ‘moral’ panic in society and often leads to their exclusion. Sometimes the monopoly of popular culture defeats its very purpose, instead of providing an outlet for young people’s concerns it represents them in a negative way. Attempts to give young people space to voice their views are illustrated in the 15 following subchapter. Through the Young Voices method I aim to create a way to help diminish the negative views of young people and to give voice to their concerns towards their social inclusion. 1.2 The Problem of Youth Inclusion in Various Areas in N. Yorkshire: Meet Filey, Scarborough, Barrowcliff and Ayton. I collaborated with two youth organizations for the practical research of the project, 4Youth27 and Sidewalk28, that are both located in Scarborough and who have helped provide young people to participate in the project. The youth groups that participated in the project were 4Youth’s Filey Youth Centre, Barrowcliff Youth Centre and Ayton Youth Club. Moreover there was Sidewalk’s Monday group also from Scarborough. From the knowledge that was gathered while working with these different groups, the youth focused services were developed because there are not many activities or many opportunities for young people in these areas, which results to young people ‘hanging around the train station in Filey, taking illegal substances in parks in Barrowcliff, vandalising playgrounds in Ayton and drinking alcohol on the beach in Scarborough or even getting arrested for climbing on Valley Bridge in Scarborough to “practise 27 4Youth is a service for young people in North Yorkshire between the ages of 13 and 19 and Connecting Youth Culture is a group that concentrates on arts for young people and forms an integral part of the 4Youth service (4 Youth and Connecting Youth Culture, 2011). 28 Sidewalk is a detached youth project with a charitable nature, supported by the Local churches in Scarborough as well as local business and funding organisations. Their focal point is young people who they meet on the streets. They visit locations around Scarborough such as Hairy Bobs Skate Park, behind Sainsbury's, or the Seafront, where young people are mostly found and deliver refreshments and other various resources. Sidewalk also provides regular Monday afternoon sessions for young people, where they can engage in a variety of activities such as baking (Sidewalk, 2011). 16 their skill”’, as teenagers that attend the youth centers conveyed (Young Voices, 2011). Scarborough Borough covers an area of 81,654 hectares. The Borough's population is 106,243 (Census Area Statistics, 2001), with 60% of residents living in the three urban areas of Scarborough, Whitby and Filey. The population of Filey Town is 6,468 with 27.5% of the population aged over 60; only 21.9% of the population is aged 16 to 39 (Census Area Statistics, 2001). The Borough’s economy is mainly based on manufacturing, tourism, public sector services and retail. Many of the people from the borough either work in the manufacturing industry or are employed in hotels and catering (Census Area Statistics, 2001). Scarborough has a higher rate of people claiming benefits29 for mental illness and estimates suggest a higher percentage of over-consumption of drinking in adults and young people compared with the average for England (Scarborough Health Profile, 2008). Barrowcliff is a council estate in Scarborough; a governmental research that looked at the socio-economic problems in Barrowcliff Estate indicated high unemployment, low incomes, a high proportion of single parents, a high level of child poverty and problems with substance abuse. According to Government figures, an 29 An online article in the Scarborough Evening News states, “more people in Scarborough are claiming housing and council tax benefits than ever before, new figures have revealed”. It claimed that a total of 12,475 people were claiming benefits, up from a figure of 11,698 in May 2008 and it is suggested that these figures would rise (Scarborough Evening News, 2009). In the same article the last mayor of Scarborough (2009-2010), Bill Chatt suggested, "The nature of a local economy with so many seasonal workers is that there will be times when they are dependent on benefits. Because we haven't had the weather, the season hasn't really arrived yet and people aren't taking on staff. Because of that people who really want to work are still dependent on benefits" (Scarborough Evening News, 2009). 17 article in the Scarborough Evening News claims that Barrowcliff Estate is amongst the most deprived areas in the country. The previous mayor commented that Barrowcliff had largely been forgotten and the subsequent decline had taken place over the past decade. He also argued “that boredom among young people was the biggest problem which could lead to involvement with gangs or the misuse of drugs and alcohol” (Scarborough Evening News, 2010). Ayton is a village and civil parish in the Scarborough district of North Yorkshire with a population of 1,687 (UK Census, 2001). The East Ayton Community Appraisal Report (2005) contained information from 673 people of all ages30. The economy of Ayton is based on all local businesses; there is support to keep jobs local and on-going small development permissible, providing it does not have detrimental impact on the community (East Ayton Community Appraisal Report, 2005). In addition, the report also claims that the respondents of the research had mentioned litter and vandalism as significant issues (East Ayton Community Appraisal Report, 2005). In undertaking the research about the perceived image of young people in these areas, a lack of relevant information was discovered. Therefore the initiative was taken in gathering anecdotal evidence, by 30 They are summarised as: 89 people aged 0-18, 96 from the age of 19-40, 260 individuals aged 41-64 and 228 elderly over the age of 65. The area is occupied by 32% of residents who have lived in East Ayton for 26 years or more. A further 38% have lived there for between 6 and 25 years, with the remaining 30% living in the area for up to five years. But as the research in the report states only 6% of residents have being born there. The report also claims that families have relocated to Ayton because of work nearby, retiring, the love of country and village life and most importantly the affordability of housing, this shows the quality of life in Ayton (East Ayton Community Appraisal Report, 2005). 18 interviewing local adults, towards filling this gap in the study. Altogether, 50 people were interviewed, 25 from the ages of 30-59 and 25 aged 60-80. There were three opinions from the ages of 6080: A) 25% of them stated, “Young People in this day are a problem”. B) 23% believed “Young people are not the problem it’s their parent’s fault”. And C) 2% said, “It’s just a phase they will grow out of it”. From the ages of 30 – 59 there were two opinions: A) 30% stated “There is a certain anxiety that surrounds young people and that should not be there” and B) 20% claimed “Not all young people are bad, some are and some aren’t, but they definitely lack discipline” (Young Voices, 2011). This evidence indicates that there are issues in these areas regarding the local citizen’s perception of young people. During the verbatim workshops of the Young Voices project in these different locations the adolescent groups revealed their own concerns regarding the areas they resided in. Sidewalk’s Monday Group, situated in Scarborough, stated that there are mostly no opportunities for young people, “we are bored most of time, and so we try and find alternative solutions like gathering on the beach, but older people give us dirty looks” (Young Voices, 2011). In Filey, many of the teenagers admitted, “Once we turn 18, we will definitely be out of here, Filey is for old people”. In Barrowcliff, many teenagers revealed that they felt undermined by young and older people from other locations. They said that the public outside their areas believe that 19 teenagers from Barrowcliff “do heavy drugs, are un-employed and sit at home all-day, claiming benefits” (Young Voices, 2011). They agreed that there is a large percentage of people who are in that situation, because of many domestic and community problems, but not everyone is in that condition. They explained that they are sometimes nervous about gathering in parks, because they constantly find drug use needles, which threaten their health. Many of the young people’s responses about living in Ayton were rather positive disregarding the minor issues of lack of facilities for young people. But these participants also mentioned that they were often found responsible for littering and vandalising locations in Ayton, minor crimes that they had not committed, merely because they gathered in these places (Young Voices, 2011). Two youth projects from Filey youth club that include applied theatre elements and which share aims to the Young Voices project were selected to be explored in this subchapter. In 2004 Filey Youth Centre, in collaboration with Facilitator Ali Watt, Pete Massey from Create Productions and filmmaker Claudia Nye, devised an intergenerational filmmaking project entitled The More We Are Together (2004). This film project aimed to bridge the age gap between young people and elderly individuals within the community; the objective was to unite the intergenerational group and have them share their own experiences of being young in different periods. They 20 intended for a development of a greater level of trust through the sharing of the participants’ experiences. The project was produced in conjunction with young people from the Princes Trust Excel Group who worked with residents of the Silver Birches residential home to disclose stories of their youth, which had resonance with their own experiences of being young. The young people then took several of these stories and exhibited them in a piece of devised theatre (DVD, Create, 2004). The More We Are Together (2004), operated on the concern of reducing crime among the elderly in Filey, much of which was considered to be caused by the supposed anti-social behaviour of young people around North Yorkshire. This project would bring old and young people together to promote a better understanding, trust and tolerance. The film examined the experiences of being young in the nineteen thirties and forties compared to being a teenager today; it portrayed the endeavours to search for a common ground between the two age groups (DVD, Create, 2004). The research process went as follows: a) the youth were asked their opinions on how they thought elderly people perceive them31. b) Then the participants were instructed to note two questions addressed to elders from the residential home in the context of them interviewing them32. c) The stories that derived from the short interviews were then presented to 31 One replied, “They are scared of us because they think we’re going to fight and they don’t like us” (Unknown Teenage participant); or “We are younger and they think that we are going to mug them or something, they think that we have antisocial behaviour” (Unknown Teenage Participant) (DVD, Create, 2004). 32 For example, “Did you get ever into trouble?” or “Did you go out on dates?” (Unknown Teenage Participant) (DVD, Create, 2004). 21 the senior participants as a short collaborative theatre piece modernized to fit current situations. d) A platform discussion followed where the participants, both young and old, confronted the perceived images and attitudes that each age group had for the other33. The project’s findings were that the teenagers understood why the senior individuals reacted in a negative way towards them. Similarly to Young Voices this study also looked at deconstructing the negative images that surround young people and assisting the community to better understand youth and most importantly to begin to bridge the gap between young people and the adults that surround them. In 2005 Filey Youth Centre, with the same young participants as the previous project, generated another film project entitled Fast-Forward (DVD, 4 Youth, 2005). This project focused on the future aspirations of the youth taking part. It followed the lives of the participants, from their last year at school to September. It addressed issues such as whether the young people were receiving the appropriate amount and quality of career advice, if they benefited from it and “how they got to where they're going” (DVD, 4 Youth, 2005). The film began by portraying the teenager’s views about what they thought of the town 33 Some opinions that came out of this discussion were, “for our opinion to change about youth, they have to change, teenagers are cheeky; they think they know it all, we older people are not respected for our wisdom that we have gained for living more than they have… All they want to do is watch TV, I feel sorry for them” (Unknown Senior Participant) (DVD, Create, 2004). 22 where they resided34. A few of the participants wrote a poem that revealed how they felt about living in Filey Town: Filey’s rubbish, Filey’s shit. There are too many tourists and all of them thick. It’s full of old people that come here to die. So we go through smokes, so we think we can fly. Now that’s the story of our Filey town, we get pissed; we get high so we don’t feel down (DVD, 4 Youth, 2005). This poem may be considered offensive expressing antisocial behaviour by the young people who wrote it. However, it does reveal their true feelings about their town, that they cannot pursue and attain much by staying in Filey. The participants actually admitted that in their free time they ‘hang around’ in the train station and the streets and that they are not allowed to sit on the benches, because they are for tourists, and so they sit on pavements and bins. Next, a group discussion is depicted in which the youth comment on where they see themselves in the next five years. The young participants also discuss how school and the career advice service assist them in deciding what path they would like to pursue in their life, education and career. During this discussion, one of the participants described their job interview they had the previous day. The young person stated that she had to undergo two different exams, an English exam and a Mathematics exam; she had failed them both, and therefore did not succeed in receiving the job offer. She then made a remark that 34 Some of these opinions were: “Filey is boring, there's nothing to do; it’s full of tourists and the old people don’t like us, they think they own the pathways”(DVD, 4 Youth, 2005). 23 the reason she failed was because she was not intelligent enough to pass the exams. This comment demonstrates the low self-esteem that the specific individual had of herself; this could also be the case with the rest of the group, due to the fact that their group discussion revealed similar negative comments by other members of the group. The film continued on interviewing the careers advice service at the participant’s school and proposing solutions that were recommended by the young people. Recommendations that could possibly assist teenagers with future career decisions. In the last part of the film project, we see the youngsters where they are in September, when they are not in school any longer. This project was a great way for outsiders, like myself, to discover the youth of Filey, how they are perceived and how they perceive their environment35. As well as creating awareness to issues that surround teenagers, participating in this film project may have helped them focus more on their future and may have provided them with additional support for advantageous and more mature decisions. A youth worker admitted that the issue of low-confidence and selfesteem could be an outcome of having limited challenging activities for youth in the towns that they live in and they have therefore set 35 One of the stories that was presented and caught of my attention was that of Shaun Louis. He had been excluded from school on behaviour grounds and was living in Bed and Breakfast accommodation in Scarborough, having decided on his sixteenth birthday to leave the family home. The film emphasized that without any parental support, qualifications or an appropriate education, Shaun and any teenagers like him will have to face obstacles (DVD, 4 Youth, 2005). It also questioned whether the decision to exclude this young person from school was correct and how this sequence of events had robbed the young man of one of the most fundamental human needs. The project concludes by hypothesising that the school’s decision on Shaun’s exclusion had merely given him a basic existence (DVD, 4 Youth, 2005). 24 their future targets and hopes too low. What was also expressed was that due to Scarborough and Filey being seaside towns there is a significant amount of unemployment, and sometimes parents struggle to think of affordable activities to take on with teenagers or perhaps do not have the economic ease to accomplish what teenagers are able to achieve at the youth centres. Furthermore, due to the large amount of unemployment, there are many teenagers who have very low expectations about what they would like to be employed as in the future. When asking the young people from Scarborough, Filey and Barrowcliff about their future aspirations it seemed as though their ambitions did not go beyond the areas they live in. Many of them answered that they would most probably be working at the bacon factory in Malton or any other seasonal jobs available. Their responses were very different to those received by the Ayton group; they discussed universities in other cities in the UK, possibilities of studying in other countries, gap years of world travel and mostly non-manual labour occupations. This highlights a major difference between the Ayton group and Scarborough, Filey and Barrowcliff groups; the young people from these three regions had many negatives points to say about living in their areas. Moreover, to the Ayton group, teenagers from Barrowcliff, Filey and Scarborough are considered unfortunate and underprivileged. I have found all this information rather intriguing; it provoked my thoughts of how areas that are very close in distance to one another are actually very 25 different. For even the youth groups from Filey, Scarborough and Barrowcliff had distinctive differences between them; the differences between each group will be discussed and highlighted further on in the dissertation in the context of how each group responded to the methodology and collaborated during this study, Young Voices. The idea of encouraging individuals, who are at risk of social exclusion in their participation in the arts, is believed to have a positive impact on how they engage and participate in different aspects of their lives (McAvinchey, 2009 in Prentki; Preston, 2009). The notion of creativity appears to reside in many contemporary domains because of its connection to humanist ideologies of ‘genius’, ‘originality’ and the ‘visionary powers’ of the artistic imagination. Furthermore, creativity is considered an important element both in artistic creation and in the general practices of living (Nicholson, 2005). Creativity plays an important role in the field of applied theatre and in everyday life. As Nicholson states in Applied Drama The Gift of Theatre (2005), “There are creative breaks in social systems, as well as new art forms of artistic communication, and new ways of looking at the world can produce new forms of social action” (Nicholson, 2005). On the notion of creativity and social change Bob Jeffrey and Anna Craft explain that: It switched the responsibility for social change from governments and large global forces back to the individual in 26 whom dilemmas and conflicts of power within society are realized… empowerment is seen as essential to survival and the locus of creativity is once again seen as lying within the individual (Craft; Jeffrey, 2001 in Nicholson, 2005). This idea can be related to Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) method seeing that Boal himself stated that his Forum Theatre (FT) technique “is a rehearsal for reality” (Theatre of the Oppressed.org, 2011). This means that through this exercise his spect-actors are ‘visionaries’ and possess ‘active-imaginations’, which will help them resolve their dilemmas; it is up to each person’s creativity. “Once freed from liberating restraint by the power of theatre, Boal anticipates that this renewed self-knowledge will enable individuals to act at their most creative, which he assumed would be a positive force for good” (Nicholson, 2005). These ideas are found in my practice as Young Voices is a combination between a variety of theatre techniques workshop elements of Boal’s Forum Theatre (FT) system and verbatim theatre towards developing a method that explores how performance modes can create youth inclusion and that can be used for the idea of inclusion with individuals from nonnecessarily theatre backgrounds. In this Chapter I have attempted to contextualize the issues associated with the negative perceived image of young people and I have also given background information of the locations where the 27 project took place as well as the young people that took part in the project, while preserving confidentiality and information from the local people about how they perceive teenagers. I have moreover referred to youth projects in the areas that this research in concerned with and that share similar aims and objectives to those of Young Voices’. To summarise, this chapter has focused on the reason why the project is essential and the importance of the attempt to develop a method for youth inclusion, the following chapter explains the methodology of the Young Voices method. 28 Chapter Two The Methodology Introduction to Chapter This Chapter aims to contextualise the methodologies that were used in order to develop the Young Voices method. The term ‘methodology’ not only indicates at the methods used in a research but also “considers the logic behind the methods that we use in the context of our research study and explain why we are using a particular method or technique” (Kumar, 2008, p.5). Thus, this chapter is used to discuss and analyse the theories behind the methods used in the practical research and the following chapter examines the process (i.e. the methods used). The Young Voices method combines various Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques and verbatim theatre, aiming to begin to bridge the gap between young people and the adults that surround them. In particular it involves a series of workshops with young people, which include elements of Augusto Boal’s Aesthetic Process (AP), Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques followed by a verbatim theatre process. Young Voices was developed as a collaboration with the youth service 4 Youth and the organisation Sidewalk from Scarborough, North Yorkshire in the UK, that have facilitated the participation of young people aged 13 – 16 in several stages of the 29 method’s development, between February 2011 and June 2011. The analysis of this chapter is divided into two parts: 2.1 Young Voices an Applied Theatre Project, that discusses the applied theatre methodologies used towards developing a theoretical context for the Young Voices method. 2.2 Verbatim Theatre in Young Voices – Comparing and Contrasting Verbatim to the Boalian Ethos Used, which examines the theoretical role of verbatim in the Young Voices method but also looks at finding similarities and differences between theoretical groundings of the practices used in the Young Voices method. 2.1 Young Voices an Applied Theatre Project 4 Youth’s projects The More We Are Together36 and Fast Forward37, that were discussed in Chapter One, 1.2 benefited the participants and their communities by giving young people a platform to have their voices heard, simultaneously building intergenerational relationships between the young and old in Filey. Alongside this, Sidewalk’s Detached youth work also benefits the young people they visit, they give them the degree of respect they are entitled to and in turn the young people feel empowered and communicate with the youth workers. In this way both organisations, 4 Youth’s and Sidewalk’s, collaborative work not only promotes youth 36 In 2004 Filey Youth Centre, in collaboration with Facilitator Ali Watt, Pete Massey from Create Productions and filmmaker Claudia Nye, devised an intergenerational filmmaking project (See Chapter One, 1.2). 37 A 2005 Filey Youth Centre and 4 Youth project (See Chapter One, 1.2). 30 empowerment and inclusion but also tries to begin to bridge the gap between young people and their elders, which is the main purpose of the Young Voices method. Because of the shared principle purposes between my project and both organisations’ works, many of the youth workers in both cases considered the Young Voices project as a useful and constructive addition to their youth club’s schedules (Young Voices, 2011). As a qualitative research, Young Voices began as a project enquiring how performance practices can create youth inclusion, using “a collection of a variety of empirical materials” (Denzin; Lincoln, 2005) to accomplish this, such as case studies, personal experience, life stories, interviews, recordings, etc. photographs, (Denzin; & conversations, 2005). and It productions, collaborated participations, with the Lincoln, above youth services stated with participants from the communities of Scarborough, Barrowcliff, Filey and Ayton, who did not necessarily have past theatre experiences and took place in non-conventional theatre spaces, in order to study the participants in their ‘natural settings’ “attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (Denzin; Lincoln, 2005). The aim of the project was to provoke transformation within these communities by investigating the relationship between young people, their local community and the wider world, and to engage with the deconstruction of the negative 31 images of youth held by many adults in these communities, as the anecdotal evidence indicates provided in Chapter One, 1.2 thus aiming towards the young people’s social inclusion in their communities. The idea of the project commenced with the verbatim theatre as a tool to voice young people’s concerns and exhibit them anonymously, to create an awareness of their issues in the local community towards their social inclusion. In consideration of this idea it was deliberated that before this occurs there should be a preparatory practice, such as Augusto Boal’s Forum theatre (FT). Ronaldo Morelos (1999) states that FT38: Presents a concretisation of a problem or oppression and the spect-actor steps forward to demonstrate an idea in action…it is an interrogation of oppression, implying the possibility for some form of dialogue. When a dialogue ceases to be possible then different forms of action are required. It is therefore important for a FT model to present a situation that will facilitate the exploration of the crossroads rather than the dead-end of human existence (p.37). The potential of combination of verbatim and FT, was considered in the context of FT to prompt the participants to think of their own 38 The principle of Forum Theatre (FT) is “a situation that is undesirable, a symbol that should be avoided if it were possible, and an audience group undertaking to find alternatives and offering proposals for change in the situation presented. Therefore it is essential that the situation presented in a FT piece, or ‘model’ as it is known, be able to engage its audience in a way that a desire for change in the situation is awakened and heightened. For this reason, it seems to work most effectively with a protagonistic character, with whom the audience members would identify and for whom the spectator would cross the boundary of the fourth wall to become a spect-actor” (Morelos, 1999, p.37). 32 concerns and ‘oppressions’, whilst working with ‘fictional’ storylines created by the participants that depicted ‘realistic’ problems, and revealing them through verbatim theatre. This was developed whilst including Boal’s TO working ethos with the attempt to trigger a transformation amongst the young people and their communities. Although, in the course of the project it was considered that these ‘transformational aims’ were rather ambiguous they had to become more precise for the research. Therefore, it was decided that the project should benefit three social groups; to empower young people towards expressing their concerns more often and to have a positive impact on their inclusion; to influence their surrounding adults to be more willing towards youth inclusion (the social group of adults includes the parents, guardians, teachers) and to inspire the young people’s youth workers on using new techniques for youth inclusion. Thus, through the applied theatre project of Young Voices an attempt to create a method was discovered, that can be used by youth workers to begin to bridge the gap between young people and their surrounding adults. As Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln maintain in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research39 (2001), “If the researcher needs to invent or piece together new tools or techniques, he or she will do so” (Denzin; Lincoln, 2001). This is exactly what was followed, since piecing and combining different practices formed the method itself, but also within the method there are exercises that 39 This text can be considered an essential resource for anyone doing interdisciplinary work. The book examines the theory and strategies used behind the paradigms of qualitative work that it provides. 33 already exist but have been adapted for the needs of this project. Furthermore, there are also newly discovered activities created by myself, such as the performance presentation exercises that are discussed in Chapter Three. These were used as “visual texts” to help “describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives” (Denzin; Lincoln, 2005). The involvement of the youth workers in this method came about since it was observed, during the practical research, that the youth clubs had a disorganised atmosphere to the point of ‘chaos’ due to the young people’s sporadic attendance and uncooperativeness. As much as the youth workers tried to solve this situation it was mostly unsolvable. This would happen at various youth clubs 40 as there was no structure to the youth club session, as a few of the youth workers 41 revealed; though the youth workers justified the situation by stating, “we can’t tell the kids what to do”. The youth workers reasoning for this situation could be considered accurate, but perhaps if there were some structure during the youth club sessions then they would not be so ‘chaotic’. In other youth centres because there was much more of an ‘itinerary’ the young people enjoyed their time there and they were more collaborative and more open to new activities. In the majority of youth clubs where it was much more disorganised, many of the youth workers admitted that they thought they were not doing 40 It is preferred to not mention which for ethical reasons. 41 It is preferred to keep the sources anonymous also, due to ethical reasons. 34 enough and felt boredom during the sessions. These youth workers inquired whether the young people felt the same way and continued by seriously questioning the value and productiveness of the youth clubs. Due to these observations it was considered that the method could benefit the youth workers, and in turn the youth workers using this method could create a beneficial and transformational atmosphere for the young people, towards their social inclusion and their acknowledgment from the adults that surround them. The Young Voices method is workshop and process based. It borrows the working ethos of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) system and uses elements of his Forum Theatre (FT) technique and combines this to the verbatim theatre process. It is bound by three stages that were mentioned in the Introduction; these stages will be discussed and analysed in depth in Chapter Three because they are part of the process. The method implicates the participants in the development of an innovative exploration that leads to a presentation (Prentki; Preston, 2009), since the project’s key focus is the young people, these participants supply its content; this content is gathered during the workshops of FT and verbatim and their contributions become the main material used in the method. The participants present this content in a performance presentation session by performing it from ‘script-in-hand’, so they are involved in the whole course of the method. The method is mostly concentrated on uncovering the 35 ‘hidden stories’ of a community, by revealing the young people’s stories from their own perspectives and raising awareness about these stories (Prentki; Preston, 2009). Furthermore, it employs a ‘passive participation’ method whereby participants anticipate by being told what is going to happen, this occurs during the project’s entire process. Another participative relationship in the method is ‘participation in information gathering’. This is where people participate by answering questions posed by the researcher and do not have the opportunity to influence proceedings (Prentki; Preston, 2009). This appears in the verbatim stage of the project, where the participants are interviewed, their contributions are gathered and then converted into anonymous monologues. The method was applied to a parish hall in Scarborough, situated on Castle Road, facilitating the teenagers from the Sidewalk organisation; 9 participants from 13 - 16 years of age (from Monday, 16th of May 2011 – Monday, 20th of June 2011). The young people from this group were all secondary school students from large single parent families, foster or reconstituted families with very little or average income. Many of the young people had a mentor assigned to them to make sure that they went to school and that they were not bullied. Others rarely attended school because they were taking care of their parents’ drug or alcohol use. The method also took place at Barrowcliff youth club at Gallows Close, which is a council estate in 36 Scarborough (from 17th of May to 21st of June 2011). They were a group of 8 teenagers from 14 to 16 years of age who seemed very protective of their community and ‘paranoid’ about speaking to people about it, in case their words would be manipulated; they too were mostly from single parent families without work and who lived on benefits because of this. The method was also applied to teenagers that attended Filey youth centre. Two groups were facilitated here, the midday group (from 10th of February 2011 until 31st of March 2011) and the Filey afternoon group (from 19th of May – 23rd of June 2011). The first group consisted of 5 participants aged from 13 to 15; the second group also had 5 participants but instead they were all 15 years old. The participants in both of these groups were either from extended families or living with their grandparents as guardians. The project took place in Ayton, in a Village Hall located in East Ayton next to a cricket field that converts into a youth club every Wednesday afternoon. Here there were 9 participants aged 14 – 16 (from 18th of May – 22nd of June 2011). These teenagers were all secondary school students and were open to collaborating in arts projects with practitioners. They were mostly from nuclear families, reconstituted or extended families with a high or average income. As briefly mentioned in the Introduction of this dissertation, from February to March 2011 I worked with the first Filey group, the 37 midday one. On the day of our introductory meeting, the young people together with the youth workers of Filey youth centre were preparing one-minute pieces, which had a resonance to Augusto Boal’s Simultaneous Dramaturgy42. According to Boal, “Simultaneous Dramaturgy is the first invitation made to the spectator to intervene without necessitating his physical presence on the ‘stage’”; he also suggests, “while the audience ‘writes’ the work the actors perform it simultaneously” (Boal, 1979, p. 132). In the case of the Filey midday group, the participants depicted how they are treated at school and how they would like to be treated by their teachers and peers. Instead of using actors as Boal had done with Simultaneous Dramaturgy, the participants themselves would take turns to be the actors and the spectators. Each group produced two scenes: the first showed a negative happening at school and the second demonstrated an opposite, more positive, view to the first, while suggesting a realistic solution to the problem posed in the first scene43. The scene’s themes 42 A short scene was presented with an issue suggested by a participant. The performance gains theatricality if the person that proposed the scene is in the audience. This piece would run its course up to the moment of crisis, where the protagonist had to make a decision. The play would stop and the audience were asked to offer solutions about what they thought the protagonist should do. On stage the actors would improvise every suggestions made by the audience (Boal, 1995). “The spectators thoughts are discussed theatrically on stage with the help of the actors, all solutions, suggestions and opinions are revealed in a theatrical form” (Boal, 1979, p. 132). For Boal this new form of theatre was progress since to him he was no longer giving advice but the actors that played the action in this form still ‘retained the power’, “their dominion on stage, the suggestions came from the audience but on stage it was still the artists that interpreted what had been suggested” (Boal, 1995, p. 4). 43 Group A presented a scene of bullying and exclusion in the playground at school, where a young person from the group of friends gathered in the school’s playground, confessed that he is gay to the whole group. Some of the teenagers in the group began to verbally bully him, followed by the whole group walking off and leaving him behind with the feelings of isolation and exclusion. After that, the first group presented the exact scene for a second time, but instead they substituted the feelings of isolation and exclusion for acceptance and inclusion. They showed the young person confessing and the friends accepting his sexuality, and when the whole group of friends got up to leave they asked him to go with them. Hence, the second version of the scene showed the positive attitudes towards that problem. Group B showed ignorance in class where the oppressor was the teacher. The teacher ignored a less successful pupil giving all the attention to a more scholastic independent pupil. This showed how teachers often focus and assist the students that have greater scholastic abilities more than the ones that have the 38 were selected by the participants and captured their real experiences in their own school communities and what they have to deal with in their daily school environment; these derived from a group discussion at the start of the session, in which they played the good and the bad exercise44, facilitated by the youth workers. The participants at Filey youth centre may not have been aware or followed every detail of Simultaneous Dramaturgy, although elements in their practice and their objectives were similar to that of Boal’s technique. This was a suitable starting point for creating the prototype of the Young Voices method, since this whole process demonstrated the participants’ collaborative potential and that they were accustomed to working in such a way, therefore this meant that they could be involved in the procedure of the method even more by offering their opinions and suggesting ideas about the method. The techniques that are used in the Initial Stage of the method as preparatory derive from the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO)45, which is a category of applied theatre established by Brazilian theatre director (and politician) Augusto Boal. The first stage of the Young Voices need of additional help. Then, group B recreated this scene displaying how they would like to be treated instead of being ignored. In their positive scene the teacher gave equal attention to all students, whether they were less successful in class or the opposite (Young Voices, 2011). 44 Each participant of the group would share one bad thing and one good thing that they had experienced during that day or that week with the rest of the group. 45 In The Rainbow of Desire (1995), Boal describes that his method experienced a ground-breaking transformation when during the presentation of his theatre based literacy project, Simultaneous Dramaturgy in Peru in 1973, a ‘spectactor’ impulsively stepped on stage and intervened in the action of the piece. This marked the beginning of his Forum Theatre (FT) strategy. After this incident Augusto Boal astonished, as described in The Rainbow of Desire, argued “when a spectator herself comes on stage and carries out the action she has in mind, she does it in a manner which is personal, unique and nontransferable, as she alone can do it, and as not artist can do it in her place” (Boal, 1995, p. 7). 39 method is the Aesthetic Process (AP), which is a preparative procedure and a title adopted from Boal’s own writing The Aesthetics of the Oppressed (2006). Boal suggests that the AP of a session is a vital element, since it stimulates the observations and views of the participant and that it is important it goes alongside his TO system (Boal, 2006). The AP remains an essential element of the method, even though the method itself does not include the whole process of Boal’s TO; as mentioned above, it rather borrows TO’s ethos, uses fragments of Boal’s Aesthetic Process and later on employs various Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques in the purpose of gradually leading the participants efficiently to each stage of the method. The exercises used in this method’s version of the AP are taken from Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors (1992), that is a repository of workshop techniques. These were selected on the basis of choosing an exercise from each of the categories stated in his text, towards gradually working with each muscle and sense of the participant’s body that each category concentrates on. Boal’s theory about the necessity of the AP is based on the principle that the human being is a unity and that science has proved that a person’s physical and psychic apparatuses are inseparable. In addition, the five senses are too interlinked in the way that physical actions, which are caused by the senses, are the actions of the whole body (Boal, 1992). 40 Augusto Boal begins his AP with several exercises for actors, although he then argues that these can also be used by non-actors (Boal, 1992). This is a principle that the Young Voices method follows since the participants are non-actors and the method is aimed at individuals, members of a community that may not have a direct connection to theatre. Boal argues that by providing the participants with the opportunity to undertake activities, which are often in the ‘norms’ of society denied to them, this develops their expressive and perceptive prospects. He explains: In our societies…the oppressors seek to reduce the symbolic life of the oppressed, their imagination, consigning them to mechanised work in which they are replaceable by any other - their names become numbers. Quality turned into quantity, and the human being is robotised” (Boal, 2006). His AP aims at “the liberation and fortification of metaphoric activity, of symbolic languages, of intelligence and sensitivity”. It intends at developing and simultaneously expanding the awareness and insight that society has of the world. This is produced from “the words, the image and the sound guided by a humanist ethic” (Boal, 2006, p. 43). The process generates emotional and intellectual incitements that assist the participant to feel and to develop a coherence of social reality (Boal, 2006). In Games for Actors and Non-Actors (1992) Boal argues that the actor cannot operate unless a ‘de-mechanisation’ process is followed which 41 will give the actor’s body the ability for emotions to “freely manifest themselves throughout” it. He maintains that “A newly discovered emotion runs the risk of being petrified by the mechanised patterns of the actor’s behaviour; the emotion may be blocked by a body already hardened by habit into a certain set of actions and reactions” (Boal, 1992, p. 29). As mentioned above, although the method is not for actors but instead for non-actors, this process is used during the Initial Stage of the method with hope that Boal’s concept of the ‘blocked emotions’ to be as effective with the participating non-actors as it was with is Boal’s “a actors. The goal of of the Augusto body Boal’s and its ‘gamexercises’ better awareness mechanisms, its atrophies and hypertrophies, its capacities for recuperation, restructuring, re-harmonisation. Each exercise is a physical reflection on oneself” (Boal, 1992, p. 48). Therefore, the ‘gamexercises’ that are selected for Young Voices to be used in the first stage of the method, help release the participants of any inhibitions they may have and operate as a stepping stone for the Forum Theatre (FT) stage of the project, since the FT stage confronts the participants with ethical dilemmas (Boal, 2006). However, before the FT workshop techniques of Young Voices, another ‘gamexercise’ from Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors is practised (1992), The Blank Character (TBC). In his book this game is under the category of Games Involving the Creation of Characters, 42 and Boal recommends that these be practised when starting with a new group of non-actors, to help the group to escape several of their inhibitions (Boal, 1992). In Young Voices TBC is practised before the FT workshop, because it is used as a preparatory exercise for FT, so the themes of the scenes of oppression for FT derive from TBC exercise, which is played differently from Boal’s version, explained in Annex C. In Young Voices, elements of the Backstory game, which is a common character creation exercise, together with aspects from TBC are merged to help the participating young people form ideas for their FT pieces46. Forum Theatre (FT), like Simultaneous Dramaturgy, is a theatrical game, but it is a vast development from the latter. A problem is shown in an unsolved form to which the audience are invited to suggest, but this time, also enact, the solutions. The idea is that the problem is always the symptom of an oppression and both ‘actors’ and audience “will be victims of the oppression under consideration and that is why they are able to offer possible solutions, because they themselves are personally acquainted with the oppression” (Boal, 1992, p. xxiv). The purpose of the game is to bring the scene to a different end, where the cycle of oppression is broken. The only component that can influence proceedings is the facilitator, who is better known as the ‘Joker’ or the ‘difficultator’ (Boal, 1992). The 46 See Annex C for more details on TBC. 43 notions of ‘metaxis’47 and ‘praxis’48 are also important aspects of FT. The ‘Joker’/ ‘difficultator’ is a figure who is responsible for “keeping the dramatic process open, steering participants away from easy or simplistic solutions…at times educates the audience about the issues at hand…the Joker is a door opener of the two worlds” (Prendergast; Saxton, 2009, p. 69-70). Boal describes ‘metaxis’ as “The state of belonging completely and simultaneously to two different, autonomous worlds: the image of reality and the reality of the image. The participant shares and belongs to these two autonomous worlds” (Boal, 1995, p. 43). In Applied Theatre: International case studies and challenges for practice49 (2009) Monica Prendergast and Juliana Saxton cite Deborah Mutnick, “the notion of praxis lies in the process of action that emanates from reflection which in turn produces a new set of reflections, leading to the next action and so on in an on-going dialectic” (Prendergast; Saxton, 2009, p. 70). These are core elements in FT, since the strategy was formed and is applied to provide a platform for discussion and reflection as well as operating as a rehearsal for real life action towards change (Prendergast; Saxton, 2009). Boal’s radical theatre method TO and it’s strategy FT 47 ‘Metaxis’ (μεταξί) is a Greek term that is used to describe, in the English language, the term ‘inbetween’ and it was used by Plato to define the human condition of ‘in-betweenness’ (Prendergast; Saxton, 2009). 48 ‘Praxis’ (πράξη) is also a Greek word that means ‘to take action’ or ‘an action’ (Prendergast; Saxton, 2009). 49 Monica Prendergast and Juliana Saxton state that the intention of Applied Theatre: International Case Studies and Challenges for Practice (2009) is to fill the gap of the lack of text in the applied theatre domain, that provide an international overview for students and practitioners to gain a basic understanding of what applied theatre is and how it works (Prendergast; Saxton, 2009). 44 have been used all over the world by applied theatre practitioners such as Cardboard Citizens50, that support communities to take action about issues in their societies. The popularity of Boal’s method TO51 and its strategy FT demonstrate how successful his method is in its aim of ‘rehearsing action on stage can develop skills, which can be then applied to real life’. This is why I borrowed the ethos of Boal’s TO system and adopted FT workshop elements for the method, Young Voices, towards the young people having their voices and concerns heard, and finding possible realistic solutions for their problems. The FT stage of the method prepares the participants for the verbatim stage, since it helps the participants think and elicit their concerns unintentionally, which is the main focus of the verbatim interview process. 50 Cardboard Citizens is a theatre company in the UK, created in 1991 by Andrew Jackson, a long time collaborator of Augusto Boal. Cardboard Citizens presents plays performed by excluded people such as the homeless and displaced, towards sharing their experiences with a wider audience and to problemsolve together. They have been using Forum Theatre since 1994, they provide training for people to use Theatre of the Oppressed in their work (Cardboard Citizens, 2011). 51 Not only have theatre practitioners in helping incarcerated people used this theatre form, but it has also been used by business consulting companies such as Activation Business Theatre, Scene Change Creative Consultants and Partners With You. These companies use FT as an arts based intervention to raise awareness of matters relating to equality and diversity, bullying and harassment, to help encourage and challenge workforces, to draw attention to any behavioural issues and to help develop employees’ communicative skills. Through FT and role-play Scene Change Creative Consultants assists public and private companies to construct a vigorous working environment that is in line with pending legislation and government initiatives (Scene Change Creative Consultants Ltd, 2011). In 2008 Shell UK, a company of energy and petrochemicals contacted Scene Change Creative Consultants and invited them to deliver a custom-built forum theatre event for their annual cross border conference in Norway, developing an interactive Coaching session that covered the themes of deeper understanding of operations and development of challenges, safety, integrity and leadership (Scene Change Creative Consultants Ltd, 2009). Many of the case studies testimonials found on each company’s website convey that the use of FT is thought provoking, eye opening and powerful (Scene Change Creative Consultants Ltd, 2009). 45 2.2 Verbatim Theatre in Young Voices – Comparing and Contrasting Verbatim to the ‘Boalian’ Ethos Used. Derek Paget first coined the term verbatim theatre in 1987 to describe theatrical performances that were based on interview transcripts. In Verbatim Verbatim Contemporary Theatre (2008), Will Hammond and Dan Steward explain that the term ‘verbatim’ refers to the origins of text spoken in a play (Hammond; Steward, 2008). A main element of their discussion is that verbatim theatre is not a form but rather a technique. This is because during a verbatim theatre process an artist will document the exact words of real people during an interview or research process. These interviews will then be arranged to form a dramatic presentation, in which actors will take on the roles of the verbatim subjects whose words are being used (Hammond; Steward, 2008). According to Alison Jeffers (2006), Derek Paget described the sudden emergence of verbatim theatre as such, “practitioners had seen a whole new area of documentary opening up - the direct communication…of lived experience through the actor as instrument via the new technological resources that they had access to, like a mobile tape recorder “(Jeffers, 2006, p. 2). In the same text, Jeffers continues by suggesting that the concept of ‘authenticity’ was a key idea and formed a significant role in the initial development of verbatim theatre, because of the importance of documentation and the ‘performative’ response back to the communities who had offered 46 their stories (Jeffers, 2006). To Derek Paget verbatim theatre is dependent on the ‘authenticating detail’. Its authentic character is an element that produces a ‘power’ to draw the audience in. Significantly, the lack of the elements that generate a performance’s atmosphere (props, staging, etc.) turns the audience’s attention to the verbatim subject itself. During an observation of verbatim process, Paget noted how the actors studied their characters behind the stories that they were given, forming decisions about minor gestures and expressions as symbols of identity. According to Paget: So far from a distancing effect, a kind of proximity is achieved by means of this closeness to the fact of the interview… verbatim theatre opens a space of ethical reflection and deepening engagement (Paget, 1987). In A Resurgence of Verbatim Theatre: Authenticity, Empathy and Transformation (2006), Michael Anderson and Linden Wilkinson indicate that: Verbatim theatre developed to specific communities in regional Britain in the 60s, verbatim plays provided a platform for silent or marginalised in those communities. The captured uniqueness of individual stories and perspectives are interwoven both to inform and engage the audience…The theatre projects that come out of this process represented a way of understanding a shared past, a traumatic present, a diversity of truths (Anderson; Wilkinson, 2007, p. 154). 47 In this sense, the technique devised a space for different, genuine voices that were unheard in prevalent media (Anderson; Wilkinson, 2007). This is an element that is also found in applied theatre forms. Like applied theatre, verbatim plays are too transformational. In verbatim theatre the characters use their own story instead of having to depend on ‘fiction’, as most conventional ‘narrative dramas’. Its ability to exhibit the truth in a simple and comprehensible way through the verbatim subject’s personal stories is a component that makes the verbatim stories presented on stage much stronger. As Peter Cheeseman, a British theatre director acknowledged in his early verbatim plays of the 1960’s, by using the language of the community it elevates that community by enhancing its self-esteem (Anderson; Wilkinson, 2007). This is a concept that Augusto Boal also came across when travelling with his theatre company ‘el Teatro de Arena de Sao Paulo’ (the Arena Theatre of Sao Paulo), around poorstricken parts of Brazil where they performed ‘anti-capitalist and heroic’ plays to the locals. There was a particular incident52 that provoked a realisation that relates to an idea by Adams and Goldbard, that many scholars are critical about the usage of applied theatre in deprived communities, because it may be dominating and patronizing 52 “One day we were performing one of these splendid musical plays for an audience of peasants in a small village in the North- East – and we sang the heroic text ‘Let us spill our blood’, to our rapt audience made up of only peasants”. At the end of the piece a man of from the audience, called Virgilio, approach Boal and invited the whole theatre company to join them for lunch and to after gather their guns and fight together. Boal states that through the performance, Virgilio assumed that they all shared similar opinions about the situation in Brazil and thus wanted, expected them to fight too. Boal and his theatre company tried to explain that they believe what they preach as true artists but do not know how to be violent in that manner. Virgillio answered, “so, when you true artists talk of the blood that must be spilt, this blood you sing about spilling – it’s our blood you mean, isn’t that so?” This made Boal ‘ashamed of his art’ stating that, “we white men from the big city, there was very little we could teach black women of the country” (Boal, 1995). 48 towards less fortunate communities (Adams; Goldbard, 2002). After this incident, Boal never again wrote or performed plays that gave advice, he rather developed Simultaneous Dramaturgy and later on Forum Theatre (FT) so the audience could give their own advice, which was an element that gave them respect and self-confidence because it provided them with space for their own suggestions (Boal, 1995). In Empathetic Intelligence: Teaching, Learning, Relating (2005) Ros Arnold describes the experiences that involve both the intellect and the emotions as opportunities for emotional learning (Arnold, 2005). Arnold suggests “transformational learning is a product of empathetic intelligence”, she maintains that the imagination has to be engaged and there must be the opportunity to reflect in an energised environment” (Arnold, 2005 in Anderson; Wilkinson, 2007, p. 166). Anderson and Wilkinson state, “Such intelligence occurs in effective verbatim. There is a capacity to connect, an opportunity to identify ourselves and others, a chance for our humanity to be touched and our world to be understood” (p. 166). They maintain that this intelligence is an opportunity for transformational learning that is not offered anywhere else in the media. According to them, it occurs because verbatim theatre tells authentic stories, thus connecting with its audience on an intellectual and emotional level: Verbatim theatre provides a unique vehicle for the enrichment of an audience starved of debate, denied an identity…it’s the community’s need to 49 hear more authentic voices, to be presented with multiple voices and perspectives, to be informed, engaged and transformed (Anderson; Wilkinson, 2007, p.167). The transformational learning that is found in verbatim is an element that is shared with applied theatre forms and in particular Boal’s TO ethos and his FT technique, whose transformational nature has been explained in the previous subchapter. Another aspect that is common between verbatim and FT is the concept of audience empowerment, as mentioned above, both Cheeseman and Boal acknowledged this and used it in their practices. Although, as Anderson and Wilkinson suggest verbatim triggers empathy, unlike FT, which provokes sympathy. This occurs because verbatim is associated more with a ‘conventional play’, according to Boal: In a traditional theatre show, the spectactor character relationship comes into being by means of what is called empathy. The emotion of the characters penetrates us, the moral world of the show invades us, osmotically; we are led by characters and actions not under our control; we experience a vicarious emotion. In a TO showing, where the oppressed themselves have created their own world of images of their own oppressions, the active observer – character relationship changes in essence and becomes sympathy. We are not led. We lead (Boal, 1995, p. 42). The Young Voices method combines the concepts behind the technique of FT with the ones of verbatim theatre, and it may be that it involves both empathy and sympathy, due to the ‘power’ of both 50 techniques being transformational. In the method FT prepares the ground for the verbatim process. The verbatim process consisted of one-to-one 10-minute interviews where the verbatim subjects would be asked about their lives, concerns and their aspirations. The interview answers were gathered and transformed into anonymous monologues and were then presented in a performance and feedback session53 ‘performed’ by the young participants themselves. In addition the monologues are not read and discussed by the group that they were taken from but exchanged between the groups of Filey, Barrowcliff, Scarborough and Ayton. Through the intermediary stages of the project when collaborating with the midday group from Filey Youth Centre, it was discovered that presenting each group’s monologues to the same group they originated from, meant that the content could be recognisable to the participants and each person’s story could be revealed. This is because individuals in the groups that took part in the research were familiar to one another by attending the same school, having similar after school activities or even living in a rural area. The recognition of stories was something that was attempted to be avoided, because the participants offered their 53On March the 31st 2011 the midday group from Filey youth centre and myself, presented the verbatim promenade performance of Young Voices at Scarborough Campus of the University of Hull. The group performed their own monologues, although each individual performed another person’s monologue from the group. This was supposedly a finale to the series of Young Voices workshops that I facilitated with that group. There was a lack of interest from the community outside the university, which was essential to the piece for it was addressed to a targeted audience of adults (parents, guardians, teachers, etc.). In addition, the young participants that performed were not actors nor were they theatre students. Putting them on the theatre stage in the university might have built up their confidence but it simultaneously destroyed the authenticity of the monologues, seeing that the stage to them signified that they had to act, even though I had explained countless times that their purpose was not to act but to deliver the message that the monologues conveyed. Therefore, it was decided that any other performances would be an informal presentation of the monologues. This approach was much more intimate and authentic, there was no unintentional acting by the participants. It was merely the participants and myself, sitting in a circle of trust reading the monologues and discussing. 51 stories to the project. Presenting them in a state that is identifiable might lead to a danger of exposing them, which is unethical. Thus, the monologues were delivered according to each group’s perceptions of the different areas (see Table I). 52 Youth Group Barrowcliff Youth Club(Gallows Close, 4Youth) East Ayton (Village Hall, 4Youth) Filey Youth Centre (4Youth) Monologues Scarborough (Sidewalk) and Filey’s (4Youth) monologues. Barrowcliff’s monologues. (4Youth) Previous Filey groups monologues from Thursday midday meetings. (4Youth) Scarborough (Parish hall, Ayton’s monologues. (4Youth) Sidewalk, Monday Group) Table I In this way, the participants had the opportunity to read other young people’s monologues from other areas that they may or may not have had a negative perception of. They could discuss the stories and somehow find similarities between their lives and the teenager’s life portrayed in the monologues. For example, the group from East Ayton youth club read and discussed the young people’s monologues from Barrowcliff youth centre54. Therefore, the monologue exchange was not only useful to the shift of focus, from whose story it is to what is in the story, but because it offered each participant an insight to other teenagers’ lives from other local areas. Through the discussion that 54 At the start of a session I overheard the teenagers form Ayton discussing a 4Youth field trip, when they were displeased with sharing transportation with teenagers from Barrowcliff. They expressed their disapprovals by saying, “they’re all smack heads”, “they don’t deserve to live”, “they are dirty and do not were nice clothes, I’m embarrassed to be seen with them”. At that point it occurred to me that although only small distances divide these areas they are completely diverse, as if they live in their own internal culture that brings with it different attitudes, lifestyles and habits. 53 took place after each reading, the participants built an understanding of why some teenagers act in particular ways. Performance is a strong communication device for the Young Voices method, as many philosophers, academics, and artists have seen performance as a pedagogical and didactical device and as a lens through which society can look at reality. For society might not be able to recognize its mistakes upfront, but if it sees its faults through another angle, in a society created on stage, it will possibly realise its issues and provoke change. This Chapter has discussed the methodologies and theories used within the research and the project towards developing a method that can be used by youth workers to begin to bridge the gap between young people and the adults that surround them, so the adults are more receptive to the young people’s social inclusion needs. The methods and the process of the development of the Young Voices method are discussed in detail and analysed in depth in the following chapter. 54 Chapter Three The Research Process and the Development of the Method Introduction to Chapter Three This Chapter examines the method’s research process, and its development in the context of how each stage of the method during the research process impacted on the participating youth. To do this each stage of the method is addressed individually. The Chapter is divided into two subchapters according to the different stages of the method: 3.1 The Initial Stage of Young Voices includes Young Voice’s fundamental and preparatory workshop process 3.1.1 The Aesthetic Process, 3.1.2 The Blank Character (TBC) and Forum Theatre (FT). 3.2 The Intermediate and Final Stages of Young Voices, which involve the second and third phase of the method, the 3.2.1 Verbatim Theatre Process and the last phase of the project as a whole 3.2.2 The Performance Lecture. The method has been attempted to be developed through the applied theatre project Young Voices, and from the collaborations with organisations55 such as 4Youth and Sidewalk that are located in Scarborough, that have helped provide young people for the process of the method. This collaboration formally began in February 2011 56. 55 These organisations were introduced in Chapter One, 1.2. 56 More details concerning this can be found in Chapter One, 1.2. 55 The youth groups57 that were provided by these organisations were58 introduced in Chapter One, 1.2. 3.1 The Initial Stage of Young Voices This is the first stage of the method, its process and workshop-based character focus on the mental and psychological preparation of the participants, towards the subsequent levels of the method. This stage borrows the ‘Boalian’ Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) ethos by adapting several exercises from his Aesthetic Process (AP) and adopting fragments of his Forum Theatre (FT) mode as preparatory workshop techniques. Thus, this subchapter is divided into the two phases of the Initial Stage of Young Voices, the Aesthetic Process (AP) of Young Voices and the Blank Character (TBC) and Forum Theatre (FT) Workshop Techniques. 3.1.1 The Aesthetic Process (AP) of Young Voices All of the ‘gamexercises’ used for the AP were selected to suit the content of the Young Voices method, but most importantly to prepare the teenage participants adequately for the next stages of the method. These exercises were taken from Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors (1992). As Boal states “the games deal with the expressivity of the body as emitter and receiver of messages. The games are a dialogue…they are an extroversion” (Boal, 1992, p. 48). 57 The information provided is basic information, I would have liked to have given more observational details, and each participant’s entire individual story, but this would expose them. Therefore, the participant’s stories are anonymously portrayed through the monologues that were produced during the verbatim stage of this method. Several of these can be found in Annex D. Although, additional geographical information about the locations can be found in Chapter One, 1.2 and in Chapter Two. 58 A timetable of the entire series of workshops is provided in Annex B. 56 An AP workshop59 of Young Voices was structured with the following ‘gamexercises’60: a) Colombian Hypnosis b) The Machine of Rhythms c) The Peruvian Ball Game d) The Imaginary Journey e) The Plain Mirror & Subject of Swapping Roles f) Remembering An Actual Oppression The principle of the selection of exercises was to attempt to include an exercise from each category of Boal’s Games for Actors and NonActors (1992), in order to gradually work with all muscles and senses, as a ‘de-mechanisation’ process of the body. The theoretical purpose of this was previously discussed in Chapter two – The Methodology. According to Boal: In the body’s battle with the world, the senses suffer. And we start to feel very little of what we touch, to listen to very little of what we hear and to see very little of what we look at. We feel, listen and see according to our speciality… In order for the body to be able to send out and receive messages, it has to be deharmonised (Boal, 1992, p. 49). Thus, the procedure of selection occurred with the above quote in mind; it was essential to the method to select exercises from each category to work on the different senses. Exercise A is in the category of Feeling What We Touch - Restructuring Muscular Relation (Boal, 59 Six exercises were selected for one session of two hours, were each exercise took eighteen minutes exactly for its completion. All exercises are from Boal’s Games for Actors and Non- actors (1992). 60 Full description of activities can be found in Annex C. 57 1992). This is concerned with discovering different ways of structuring muscles and finding new ways of expressing oneself on stage and in life (Boal, 1992). Exercises B & C are under the category of Listening to What We Hear. Rather than focusing on the feeling of touch, these activities concentrate on the discovery of ‘inner’ rhythms. For both exercises Boal suggests, “this can provide useful illustration of the way actions and sounds have been modified” (Boal, 1992, p. 97). Exercise D is in the Dynamising Several Senses category and is part of The Blind Series. In contrast to the previous exercises, this was developed because “we don’t bother to perceive the world outside through the other senses that remain dormant or become atrophied” (Boal, 1992, p. 114) and encourages us to “voluntarily deny ourselves the sense of sight in order to enhance the other senses and their capacity for perception outside the world” (Boal, 1992, p. 115). Both of the E exercises are located in Seeing What We Look At and F belongs to The Memory of the Senses series. The exercises in E use mostly all senses developed in the previous ones, unlike the previous exercises, these “develop the capacity for observation by means of ‘visual dialogues’” between the participants (Boal, 1992, p. 129). Finally F uses all senses accessible to reconnect memory, emotion and imagination. All ‘gamexercises’ are similar in the sense that they heavily depend on the same principles to be successful: group work and trust within that group. In addition, it was important to follow the designed structure of the exercises given in order to ‘de-mechanise’ the body gradually, a sense at a time to finally transpire into using all senses possible. 58 In the case of Young Voices, these exercises had a fundamental role since the proceeding stages of the method all depended on the AP, to attempt to release the participants of any inhibitions they had, thereby making it easier for them to remove their ‘social masks’ 61 without the feeling of being ‘shamefully’ exposed. As demonstrated in Chapter Two, Boal argues that this is the very purpose of the AP exercises, to ‘de-specialise’ and ‘de-mechanise’ the body from its usual routine of actions and behaviours, thus using its impulses and senses that have been previously suppressed (Boal, 1992). This is the very reason why fragments of Boal’s AP were chosen as starting points for the Young Voices method. 3.1.2 The Blank Character (TBC) and Forum Theatre (FT) Workshop Techniques It was found that by adding elements from the Backstory game to TBC62 exercise, the participants would create characters that somehow reflected their own persona, since they were encouraged to think that the character they were creating was a person of their own age who would attend the same activities as them63. They were also instructed to create an oppressor character; this aspect provoked 61 More details on this found in 3.1.2. 62 See Annex C for exercise description. 63 During Sidewalk group session a female participant revealed that she had un-intentionally created a character with similar problems to hers and that by exploring a variety of resolutions to the problem posed in the scene she could adapt them to her situation. “Mary is a 14-year-old girl that attends Graham secondary School in Scarborough. She has severe anger problems, which get her into trouble when she goes to school. But she often does not attend school to take care of her mother who is an alcoholic. The fact that she does not go to school also gets her into trouble, because in order to protect her family situation she does not inform the school of the truthful situation and she would rather get blamed for it, instead of the school blaming her mother and having to inform the child services about it. Her oppressor is her mother” (The Blank Character (TBC) and Forum Theatre (FT) transcripts can be found in Annex D). 59 them in considering their own ‘oppressions’ and ‘oppressors’, which they elaborated onto the blank character they created. Although participants had already been through the AP, some individuals still found it difficult to engage, especially when being surrounded by familiar people (i.e. their peers). Therefore, by adding this element to the task, the participants discovered it was easier to reveal their ‘oppressions’ through the character they were creating. In this exercise the character that the participants created acted as a metaphorical ‘social mask’64, a safety net that protected the participants’ ‘vulnerability’ from everyone else in the group. This has its foundations on theories that involve ‘conformity’, ‘intimacy’, ‘acceptance’ and ‘vulnerability’, and as discussed in Chapter One, these concepts play an important role in the adolescent period of an individual’s life. Exercises that do not operate with a ‘social mask’ can risk violating a participant’s ‘intimacy’. Boal claims that, “these workshop exercises should neither have a therapeutic intention (unless they are being done in a therapeutic environment), nor should they risk the participants’ health” (Boal, 1992, p. 151). By generating a metaphorical ‘social mask’ (a fictional character of the same age as them), the problems and the issues the participant has are placed back in a more general context of external, physical and social reality 64 “The smooth functioning of society depends on people controlling many of their immediate impulses. This includes people not fully revealing everything about themselves…most of us go through our day-today lives wearing socially accepted masks. We put our best foot forward and we don’t advertise our mistakes. We do this because we want people to think well of us, to accept us… the essence of acceptance is non-judgemental” (Rosenbloom; Williams; Watkins, 2010, p. 219). Herbert Kelman identified three forms of ‘social masks’: a) Compliance – when people tend to agree with others but actually keep their disapproval private. b) Identification – when someone who is already socially accepted and respected influences people. c) Internalisation – when people accept and agree with an opinion publicly and in private (Kelman, 1958). 60 projected on the character created, thereby preventing the exposure of the participant’s vulnerability (Boal, 1992). Furthermore, the other participants are treated as ‘strangers’, (strangers to the character that the participant has created). This is based on a theory by Georg Simmel65 that human beings have a tendency to confide in strangers because of their objectivity, and thus confide in a stranger in ways that they would not with each other, because the stranger has the ability to see patterns that are much more difficult to see for those immersed in the situation or for basic acquaintances, and will not be judgmental towards the person who is ‘exposed’ (Glencoe, 1950). Consequently, it was much easier for the participants to project their own issues onto the characters that they developed, by treating that persona as another person who is a ‘stranger’ to them and the rest of the group. I also found that situating this exercise before FT was a great incitement, because the participants were provoked to think about their own concerns freely through the imaginary character without the feeling of intimidation. Additionally, through the FT process they had the opportunity to ‘play’ with these characters, reveal their concerns, find similarities and differences between theirs and their peers’ ‘oppressions’, and most importantly, (which was actually the objective of the FT exercise), to look for and act out realistic solutions to the obstacles 65 Georg Simmel (March 1, 1858 – September, 18, 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher and critic. Simmel’s most popular works include The Problems of the Philosophy of History (1892), The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), The Philosophy of Money (1907), Soziologie (1908 inc. The Stranger, The Social Boundary, The Sociology of the Senses, The Sociology of Space, On the Spatial projections of Social Forms), Rembrandt: An Essay in the Philosophy of Art (1916), Fundamental Questions of Philosophy (1917) (Glencoe, 1950). 61 and dilemmas posed in the scenes portrayed. In Chapter Two I refer to Boal’s theoretical framework of FT. As Boal argued would happen, through FT’s components of ‘metaxis’ and ‘praxis’ the participants indeed drove towards more realistic solutions to the ‘oppressions’ that were depicted in the scenes of each group. The impact that this had to each group was that each person’s ‘oppression’, when shown in a scene of FT, instantly became everyone’s ‘oppression’. As Boal believed, FT “is the theatre of the first person plural” (Boal, 1995, p.45). This means that when another person’s story is presented, the members of the group invest in that story with parts of their own experience. It seemed as though each person could relate to the issue at hand; this was apparent through their continuous involvement where they would consider alternative solutions to the problems depicted. As previously mentioned in Chapter two, the problem is always the symptom of an oppression and both ‘actors’ and audience “will be victims of the oppression under consideration and that is why they are able to offer possible solutions, because they themselves are personally acquainted with the oppression” (Boal, 1995, p. xxiv, in Demetriou, 2011, Chapter Two). 3.2 The Intermediate and Final Stages of Young Voices The AP and the FT all contributed to the preparation of the verbatim workshop, not only preparing the participants to release their inhibitions and ‘de-mechanise’ their bodies and behaviour but, most importantly, they prepared the participants to think of their ‘oppressions’, which can be considered a ‘dangerous’/risky subject 62 when working with a vulnerable age group. The method was designed to think and deal with those concerns that were emotionally powerful and difficult to be dealt with, through the use of TBC and FT. The FT stage of the method would draw all the emotionality inscribed in the ‘oppressions’ and its related concerns so it became much easier to talk about them during the verbatim interview process. The Intermediate Stage of the method includes the verbatim process, which is the conducting of one-to-one interviews with the participants; the transformation of these transcripts to anonymous monologues and the final stage of the method include a series of performance presentations of these monologues at each youth club. However, this also involves the final stage of the project as a whole, which involves a performance lecture addressed to youth workers. 63 3.2.1 Verbatim Theatre As explained in Chapter Two, a verbatim theatre process involves interviews, where the verbatim subject’s answers are then formed in an appropriate narrative and later exhibited on stage (Demetriou, 2011, Chapter Two). One-to-one interviews66 were conducted, asking each participant about their life, ambitions, ‘oppressions’ and their concerns. Questions that were asked are the following: “What would describe you as a person?” “Could you tell me about yourself?” “What is it like being a teenager in … (such and such area)?” “What kind of relationship do you have with your family?” “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” In some instances more questions had to be added in order to provoke an efficient conversational interview. Whilst, in the majority of interviews the basic questions were asked according to the content of the verbatim subjects’ answer, questions were often improvised to suit that content and to tease more information out of the discussion. The transformation of the interviews into monologues was an exciting but simultaneously difficult process. It was essential to the project to 66 Every participant was provided with a consent form to give to his or her parents to sign, but if the participants were sixteen years of age they were able to sign it themselves. This was to protect their rights as much as the university’s and my own. I agreed to a photographic interview with the participants only if the footage was for my own use and that it remained anonymous. That meant that the footage would be edited so the face would be blurred and the voice would be low pitched. This was to protect the verbatim subject’s anonymity and conceal their identity, in some cases though it was not enough. The participants were not encouraged to speak about concerns and oppressions that threaten their safety, since I was the only person that would be able to identify them and had no authority to deal with such a crucial matter. During the process of transforming the interviews to monologues I came across a couple of issues that were a risk to the health and safety of the participants. The participants/verbatim subjects were then assured that the specific line in their narrative would be removed and destroyed and they were informed that the youth workers would be notified of their situation, which is what was exactly followed. 64 maintain the experiences found in the monologues as authentic as possible without editing them, in the manner of adding elements to them. As Will Hammond and Dan Steward state in Verbatim Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre (2008) “the real world provides him with the raw material, which, as Max Strafford- Clarke puts it, he leaves raw, but he must still craft a drama from it” (Hammond; Steward, 2008). In Young Voices the ‘drama’ is the monologues; these might not be heavily edited, although they are selected in order to fit the performance presentations at each youth club. From the experience of developing this method towards a presentation, it was found that maintaining a balance between (upbeat and disheartening) monologues was a very important element for the performance presentations towards the safety of the participants’ psyche. This became apparent immediately after a workshop of the performance presentations, where there was a noticeable distress in the group due to the insufficient balance of content selected, (there were more ‘sad’ monologues). This meant that the verbatim approach and the ‘rawness’ of the monologues had an impact on the participants, but the aim of the project was not only to read and hear a ‘sad story’, which could possibly provoke change, but rather to project teenagers’ stories from their own perspective. As many adults that attended these performance presentations said, “teenagers aren’t heard enough” (Young Voices, 2011). An adult from Ayton stated: 65 This is eye-opening and scary at the same time, to think that some of the problems discussed in the monologues or during the workshop today I went through as a teenager thirty years ago, and they are still not resolved, that is definitely something to consider (Young Voices, 2011). The Performance Presentations were the last of the workshops with the young participants, where the monologues were presented. The structure of this workshop was in the form of an exercise67, in which each group would present another group’s monologues. The distribution of the monologues was executed as discussed in Chapter Two (See Table I, Chapter Two). For example, the teenagers from the Ayton group read the Barrowcliff group’s monologues. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the aim of this principle was to avoid the recognition of the content depicted in each monologue, which would have possibly occurred if each group had presented their own monologues (Demetriou, 2011, Chapter Two). Presenting the monologues as an exercise made this a challenging activity for the participants, not only were they offered a chance to give their views on the content of each monologue, structured into five phrases, but they also had the opportunity to have an insight into other teenagers’ lives and find similarities between the concerns depicted in the monologues and their own. In addition, the young people had the opportunity to present anonymous adult monologues that were focused on their teenager years. An interview was taken from each youth worker; these went 67 This exercise is explained in Annex E. 66 through the same selection and distribution process as the young people’s monologues. By reading these in the performance presentations the participants could find similarities and differences between their life and the teenage years portrayed in the adult monologues that were presented68. This additional step was selected for an opportunity of sharing past and present experiences between both age groups, thereby building intergenerational relationships. This will eventually begin to bridge the gap between teenagers and adults, by facilitating a particular communication through the use of both the teenagers’ and youth workers’ monologues. Initially, it would have been preferred that the teenagers’ parents would also be involved in the process, although there was a noticeable lack of interest69 from the parents and the teenagers preferred that their stories were not exposed to their parents. Therefore, the youth workers were another option of the concept ‘surrounding adults’ and more than interested to take part in this project70. Consequently, this tactic was used to show the teenage participants what their adult youth workers dealt with when they were 68 For example, an adult monologue captured the theme of bullying. The observation that the young people made was that this is similar to happenings in their lives. They then recognized it as an ongoing problem still happening in the 21st century. 69 In the beginning of the project the aim was to involve the parents of the young people in the process, as much as the young people were. But in the process of attempting to gather a targeted audience of parents for the Filey midday group’s verbatim performance on 31st march 2011; there was a lack of interest (more details in Chapter Two). The teenager’s teachers were also contacted to attend the performance, but that was also an unsuccessful attempt. 70 A participant influenced this approach during the early stages of the project, she said “adults might go through the same experiences as us today, but they don’t want to talk about it, so they don’t corrupt us, they only talk about the moral stuff like what we should be doing, they don’t explain why it’s wrong to do certain things” (Young Voices, 2011). 67 teenagers71. The youth workers were chosen on the principle 72 that they are the ‘intercessors’ between the young people and their parents. The parents entrust their young people to the youth workers, and in turn the young people trust the youth workers “as adults who are not in any authority over them and yet can work with them to maximise their learning and personal development” (Services for young people, 2011). 71 See Annex E for several adult monologues. 72 More details on this can be found in the part of the subchapter 3.2.2 The Performance Lecture. 68 3.2.2 The Performance Lecture This is the last stage of the project as a whole, where the method that was developed and applied to the different youth clubs of Barrowcliff, Scarborough, Ayton and Filey was presented to youth workers. The research was proposed as a method that can be used to empower young people by sharing their experiences, concerns and views from their own perspectives, towards beginning to bridge the gap between young people and adults. In Young Voices the youth worker takes the role of the ‘mediator’ between the young people and their parents. The reason behind this that was briefly mentioned in the previous subchapter will be analysed further on to distinguish the importance and purpose of the youth workers’ role in the method. In Delivering Good Youth Work: A Working Guide to Surviving and Thriving (2001), Gina Ingram and Jean Harris argue that: Youth work is the only agency that is set up to offer learning, i.e. education in its broader sense, to young people in a way that - A youth worker’s focus is on young people; a youth worker is an advocate on behalf of young people to help to make their voices heard; a youth worker works non-judgementally and treats young people as inexperienced young adults by offering them respect as valued individuals. They are concerned about listening to young people’s thoughts because it is important that young people have the opportunity to discuss and explore their 69 ideas…Youth workers bring special skills, they can relate to young people and win their trust and confidence. They can offer them learning in a way that young people can accept (Ingram; Harris, 2001). In addition, as mentioned in the previous subchapter 3.2.1 Verbatim Theatre, the Parliament UK website has published an article in its sector Services for Young People that states, “young people trust youth workers as adults who are not in any authority over them and yet can work with them to maximise their learning and personal development” (Services for young people, 2011 in Demetriou, 2011, Chapter Three). Unlike youth workers, In Bridging the Gap Between Teenagers and Parents (2008), Terry Louise Washington suggests that many parents do not respect their teenagers as individuals. She maintains that: Teenagers express themselves to be their own individuals and when their opinions and ideas are different from their parents does not mean that they do not respect their parents’ views...Each teen is his or her own individual, and although they come from their parents their views on life maybe somewhat different (Washington, 2008, p. 2). Washington also indicates that many parents often have bad judgement about their teenagers and make negative assumptions about them. Through the monologues that were created during this project and the discussions that took place during the performance presentations it was noticed that this is often the case with young 70 people and their parents73. An online article in Teens Health claims that this distrust between both teenagers and parents only creates family conflict and alienation. The article argues that teenagers become angry because they feel that their parents do not respect them; do not give them space to do what they like and consequently parents grow angry since they are not used to being ‘un-authoritative’ and therefore having to disagree with their offspring’s decisions74. The article concludes that this period of adjustment creates many generational gaps (Teens Health, 2011). Another online article asserts that family practitioners have observed that many adult youth workers naturally ally with young people when they complain about their families. Those who work with youth respect a teenager’s privacy and confidentiality while still acknowledging parental rights and authority (Ooms, 2011). In the paper Youth Work Contract of Edith Cowan University’s youth work programme Howard Sercombe explains the role of the youth worker and the position of this role in the community, “the youth worker engages the young person as the primary constituent. Where conflicts in mandates occur, and they sometimes do and sometimes don’t, youth work gives priority to the contract with the young person” (Secombe, 2011, p. 2). He maintains that: 73 For example, during an interview a participant revealed that his/her parents do not trust them enough, with the belief that all adolescent individuals are troublesome and delinquent; a belief that originated from several teenage minor crimes in the area they lived in. 74 This was the case with a participant, during the interview when asked ‘what is your relationship with your parents like?’. The participant answered negatively claiming that their parents did not agree or understand his/hers own political views or beliefs concerning life. This participant revealed that their parents were trying to force their beliefs onto the participant, without accepting their offspring’s own views or his/her individuality. 71 In youth work, as in many other spheres of life, a worker is subject to several different contracts... there are spoken or unspoken contracts. Many of these contracts involve contradictory mandates. The representative of the local shopkeepers’ organisation on your management committee may want you to get the kids off the street where they are annoying potential customers. The police may expect you to keep them informed on the whereabouts of certain young people. Parents might want you to make sure that their offspring is in school. Funding bodies may want a decrease in offending behaviour by the young people that you work with. The church might want to see some conversions. And the young people that you work with might not want any of these things. They may have entered into a relationship with you to help them find a job, or to help them stay out of trouble, or because they needed someone to talk to or somewhere to hang out (Secombe, 2011, p. 2). These written and unwritten contracts class and assign the youth worker an essential part of society, because of the ‘negotiator’ role (Secombe, ‘negotiator’ 2011). role Because that the of the important takes and on necessary with the youth worker responsibilities of the profession in society, the worker was selected as the ‘mediator’ between young people and their parents for the Young Voices method. The performance lecture is addressed to the youth workers since the third step of the method relies on youth worker’s power as ‘negotiator and mediator’. Secombe also states “It is important for youth workers to have working relationships with other professions and to be able to refer when appropriate” (Secombe, 2011, p. 2). Therefore, this performance lecture can 72 benefit the youth workers, in turn in experiencing new techniques for youth inclusion. The performance lecture took place at Scarborough Campus, University of Hull, Performance Studio (PS) 3, on the 23rd of September 2011 at 16:00 p.m. The youth workers were asked to arrive 10-15 minutes prior to the start of the performance lecture, in order to be delivered the ‘front of house speech’, that followed the guidelines of the studio’s health and safety rules, but also for the audience members to meet one another, write their names on name tags that were placed for them on a table at the entrance of the studio, and take their seats towards discovering the material that was positioned there for them. This material included an Information Pack that explained the method in detail, a hard copy of the slide show they were about to experience and a feedback sheet that they would eventually fill out at the end of the performance lecture75. It was a presentation of the method by using PowerPoint, which illustrated all the information for each section of the performance lecture76. The Performance lecture was divided into three sections: A) Introduction This is where I briefly introduced myself, the degree I am studying for, and the ‘interactive space’ that would be used during the performance lecture, where the audience of youth workers were 75 See Annex F for copies of the material given in the performance lecture. 76 The PowerPoint Slides can be found on a CD-ROM in Annex F. 73 invited to participate in a Name Game77. After this, using the PowerPoint slides the reasons that make the research important were depicted, as discussed in Chapter One. This contained statistical information and quotes regarding the perceived image of young people, a pie chart that was created by myself, which indicated the anecdotal evidence about the perceived image of youth locally, that was gathered from interviewing people in the local community; Furthermore, this section included a slide called “What is the Method?”(Young Voices Performance Lecture 2011, Annex F, CDROM), that explained the combination of techniques that formed the method, along with background information regarding each one and an excerpt of a short clip downloaded from YouTube that showed the late Augusto Boal discussing the ethos of his work. The aims of the method that were discussed in the Introduction were also illustrated and connected to the next section of the performance lecture. B) Main Body – Stages of the Method In this section each stage of the method, The Initial, Intermediary and Final stages were addressed individually in detail, as to engage the youth workers and for them to develop an understanding of the importance of each stage. But also to give them time to take in the amount of information discussed. For a better understanding of each stage, there were illustrative pictures of each exercise practised in the AP, an audience participative demonstration of The Colombian Hypnosis exercise, an audience participative reading of a The Black 77 Details of exercise explained in Annex F. 74 Character (TBC) and Forum Theatre (FT) transcript followed by an audience discussion and debate of the possible enacted solutions for the specific FT piece; a reading of monologues that was in the form of an exercise78 followed by a discussion with the audience of the issues and ‘oppressions’ reflected in a particular monologue audience’s choice. C) Conclusion This section included a reference to the importance of the youth worker’s role within the method, the significance of performance and its relevance to the issues that make the whole research important. It contained a summary of each stage related to the aims of the method that are stated in the Introduction, and a combination of quotes that demonstrate the significance of the use of performance in different key stages of the Young Voices method. This section also provided a bibliography that was accessible to the youth workers and a ‘Question Time’ moment where the audience of youth workers could ask any queries about the method and the information they were offered. In this section they were also to fill out the feedback sheets that were placed on their seats before the start of the performance lecture. The purpose of the aims referred to above is to investigate the relationship between young people and their social environment and engage with the deconstruction of the negative images of youth held by many adults in these communities, thus aiming towards the young of the 78 Details on this exercise can be found in Annex F. 75 people’s social inclusion in their communities, which will begin to bridge the gap with young people and their parents. The first, is to develop interpersonal communication through sharing stories between teenagers, by adopting Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) ethos, adapting and using elements of his AP and FT workshop techniques and also using verbatim theatre techniques, towards finding a common ground between their ‘oppressions’ and life experiences. In this they are anonymously ‘exposed’ to individuals their own age and this is where the monologue exchange occurs. The second is for the young people to be ‘exposed’ to adults they more likely trust, which is often the youth workers, to develop interpersonal and intergenerational relationships between the teenagers and their youth workers, through sharing their teenage experiences by using the verbatim theatre process. And the third, which, as explained, depends on the youth workers as ‘mediators’ to develop a local performance using the content collected from the young people, to devise a piece presenting these monologues performed by local people. This communal performance has potential for creating a new dynamic among local people and the young people’s inclusion. As Edward Bond suggested, “theatre is the place where reality is made real” (cited by Nicholson, H. 2009). In this sense the performance of the monologues can create a reality on stage in addition to the reality of the actual content of the monologues and to devise a “collage that enable multiple points of view, represented through multiple voices… offered up for “social deliberation” in an “alternative public sphere”, thereby creating “a theatre of public dialogue”” (Westlake; Heddon; 76 Oz, 2004). Thus, giving the audience the chance “to shift their discursive conceptions from the single protagonist to the greater community” (Claycomb, 2003 cited by Westlake; Heddon; Oz, 2004). In this Chapter I have discussed the research process that lead to the attempt of developing the Young Voices method. The stages of the method have been divided and explained in detail, also referring to the exercises practiced in each stage that can be found in Annex C F. I have also explained why the method is addressed to youth workers, and the importance of the youth worker as intercessor in the method. Furthermore, the performance lecture was described, of which evidence can be found in Annex F and the findings of event will be discussed in the following, Chapter Four. 77 Chapter Four Conclusions and Findings 4.1 Evaluation The problems associated with young people that were examined in Chapter One, do not give adolescence the adequate space to voice their ‘oppressions’, concerns and views. During the collaboration of Young Voices, with the teenagers from Scarborough, Barrowcliff, Filey and Ayton and through the discussions that followed the performance presentation sessions that were discussed in Chapter Three, it was surmised that the issue stated above is caused by the fact that young people do not receive the same amount of respect that adults do. The participating youth explored factors that possibly influence this situation, during the discussions that followed the performance presentations. These were: a) The economic independence of an individual; this idea was conjured after a reading of a young person’s monologue, where the verbatim subject stated that until he/she was employed, they were looked down at, and therefore being employed changed the verbatim subject’s status in their local society. b) As discussed in Chapter Three, parents still see their teenagers as children, and they often expect their offspring to have the same views as them. This notion was also prompted by a monologue during the performance presentations79. 79 See Annex E, Monologue 5. 78 c) Although young people have the ability to think and discuss as adults (as the discussions that took place during these sessions show), because they are often considered immature by society, through their insufficient experience and lack of responsibilities, they are not given equal respect. This was an observation made by the participants from the overall readings of the monologues. But this idea relates to a theory by Monica Barry that was quoted in the Introduction of this dissertation “those who are older and more powerful than young people have rights and responsibilities which are not only denied to young people but are also used to further marginalise them” (Barry, 2005). These may be very specific factors to the particular participants of the project, however the project explored the views of 36 teenagers in total and every monologue during the performance presentations encouraged a discussion of similar content, which related to the questions of how and why teenagers are misunderstood. Thus, by generating a method that emphasizes how forms of performance can facilitate youth inclusion, the method aims at becoming a starting point to begin to bridge the gap between teenagers and adults, by using youth workers as intercessors. It was never assumed or thought of that all teenagers have identical behaviours, but what was most inciting was as explained in Chapter Two, each group of teenagers that was collaborated with, although their communities were located very close to one another, were extremely different. For example, there were minor differences between the Filey midday and the Filey afternoon group, although, 79 there were numerous differences between the groups from different locations. Both Filey groups consisted of a majority of members with considerably low expectations and self – esteem. While this can be considered a generalisation, these ideas are evident through the examples of adolescent - focused projects given Chapter One, 1.2 that took part at Filey youth centre and the information given about the teenagers that attend this youth club by the youth worker, that is also found in this subchapter. In comparison, the Scarborough group faced more common issues to the participants from both Filey groups. This was noticeable through the content of each group’s monologues. In their interviews these groups discussed more about being bullied and how their family problems have a negative influence on them. In contrast, to the Barrowcliff group, which discussed their own individual problems and how their local communities issues impact them on a wider context. Furthermore, the Ayton group discussed more about their futures and the difficulties that a teenager deals with in society and in particular their own local community, in contrast to all the other ideas posed80. Other differences between them that reflected each group’s identity of their ‘family cultures’ and their local community’s ‘culture’ were each group’s way of collaborating. The Barrowcliff group was uncollaborative with ‘strangers’, in the sense that they would cooperate with each other but had difficulty with an ‘outsider’. This conclusion emerged from various discussions with this group were they would emphasize the value of community, and how their local community of 80 Several Monologues can be found in Annex E, though unfortunately for the verbatim subjects to remain anonymous the identity of the location of each monologue is disclosed. 80 Barrowcliff may seem ‘dangerous and deprived’ to ‘outsiders’, but to them it did not seem ‘dangerous or deprived’ at all. This group was very sceptical about speaking about their community to ‘outsiders’; they constantly maintained that their words would be manipulated. In addition, they would often state that they did not find a point in voicing their concerns because they felt neglected and marginalised. Some of these participants were not fully literate, could barely read and several of them, although minors, had their own children. The Scarborough group seemed much more appreciative of being included in a project of collaboration and happy to discuss their concerns, they would attend the Sidewalk session to avoid getting into trouble outside and for the reason that many of the participants families could not afford after school activities for them to attend. Similar, to the Scarborough group both Filey groups were very collaborative. They were accustomed to taking part in a diversity of projects but this is because of the pro-active nature of the youth centre they attended and what activities the youth workers would prepare for them. However, in contrast to the Ayton group it became apparent that they were inexperienced to activities that teenagers from more ‘urban’ locations participate in and they were also lessscholastic; I have reasons to believe that this stems from the individual’s ‘culture’ of their geographical location and the ‘insideculture’ of their family’s habits/traditions. In addition, for the fact that North Yorkshire is mostly known for its manual labour, and so many of the locals are not academically educated. The general discussions between them, as observed, did not include the concepts off ‘sexual relationships, drugs, etc. and in contrast to all the other teenage 81 groups that were collaborated with, their discussions projected an unawareness of common’ ‘teenage issues’. The Ayton group, on the other hand, were very different to any other group they were much more ‘developed’ teenagers that would discuss sexual relationships, etc.; they were much more ‘informed’ about the matter than any other group. They were very well educated, articulate and had the highest expectations from life than any other group that was collaborated with during Young Voices. During the interviews many of them discussed travelling around the world and university was a necessity, unlike many of the participants from Scarborough, Barrowcliff and Filey who rarely even discussed college. Nevertheless, my findings demonstrate that taking part in this project has empowered them to seek their highest potentials as individuals and has challenge their own perceptions, as they have challenged mine. The performance lecture was a great tool to introduce, engage and involve the youth workers with the Young Voices method. Various exercises during the performance lecture prompted discussions amongst the youth workers; these needed a ‘jumpstart’ at first, although once a youth worker would give their opinion, others would then follow, and at times, due to the vast amount of opinions in the performance studio, these discussions would transform into argumentative debates that were difficult and awkward to end, which is one of the reasons that the performance lecture went overtime. However, this meant that the content presented had an effect on the youth workers, which was the performance lecture’s main aim, for the 82 youth workers to see the importance of using the method and finding it interesting enough to use it in the near future. Planning the performance lecture I had left several blank points, as to where there would be room for discussion, but of course these could not be rehearsed as avoiding imposed assumptions upon the targeted audience was preferred. The very first discussion would have been where factual information was given about the problems associated with the perceived image of young people. Because it was the first time I was going to give a performance lecture to a ‘professional’ audience, I was rather overwhelmed and as a result skipped the first discussion, which of course I realised and was un-happy about, because I did want to hear their views on the matter. Maybe if that had taken part the following discussions and participations might not have needed a ‘kick-start’, or as in ‘Boalian’ terms a Joker figure in order to tease more out of the discussions. However, as Young Voices is an applied theatre project as a whole and has adopted Augusto Boal’s ethos of work, a ‘Joker’ figure is a necessity at all phases of the project, including the performance lecture. There were 3 participative points that provoked a dense discussion81 during this event: • The Blank Character (TBC) and Forum Theatre (FT) transcript. The youth workers were asked to read out loud the transcript that was projected. They were reluctant at first, as with any participative exercise, but with some encouragement two female youth workers 81 See Annex F, for excerpts of these debates. 83 volunteered to read the character parts, and because no one else seemed interested I read the scene’s background information. After this reading, instead of being told what occurred in that very session with the teenage participants, the youth workers were asked to give their solutions, without enacting them. However, the youth workers were hesitant about giving their opinions; taking on the role of the Joker I encouraged quite a debate amongst them82. The youth workers suggested many solutions, one of these proposed that the teenage character seeking for support was very similar to the one that ‘broke the cycle of oppression’ in the workshop with the teenage participants. After the discussion the youth workers were then informed about the similarities in solutions within both age groups and the importance of the combination of these exercises was emphasised. • The exercise83 of the reading of the monologues. This is another point in the performance lecture that provoked a discussion. The youth workers were asked to open the envelopes that were placed under their seats, before the start of the performance lecture. Each youth worker had an envelope under their seat that contained a different monologue; they were instructed to read these monologues and think about the character of the verbatim subject whose story is portrayed in the monologue, and to present this with one phrase. The youth workers took their time, read their monologues and each youth worker presented this. However, the instruction of 82 See Annex F, for this discussion. 83 See Annex F, for exercise guidelines. 84 presenting the description of each monologue in one phrase was not clear or emphasized enough, and so the youth workers presented a summary of the characterisation of the verbatim subject and the story depicted in each monologue, instead. This did not affect the performance lecture or the discussion that was about to follow negatively, but rather created an in-depth image of each monologue for the audience of participating youth workers to choose from, towards the monologue they chose as a group being read to them, which was the third step of this exercise. After the audience heard the monologue they chose, they were asked of their opinions on what ‘oppressed’ the young verbatim subject whose story was heard through the specific monologue. This also encouraged a deep discussion84 that provoked a realisation to various audience members that young people are concerned about politics and do have the ability to form their own ‘mature’ opinions regarding these political situations, which is the aim of the Young Voices method, for adults to hear and accept adolescents’ concerns. • Question Time. After showing the conclusion and bibliography, I hosted a question time moment where the youth workers had the opportunity to pose enquires regarding the information that had been presented to them. This moment caused the most intense debate85 amongst the youth workers, which was rather difficult to end due to the amount of strong voices in the performance studio that wanted to be heard. This 84 See Annex F, for this discussion. 85 See Annex F, for this discussion. 85 aroused an argument amongst the youth workers about the question of young people having ‘oppressions’ vs. young people being ‘normal’, as the youth workers entitled the circumstance of having no ‘oppressions’ during this last discussion of the performance lecture. Many of the youth workers gave realistic examples from local happenings to prove their point but towards the end the debate got out of line and it had to be stopped, not only because it had now gone out of context but because the performance lecture went much longer overtime than it should. During the performance lecture the final stage of the attempt to develop a method was presented as an additional step that also included a verbatim process, which the youth workers could take up towards the last aim of the method of beginning to bridge the gap between young people and the adults that surround them (i.e. their guardian, teachers, parents, etc.). What was suggested was for them to follow the same process, The Initial and Intermediary Stages, as was completed with the participating young people, but instead with adults from their local communities: The Barrowcliff adults, the Ayton adults, the Scarborough adults and the Filey adults, so the adults that surround these young people. Upon creation of the adult’s monologues, an exchange would occur between young and old participants’ monologues as well as the young people’s, as happened during the Intermediary stage of Young Voices. After this, a verbatim performance/installation would be staged where the surrounding adults would read the young people’s monologues and the young 86 people would read the adult’s monologues to an audience of local people from ages 13 an upwards. At the end of the performance lecture the youth workers were given feedback sheets86 that contained questions regarding their role in the performance lecture and if they found the information given useful and why, but also if they thought any detail or stage of the method presented needed changing or reviewing. The feedback that I received was very useful in gaining an insight in how youth professionals perceived the method that I had attempted to develop. Most of the responses were positive in the context of finding the method useful, wanting to utilise it, finding the performance lecture thought provoking and the participatory techniques interesting and enjoyable. The negative ones were also useful towards being informed of what can be advanced, developed and progressed. There were not many negative comments; they mostly focused on my presentation skills and also one of them mentioned “you shouldn’t have used the slideshow, you’re much more powerful without it, you didn’t need it” (Young Voices Performance Lecture, 2011). All responses were appreciated and they will be certainly taken into account if it is decided that such a performance lecture takes place again. From the debates of this performance lecture I discovered that the perceived image of young people, even if it is a negative or positive one, also ‘holds control’ over the youth workers that attended this event as well as many other adults from the general public as 86 Some of these can be found in Annex F. 87 discussed in Chapter One. The audience of the performance lecture consisted of 12 people, 3 of whom were the internal examiner and my supervisors, 7 youth workers (4 from Sidewalk and 3 from 4 Youth), the reverend of the Scarborough Christian Centre and an elderly citizen from Scarborough, both of whom attended a talk that I had given for Sidewalk previously and wanted to hear more about the method. The youth workers that attended this event were from ‘opposite teams’, which work with different ethics but with similar aims, youth inclusion. Through the arguments I also found that these ‘opposing’ teams of youth workers, which have two different views of approaching youth inclusion, do not have specific methods for doing so. It was realised that the method that was presented could be an element that structures the approaches of these two ‘opposing’ teams, towards youth inclusion through three stages and aims: 1. Increasing and facilitating communication between various isolated groups of adolescents through applied theatre practice. 2. Facilitating communication between adolescents and youth workers through applied theatre and verbatim. 3. Attempts to begin bridging the gap between young people and the adults around them through verbatim theatre. Through the debates it was clear that up to now these youth workers did not have a straightforward method to follow and deal with the issues associate with youth inclusion. Thus, the method that has been attempted to be developed could possibly provide them with the necessary methodological structure to approach youth inclusion. The study as a developed method has potential to influence 88 ‘transformation’ within the ‘norms’ of these communities, most importantly to challenge the issues related to youth inclusion and to give young people the chance to be included by voicing their views. 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(Director) 1978, Grease [DVD], Paramount Pictures. Kumble, R. (Director) 1999, Cruel Intentions [DVD], Paramount Pictures. Marques, P. (producers), 1995-, [TV Series], Hollyoaks, Channel Four. Morelos, R. (1994), Como Querem Beber Aqua – Augusto Boal And The Theatre Of The Oppressed In Rio De Janeiro, [DVD], Contemporary Arts Media. Nye, C. (2004), The More We Are Together, [DVD], Create. Nye, C. (2005), Barrowcliff Stories, [DVD], Create. Scwahn, M. (director), 2003-, [TV Series], One Tree Hill, WB. Scwhatz, J. (director), 2003-07, O.C. [TV Series], Fox. Scwhatz, J. (Director), 2007-, Gossip Girl, CW. Sony Entertainment, 1998-03, [TV Series], Dawsons Creek, WB. Star, D. (Director), 1990-2000, Beverly Hills 90210, [TV Series], Robinson, P. & Spelling, A. (producers). Thomas, R. (Director), 2008-, 90210, [TV Series], CBS Productions. Waters, M. (Director), Mean Girls, 2004 [DVD], Paramount Pictures. Youtube, 49 Up: The Story Of John, [Online], [Homepage of Youtube], Available: January]. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJj-fc6h0fo, [2011, Annex A Psychological Study A new psychological study conducted by Silvia Knobloch – Westerwick of the Ohio State University and Matthias Hastall of the Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen in Germany, suggest that adults and elders prefer to read negative news, rather than positive news, about young people. The study was intended to explore social identity construction theories, and the author supposed it demonstrated that society uses media to "enhance our social identities" (Fogg, 2010). The study included 178 younger people and 98 adults. The participants were told that they were testing an online magazine that was not yet available to the general public. The experimental magazine was generated precisely for the study; it contained 10 carefully pre-tested stories. Each of these stories focused on one individual, but two different versions existed: a positive and a negative (each participant could access only one of the two versions). The participants of this experiment were also instructed they would not have time to read all the stories and that they should click on the stories that they found interesting. Each participant was given a random combination of positive and negative stories about younger and older people. The computer then surreptitiously recorded the story each participant clicked on and how long they spent reading each article. The investigation results revealed that the older participants were more likely to select negative articles 1 about younger people, but they did not show a strong preference for either positive or negative stories about people in their own age group. Though, the young participants showed low interest in articles about older individuals and regardless of whether the stories were positive or negative, they did choose to read more positive stories about their own age group than they did negative stories. After the online magazine experiment, the participants were given a short questionnaire that aimed at measuring their self-esteem. Results disclosed based on what the participants had read younger people showed no differences in self-esteem. However, the more negative stories that older people read about younger individuals, the higher the older people's levels of self-esteem inclined to be (KnoblochWesterwick; Hastall, 2010). Silvia Knobloch – Westerwick stated that "Now we know why older people liked reading about the younger people - they were looking for negative stories about them" (Medical News Today, 2010). Ally Fogg in his online article of the Guardian, Why the Young Get Bad Press (2010), argues that Silvia Knobloch – Westerwick “seems to be suggesting that in a youth-obsessed world, older people revel in a moment of smug satisfaction whenever they are reminded of the failings of youth. You might think the theory sounds speculative, and I might tend to agree, but the main finding certainly rings true” (Fogg, 2010). Fogg continues by suggesting that the older generation of society tends to mainly descend towards information that confirms their opinions, and avoiding that which will challenge their thoughts. 2 He states, “This study may be most revealing because it does not demonstrate a general schadenfreude, but a one-directional, specific effect that should give us pause to think about the media's coverage of young people” (Fogg, 2010). Subculture Analysis In Sociology and Culture Studies the New Wave Subcultural Theory has substituted the term ‘youth culture’ with the more historical and structural term ‘subculture’ (Calluori, 1985). This Subcultural Theory is found in the works of Graham Murdock, Mike Brake and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, which used to be located at the University of Birmingham. Murdock explains subculture as follows: Subcultures are the meaning systems and modes of expression developed by groups in particular parts of the social structure in the course of their collective attempts to come to terms with the contradictions with their shared social situation. More particularly, subcultures represent the accumulated meanings and means of expression through which groups in subordinate structural positions have attempted to negotiate or oppose the dominant meaning system. They therefore provide a pool of available symbolic resources which particular individuals or groups can draw on in their attempt to make sense of their own specific situation and construct a viable identity (Murdock, 1974, p.213) The subculture/clique idea is so widely spread that it permeates film topics for a wide audience such as, the film Not Another Teen Movie (2001), a ‘slap-stick’ comedy. The film ridicules the teenager’s need 3 for belonging to a group at school; the cliques that it displays are the Jocks, Punks, Skaters, Goths, Nerds and the Cheerleaders. Other films that highlight the differences between and among high school subcultures and portray specific images of how the general public often sees young people, are: Grease (1978), Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Breakfast Club (1985), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Clueless (1995), Cruel Intentions (1999), She’s All That (1999), Mean Girls (2004). Even though these terms are prevalent in the United States, as shown by the teenage film introduced above, it has been related by anecdotal evidence that such subcultures exist internationally. However, David Downes has a contradictory belief to this, he maintains that American Subcultural theory is congenital to its own culture, whereas the British theory has its own highly developed historical traditions developed from the working classes. “The British social structure is more historically conscious and most British people can tell another's class origins and length of education by accent alone” (Downes, 1966, p.58). This statement by all means maybe accurate taking into consideration the vast amount of subcultural theories that agree with it, however many subcultural theories as Downe’s derived from the post-war era 1950s-1980s. This lack of information about modern youth cultures can be related to Paul Willis’s theory, a leading British Cultural theorist, who described the age of ‘spectacular’ subcultures as deceased. This is due to there being many style and taste cultures, which offer young people 2 different means of expressing their identity. He explains that there is much diversity for any single youth subculture to dominate society (Willis, 1990). The 90’s and the subcultures of today cannot be described as the same as the 60’s or 70’s or even the 80’s. In Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain and Canada (1985), Michael Brake introduces the variety of subcultures that were previously dominant in the UK, the Teddy boys, the Mods, the Rockers, the Skinheads and the Punks. The Teddy Boys, a post-war subculture in the 1950’s, they were considered as the first rebellious ‘folk Devils’. They mainly originated from uneducated backgrounds and where incapable of gaining entry into the ‘white-collar’ work or apprenticeships into skilled trades. They wore the Edwardian suiting of the upper classes combined with a Mississippi gambler image; drape jackets, velvet collars, pipe trousers, crepe-soled shoes and bootlace ties. In addition they resembled the looks of their cult heroes who were Marlon Brando, James Dean and Elvis Presley, and they followed the rock ‘n’ roll music scene (Brake, 1985). In the 1960’s as the Teds had gone the Mods developed in East London. They were originally ‘baptized’ as Modernists, which according to Nuttall meant “effeminate, snobbish, emulating the middle classes and competitive” (Nuttall, 1969). They reflected the ‘lower white-collar’ socially mobile groups. They Listened to Ska, West Indian Popular Music, The Who and Rod Stewart. They wore neat suits, narrow trousers and accompanied by 3 short hair with extremely elegant girls (Brake, 1985). The Rockers were The Mods cultural enemies; they too had developed in the 60’s. Nuttell describes the Rockers as “impolite, hopelessly naïve, and scruffy” (Nuttall, 1969). They wore black leather jackets, studs, boots and jeans. They were anti-domesticated and anti-authoritative, low paid and unskilled manual workers (Brake, 1985). The skinheads became highly visible by the end of the 1960’s. “They became a metaphor for racism admittedly…Puritans in boots they opposed hippie liberalism, subjectivity and disdain for work attempting to magically recover the traditional working class community” (Brake, 1985, p.76). They adopted conservative principles in defence of their local territory, which led to violent attacks on hippies, homosexuals and other minorities. Their aggressive rivalries appointed them as targets and neo-Nazi recruitment by the National front and the British movement (Brake, 1985). Glam rock was described by Brake as Hippy sartorial elegance and skinhead hardness combined. The musical tendencies where Lou Reed, David Bowie and Gary Glitter, who appealed to the younger, age groups. They were reminiscent of the Mods in makeup, high heels and extravagant clothes, “their image was composed of a Collage of Berlin in the 30’s and New York gay” (Brake, 1985, p.76). In 1976 the Punks were developed after rather ineffective publicity by the musical trade papers some months before. “Punk celebrated chaos linked to the surreal and to situationism making public the preserve elements of sexuality such as bondage fetishism” (Brake, 1985, p.77). Their appearance was composed of school uniforms, plastic garbage bags, safety pins, bondage and 4 sexual fetishism. Their hair was shaved close to the head, then later spiked and then formed in a Mohican. “In the early days of punk integrity to the movement was measured by an ability to create one's own costume and therefore persona”, this signified the resistance of commercial influence (Brake, 1985, p.77). The term Emo originated in the 1980s to describe a genre of music stemming from the hardcore punk music scene in Washington D.C. The term has become broader with time, and now is loosely understood to mean ‘rock music with emotionally based lyrics or effect’. Emo is now often used to refer to a person’s fashion as well as a musical category. Tight jeans on males and females, characterize Emo clothing; long fringes often brushed to one side of their face, dyed black, straightened hair. Chavs refers to a subculture, which originated from the working class culture of Britain. The fashion derived from American hip hop (African American) and Guido (ItalianAmerican) fashion stereotypes such as gold jewellery and designer clothing combined with elements of working class British street fashion. The defining features of the Chavs clothing is the Burberry pattern, baseball cap and from a variety of other casual and sportswear brands. Tracksuits, hoodies and baseball caps are particularly associated with this stereotype (Nayak, 2003). The Goth subculture began in the UK during the 1980’s in the gothic rock scene, a post-punk genre. Gothic music encompasses a number of different styles. Common to all is a tendency towards a lugubrious, mystical sound and outlook. Styles of dress within the subculture 5 range from death rock, punk, medieval era and some Victorian style clothing or a combination of the above, most often with black attire, make up including black eyeliner and black fingernails (Owens, 2011). These subcultural categories have American origins, although they are prevalent in many schools in Britain due to the media’s influence on teenagers, as discussed above. Though this depends on the location of the school, for example if it situated in London or in Scarborough, their maybe distinctive differences in the representation of Subcultures. Some of the young people that attend Barrowcliff Youth Centre revealed that the subcultures that are predominant in their schools are Chavs, Emos and Plastics. The third was explained to me as a combination of Cheerleaders and the glamorous wealthy girls, mostly found in American High School films. Although, Downes is accurate when describing American Subculture Theory as inappropriate to Britain, because it is apparent from the historical brief given above on British Subcultures that a Subcultural theory in general mirrors the historical traditions of each culture. However, in the 21st century the rate at which cultural objects and ideas are transmitted in large parts of the world is an important factor in identifying the number of youth subculture groups. In a digital revolution, where societies are linked through communication technology, they experience simultaneous pressures to unity and fragmentation (Owens, 2011). In Britain within the present day there does not seem to be one dominant youth subculture there is a range of subcultures that include Emos, Chavs and Goths. There are two 6 contradictory theories on the subculture thought, Stuart Halls and Tony Jefferson’s (1993) Marxist theory, which describes youth subcultures as symbolic or ritualistic attempts to resist the power of the bourgeoisie by consciously adopting behaviour that appears threatening to society. Which defines youth as people who are marginalized or deprived and make their sense of loss known as they resist the dominant culture. And Stanley Cohen’s (1980) Interactionist theory, that youth subcultures are not coherent social groupings that arise spontaneously as a reaction to social forces, but that the mass media imposes an ideological framework for young people to identify with. Nonetheless, subcultures do not help resolve the issue of youth exclusion in society, but often make it worse by proving the negative view of youth accurate from subculture and gang conflicts. 7 S 9th 2n 26t 19t 10t File 13t 6th 30t 16t Sc 3rd 31 27t 24t 20t 17t Bar 23r 15t 8th 1st 25t 18t S0 Ayt Annex B = Ma y arb stM ro d Jun h 6 5 4 3 22 11 on Ses rch Fe oro e1 ay wcl Jun e Ma sio rch b ug 1 iff e 11 y n 20 h 11 Table *A 11 AP Ver For P= an HA Ver For APInf bat um Bla AP Ae d LF AP bat um Bla get or im Th nk an sth tal TE an im Th nk tin ma pro eat Ch d eti kin RM d pro eat ch g l ces re ara tal c g tal ces re ara to per s cte kinProAb kin s cte kn for Int r g ces out g Int r ow ma erv Ab s the Ab erv eac nc iew out Pro out iew h es the File jec the s oth mo Pro y t. Pro er.1 nol jec = jec An og t. mi t. d ue dd tal rea ay kin din gro g gs up the pro jec File t. 2 y = aft ern oo n gro up II - Timetable of the entire series of workshops 1 31 24 Fil 21 17 14 10 7t S1 S0 Ba ey st th h 1 0 9 8 7 rro Ma 1 Jun clif rch e f 11 Pe Re Inf Ve rfo he or rb rm ars ma ati an als l m ce for pe pr at ve rfo oc Sc rb rm es ar ati an s bo m ceInt ro pr mo er ug om nol vie h en og ws Ca ad ue m e re pu pe adi s rfo ng rm s an ce at Un i. 3 Annex C Description of exercises used during the workshop process a. Colombian Hypnosis In this exercise the participants get into pairs, one of the participant in the pair is the hypnotiser/leader and the other the hypnotised. The hypnotiser holds his/her hand palm forward with fingers upright between 20 and 40 centimetres from the hypnotised face. With his/her hand the hypnotiser makes a series of movements and the hypnotised partner must control his/her body to maintain the same distance between the hand and face, so that the hand an face remain in a parallel position as began with. The hand must never move too quickly for this will be difficult to follow but the hypnotiser can guide the hypnotised partner into many positions these can be as ridiculous and uncomfortable. Boal states that by doing this the hypnotised “will use certain ‘forgotten muscles in his body, which will be slowly activated” (Boal, 1992, p.51). After a few minutes of pure concentration the Joker/ facilitator/ difficultator instructs the pair to exchange their roles, so they hypnotised becomes the hypnotiser and so on. After that, both of the participants can extend a hypnotic hand so they both are “leaders and followers, hypnotisers and hypnotised” (Boal, 1992, p.51). b. The Machine of Rhythms 1 In this game the participants in a team effort produce a machine, they are given a theme to work with such as Scarborough that was the case with the Sidewalk Monday group workshops. Although as Boal maintains, “this is a rhythm exercise, not an image one” and therefore the participants must reveal the inner rhythms instead of the cliché behaviours that a found, for example, in Scarborough (Boal, 1992, p.94). Boal gives an example that if the theme is Mexico City then the rhythm should not be sombrero-clad man but the rhythm of social ritual. A circle is devised by the participants and a participant goes in the middle of the circle and imagines that he/she is a moving part in a complex machine, though this the person begins achieving a mechanical rhythmic movement with their body while vocalising a sound to go with it. Another participant joins the participant in the middle of the circle and adds their movement and sound. Eventually all the participants join the machine, which is synchronised. The Joker/ Facilitator/ difficultator then asks the very first person that started the machine to accelerate the rhythm, all the participants have to follow this instruction seeing that the machine is one entity. When the rhythm is accelerated and it sound like the machine is near to explosion, the Joker asks the first person to slow down, till the whole group slows down together. This is a group exercise and the participants have to concentrate on what they hear and what is being instructed, they also have to be aware of their surrounding (Boal, 1992). c. The Peruvian Ball Game 2 This game is also in the same category as the last one described. It involves exchanges of mimed balls. Each participant images that they have any time of playing ball in their possession. The participants a given a few minutes to establish the nature of their playing ball (what it feels like, what kind of ball is it, how is it played with, etc.) and decide on a repetitive rhythmic action and sound that they will practice during this exercise. When they have decided on what they are doing the Joker instructs the participants to walk around the space holding their imaginary ball. After a few minutes the Joker says ‘Find a partner’. When the participant’s are paired up, they must continue playing with their ball using their repetitive rhythmic action and sound but simultaneously should each observe their partners every movement. After a moment of this the Joker says ‘1-2-3 exchange balls’ in which each person must take over their partners ball along with its rhythmic action and sound, leave their partner and continue moving around the space, as they did before. This process happens about four times, after the fourth sequence the Joker instructs the participants ‘get your original ball back’. From that moment on each participant must find the ball they started with while continuing to play with the ball they had last. Once they located their original ball and they tell the person who is possession of it “that’s my ball-out you go” That person then goes and stands on the side, he/she too continues to search for his ball from the side-lines and if he/she locates it that person will be addressed to in the same manner. At the end of the game each participant who’s ball has not been located, 2 with the help of the rest of the group will attempt to piece together the paths of who he/she swapped with (Boal, 1992). d. The Imaginary Journey In pairs, the blind partner must be guided around the space with a series of imaginary or real obstacles decided on and explained by the participant, who is the guide. In this exercise, the participants must be mute since speaking can distract attention from using all other senses and all information must be given by physical contact. After a few minutes, the exercise ends and the blind participant must give his/her guide a description of all the information she/he was able to gather by using the senses she/he had access to (Boal, 1992). e. The Plain Mirror & Subject of Swapping Roles In The Plain Mirror the participants form two lines that are parallel to each other, the participants in Line A are the ‘subjects’ and those in Line B are the ‘images’. Each ‘subject’ must complete a series of movements and expressions by which the ‘image’ in Line B must copy. The exercises objective is to produce a synchronisation of movements between the ‘subjects’ and their ‘images’. The extent of the movements accuracy should be such, in which an outside observer is not able to distinguish who the ‘subject’ and the ‘image’ are, i.e who is leading and who is following. The exercise Subject of Swapping Roles was added as the following step of this exercise during the AP of Young Voices project. After a few minutes of Line B copying Line A’s movement the Joker instructs the participants to 3 swap their roles, the ‘subjects’ become the ‘images’ and vice versa. The movement that occurred before the changeover should continue happening during the changeover, so again an outside observe cannot establish the change of roles (Boal, 1992). f. Remembering an Actual Oppression In this exercise the participants are in pairs, a protagonist and a copilot form each pair. The protagonist recalls a memory of oppression and narrated this story to the co-pilot. During the narration of the story the co-pilot constantly suggest possible actions that might eventually lead to the breaking of the oppression. This depends on the protagonist him/herself to break the oppression even if this participant is following the co-pilot’s every suggestion (Boal, 1992). e. The Black Character (TBC) In Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors (1992) the TBC exercise is played like this: The participant imagines a real person who is well known to the individual and is an oppressor. The exercise consists of a pair of participants, where one is the protagonist and the other the blank character. The game begins when the joker says: “Only the eyes”, from this point the protagonist starts impersonating the oppressor while expressing the oppressor’s thoughts and emotions, the participant has no idea of what the protagonist has in mind. Then the Joker says “the eyes and the whole face”, this statement allows the protagonist to impersonate the oppressor using all facial expressions. After that, “the eyes, face and arms” followed by “the 2 whole body on the spot” and “the whole body anywhere in the space”, which permits the protagonist to move around the space. Next “the voice, but no words” and finally “dialogue”, were both oppressor/protagonist and blank character/participant begin speaking and expressing their thoughts using all the languages they have access to. Through the stages explained the blank characters perceive who the protagonist/oppressor is and the relationship between them. In conclusion, the blank character speaks first, this participant describes what he/she got from the oppressor and from what point (Boal, 1992). In Young Voices TBC is practised before the Forum Theatre (FT) workshop, because it is used as a preparatory exercise for FT, so the themes of the scenes of oppression for FT derive from The Blank Character exercise, it is played differently from Boal’s version. In Young Voices, elements of the Backstory game together with aspects from TBC are merged to help the participating young people form ideas for their FT pieces. This occurred during a previous applied theatre project in London87, where I facilitated various workshops. In one of the workshops when proposing this exercise a young person with autism suggested that each person should develop two characters: the first should be an imaginary person but at the same time very realistic; a person that could attend the same school or even be in the same clique as them, and the second character should be a real person, an oppressor as suggested in Boal’s version of TBC. 87 A Lecture’s project situated in the East end of London that occurred during my second year of BA (Hons) degree in Drama at Queen Mary’s University of London in 2008. 2 This reminded me of the well-known exercise Backstory, which is a character creation exercise. When developing these two characters each participant gives their characters life by providing them with a background story and finally the relationship between the participant’s first blank character and the oppressor character. This procedure was added to Young Voices; at the end of this exercise each participant shares their characters that they have created with the rest of the group. The group is then divided into sub-groups, and in their sub-groups they decide on a concept/ issue for an FT piece, which they then present to the other groups, the ‘spectactors’. 3 Annex D Blank Character and Forum Theatre (FT) Transcripts a. Filey Group One (Midday Sessions) Nick, a 15-year-old boy that attended St Augustine’s Roman Catholic secondary school in Scarborough but lived in Filey with his parents and seven siblings. Nick enjoyed food tech, and hoped to become a celebrity chef in his future like his idols Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay. His weekends were spent helping out in the kitchen of the Spa’s restaurant in Scarborough while earning a bit of pocket money or cooking for his friends and family. He kept this a secret from his father because he did not approve; his father was his main oppressor. The FT scene was played like this: (It’s a Saturday afternoon and Nick is on his way home from work, when he gets home, his father has found out about his job) Nick: “Mum, what do you want for tea?” Dad: “Nick come in here, NOW!” Nick: “What is it dad? Is something wrong?” Dad: “I come home early and instead of finding my on the table and my sons ready to eat tea, I find my wife drinking coffee with the neighbours and lying to me about where you were… so where the hell where you, I hope you weren’t cooking again. I warned you if you do that job again or even think about it, you’re not my son. You see that’s a woman’s job, the kitchen is a woman’s space” Nick: “I haven’t stopped working there, I want to be a chef and I will” Dad: “Get out of my house then I’m not having a fag for a son” (Nick leaves) 1 A discussion was then formed were the participants located the oppression, the oppressed, the oppressor together with the period of tension between the characters and suggested possible solutions preventing this situation. With the instructions of the Joker/difficutator/facilitator this scene was played again till the instance of tension, the joker would stop the scene and any spectator could act out a solution. This would happen till the situation was exhausted and a realistic solution had been found were every participant agreed on. The scene finally ended with a participant coming on stage playing the son’s role: Nick: “Dad I know you’re upset, you have every right to be, we lied to you. I know you don’t approve and that’s why we we’re scared to tell you, but you’re my father and it was disrespectful to keep the truth from you and also convince mum to do this as well” (Dad in calmer mood takes a seat) “So I apologise… But this is what I like doing it doesn’t mean I’m gay; I like cooking and even my school teachers say that I have some kind of future ahead of me and just because you don’t approve does not mean that I will stop liking it! I know that because you have a different belief it will take time to accept this, but if you taste my cooking you will think differently… but if you want me to leave because I will not stop then I will.” The father hugged his son and said, “I’m very proud of you”. The participants tried this scene out many times with five very different possible solutions. We decided to call this the diplomatic approach, because the son in this scene acted as a diplomat, a person who was a perfect negotiator telling and explaining the situation from both 2 sides and eventually proving his point. The participants thought that if Nick talked to his dad in a ‘man to man’ manner, dependent on what and how Nick said, the problem could be solved. b. Sidewalk group Mary is a 14-year-old girl that attends Graham secondary School in Scarborough. She has severe anger problems, which get her into trouble when she goes to school. But she often does not attend school to take care of her mother who is an alcoholic. The fact that she doesn’t go to school also gets her into trouble, because in order to protect her family situation she does not inform the school of the truthful situation and she would rather get blamed for it, instead of the school blaming her mother and having to inform the child services about it. Her oppressor is her mother. The FT scene was played like this: (Mary hasn’t gone to school for a few days because her mother has been threatening to kill herself and she is afraid to leave her alone. It’s Friday night and her mother in a sober state is getting ready to go out) Mary: “Where do you think you are going?” Mum: “Erm Excuse me, who do you think you’re talking to? Anyway I’m going out if it’s any of your business.” 3 Mary: “Well it is if I’m having to take care of you in the morning after you get totally smashed out every night…look please don’t go out we can stay in and watch a movie at home come on its going to be fun.” Mum: “You’re not telling me what to do, leave me alone.” Mary: “Fine I’m going to go out then too but this time I’m not coming back.” One of the female participants actually revealed to me, after this session, that she had un-intentionally created a character with similar problems to her own and that by exploring a variety of resolutions to the problem posed in the scene she could adapt them to her situation. In the process of re-creating this scene a participant suggested that instead of Mary replying with attitude she should sit down and try and tell her mum everything that she is feeling. We tried this suggestion but the mother realised the pressure she had put on her daughter and resulted to alcohol again. After this, a participant said that his uncle was an alcoholic; that people that result to legal and illegal substances may listen but don’t really hear anyone around them. They become self-absorbed and inherent in their own worlds; therefore he suggested that if something striking did not happen to the mother she would not change her perspective on life or her lifestyle. The participants played the scene again they added elements to the narrative. Mary called the school and finally let them know of her mother’s situation. Then a councillor come to the house and warned the mother that if she did not find any help within four days her daughter would be taken from her, because she is risking the daughter’s safety as well as her own. The participant that 3 suggested this had a point, this action had a positive impact on Mary and her Mother. Her mother received help, stopped drinking, and Mary went to school every day and felt like a teenager d again rather than being the adult in every situation. 4 c. Barrowcliff group In the beginning the Barrocliff group was not collaborative at all. Once they heard that I was a theatre student they refused to take part in any “theatre games” as they put it. They would just sign in at the youth centre, some boys would play football and others would simply play snooker or leave. The girls would sit around and chat, walk around the playing area the youth centre or leave. It was extremely difficult to convince them in participating in such activities; I did this by presenting the ‘gamexercises’ as simple activities that will not make them “look silly”-“they are problem solving exercises”. It took us two-three sessions to create a few FT pieces, for the reason that sometimes participants would get up and leave or not even turn up, leaving myself struggling to convince people to take part in this project that would be beneficial to them. Barrowcliff is said to be one of the most deprived estates in the UK, and the people that live there a really looked down at. They wanted to make a piece about that. One of the characters that they created is based on how outsiders view teenagers from Barrowcliff: Josh a 16-year-old boy that works for a drug dealer. He has stopped school and lives with his mum. He does not have a legal or socially acceptable job; he steals money off his mum, lives off job seekers allowance and deal’s drugs. His mum is aware of the situation but she 5 feels powerless in doing anything. Josh has a ‘ghost’ oppressor who is the drug dealer. The FT scene was played like this: (Its morning and Josh is found lying outside his house by his mother. He is badly bruised all over his face and there is blood all over the floor. His mum wakes him up, cleans his face up and calls the police. The police arrive Josh is unaware of this) Policeman: “Where are you off to young man, I’m sorry but you’re not going anywhere we have much to talk about” Josh: “I’m not saying anything, I want a lawyer” Policeman: (forces him into the house) “You know we have been trying to find you for days, someone that we caught doing coke in the park said that you sold it to them, what’s your defence?” Josh: “Look man I am not opening my mouth to answer any of your questions, I want a lawyer, so go away and never come back. You coppers you think your all that right?” (Josh Laughs) Mum: “Stop being rude and answer they’re trying to help you Josh, please, I cant do this anymore, you have to sort your life out, they are going to help you sort your life out” Policeman: “If you tell us what happened to your face, who gives you drugs, we will get you sorted, we will take care of you” Josh: “Never!” Policeman: “Right then arrest him” After the initial presentation of this scene, the participants and I had a long discussion about what could happen to prevent this situation. One of them said, “you can’t, people in Barrowcliff don’t grass on each other because we are a community and we take care of each other”. As the joker I responded “but is he being taken care of by 2 being beaten up? And selling drugs, is that acceptable to you?” After an awkward minute of silence one of the girls in the group said “yes we don’t grass on each other, but if Josh does not make an example of his situation, we will continued to be seen as trouble and a deprived area that has nothing to offer”, she then turned to the rest of the group and said “is that what we want?” I took the prerogative of asking “what should Josh do then?”. After that moment many different suggestions were played but the idea that ended the ‘cycle of oppression’ was that of a sixteen-year-old participant who had just joined the group again after spending several months in prison for drug dealing. He suggested that if Josh would tell the police about who he works for, they could help him move on with his life, he could even train as a policeman. Therefore, this participant took on the role of Josh and revealed all to the police, they then put him and his mother in a safe home to protect them and arrested the drug dealer. Through this I found that the Barrowcliff participants rarely trusted anyone outside their community, throughout this exercise I constantly got the impression that they felt that I was going to manipulate their responses. After FT it became much easier to work with them seeing that they started to familiarise themselves with me and slowly I earned their trust. d. Ayton group This group was very different to all the others I had worked with. Each person’s aspirations, ambitions and self-esteem were much higher than any of the other youth groups. They seemed well educated and 3 were not vulnerable in the sense that the Barrowcliff group was, towards telling their stories and sharing their opinions. However, there was no structure in their youth club sessions either, the young people would turn up sign in and leave. They would be found in the park or around the streets. In their defence the youth workers claimed that this was because the sessions took part in the village hall and therefore the teenagers did not have a space of their own. Although, the Monday sessions of Sidewalk also take place in a space other than their own and that is enough for them. I believe that it is because the young people that attend the Monday group go there for their own reasons either to keep them occupied, to feel included or even as an alternative from being on the streets. While, the young people from Ayton have reason to attend the youth club session, the lack of ‘authority’ by the youth workers and the un-organisation of the sessions affect the behaviour of the teenagers. A character that one of the participants at the East Ayton youth club created is: Gemma a 14-year-old girl that attends Scalby Secondary School in Newby, she lives with her mum, her sister and step-dad. When she finishes school she wants to have a gap year while travelling the world and after that study journalism in London. Her oppressor was her boyfriend because he manipulated her into having sex with him. The FT scene was played like this: (Gemma meets Rob at his house while his parents are away for the weekend. Gemma told her mum that she would be staying at a friend 4 in Scarborough the whole weekend. Rob has been trying to convince Gemma into having sex with her for a week, they have been going out for a month. Although, Gemma does not feel ready to make such as commitment) Rob: “Why won’t you let me kiss you?” Gemma: “Because we have talked about this, you can kiss me but not to the point where it’s going to lead somewhere else, you know. I wish you could just stuff bugging me about it, it’s not that big of a deal anyways.” Rob: “Not big of a deal, do you want to be called a virgin at school? Everybody’s done it, even Heather Long, Come on Gem lighten up.” Gemma: “Don’t touch me like that! It’s not a joke, if you humour me again I’m leaving.” Rob: “Fine, if you’re going to be like that I’ll just have to find some other girl to do it with, you’re free to go, a man has his needs you know! This also means that you don’t love me like I do, and I don’t want to have anything to do with a girlfriend that doesn’t want me… so if we don’t do it tonight, you can leave.” (They have sex, and Gemma leaves the house depressed) Because the concept of sexual relations is generally a ‘taboo’ it was expected that there would be mixed reactions to this scene. There were some un-comfortable giggles, some were humouring the situation and others got angry. After playing it a few times with all possible solutions, one of the female participants in annoyance got up with no warning, pushed the participant that was playing the character of the girl out of the scene and said “you’re not taking this seriously, he is taking advantage of her”, she then turned to one of the boys and said “imagine if this was your sister what would you do?” he said “I would in all possibility kill him”. After a while of group discussion, she turned to the participant that played the character of 2 Rob and said “you’re not taking me seriously, I might be a little younger than you and you might have been able to take advantage of other girls my age before, but I can assure you that it’s not going to happen here” she broke up with him and left. She continued her idea by playing another scene where she arrived home and confessed every detail to her mother who then phoned Rob’s parents so this would not happen again to any other girl. At the end of the session the female participant came up to me and apologised for being rude she explained that she was in such a situation two years ago and that if she could turn time back she would have done things differently, like how she reacted in the FT piece. e. Filey afternoon group The afternoon group at Filey presented a scene of bullying. I found that most of the discussions with both groups from Filey were mostly about bullying. When I made this observation the youth workers at Filey, explained that bullying might be a general problem but because as a youth centre they have a no bullying policy, the teenagers feel safe in discussing such matters. Therefore most of the characters presented were bullying victims, this includes: Fletcher fifteen years of age he attends Filey secondary school in which he gets bullied a lot by his classmates because he is extremely dyslexic and he gets bullied by his teachers because he comes unprepared to class. His mum and his dad do not really grasp the seriousness of the situation. If the specific teacher did not bully him in 2 class in front of the other students then his peers would not pick him on and he would have the confidence to come prepared to school even though he needs more time and assistance than the other students. The FT scene was played like this: (Fletcher is in the classroom and has Religious Studies with Mr Clarke) Mr Clarke: “Who will begin can read out the passage, lets see Fletcher?” Fletcher: “yes Sir?” Mr Clarke: “Did you not hear what I said?” Fletcher: “no sir, I mean yes sir… no sir I did not” Mr Clarke: “ You are not listening or concentrating, this is not a playground it is a classroom, because you haven’t been listening you will have to read the whole chapter out loud till class is over, understood?” Fletcher: “But sir… you know I can’t” Mr Clarke: “READ IT!” (Fletcher takes a deep breath and starts reading very slowly, to the point where he stutters) Mr Clarke: “Fletcher who are you playing with, you’re not a four year old, read faster!” (Out of embarrassment Fletcher leaves the class) This FT see received many angry reactions and many similar suggestions that we implemented into the scene. The last idea that the group of teenagers agreed at was for Fletcher to leave class immediately, go to the headmaster or the school councillor and explain the situation. This suggestion was utilised, Fletcher told someone else in power about what was going on and he did not only 2 get the additional help with work that he was supposed to get but the teacher was to have training on students with learning disabilities, so he knows how to deal with a variety of students. 2 ANNEX E PERFORMANCE PRESENTATION (PP) The PP Game The participants sat in a circle on the floor and the monologues on sheets of paper where in the middle of the circle. Each participant in turn stood up, went to the middle of the circle, picked up a monologue and read it from the middle of the circle (in a respectful manner that was clear to the rest of the participants). After the reading the participant went back to the place he/she began from and the Joker asked “what did you think of that monologue?”. With this question each participant had to discuss the issue presented in the monologue (its similarities and differences to their life and situation, the problems posed if the participant agreed with them or disagreed, etc.) in no more than four phrases. This process occurred until there were no more monologues to read from; it was essential that the Joker took note of each point during the discussions such as to be able to refer to them at the end of the reading, for an extended more general discussion regarding the nature of all the monologues. MONOLOGUES Monologue 1 I have always had a problem with my weight, I hate my body and I’m full of spots, which makes it worse. Mum and dad can’t really help me, as much as I tell them that I want to lose weight they do not help 1 me, they still keep cooking really fatty foods. I went to an NHS clinic to get some nutrition help but since I’m underage I had to go with mum or dad and they didn’t want to go. So I have been trying on my own. Mum says that healthy food costs money that we don’t have, but I don’t think that’s true. At the moment I’m eating very little and I do a bit of running, things like that. I wish I could go to the gym but I’m not allowed. When I turn sixteen I’m going to get a job and sort myself out. Hopefully I will do my best. I don’t feel that mum or dad actually think of me as another person that has his or her own opinions and that wants respect. Yeah they hear me but they don’t listen, they say that it’s just a teenage phase, which really annoys me. Monologue 2 I’m 15 and I live in Scarborough with my Nan and 3 younger brothers and sisters. I hate living my nan because she scares me, she’s a scary old lady that doesn’t respect my views and what I have to say. That’s like most old people around here. I’m fed up of living here and with her. She threatens me a lot, that she will beat me up if I answer back again. But it’s not like I do, I just hate being shouted at and controlled by another person. Sure she my love us, I mean that’s why she looks after us, but I honestly do feel like I’m a waste of space, like my life’s not worth living. I’ve been asking to be put into foster care since I was really little but no one listens to me, they think its best living with Nan. What happens if she drops dead though?! We live with her because, dads in jail for murder or something like that, at least that’s 2 what I have been told, and I have never met him any way. And mum she’s an alcoholic and a smack head. Nice combination of parents isn’t it. And nan she always says that I’m turning out like both of them, that’s why I feel that I’m a waste of space, because my parents are! Monologue 3 I don’t really like school, it’s quite boring. It’s fun sometimes like I like food tech. I live my dad I haven’t seen my mum in 5 years. I used to see her every weekend but then she split up with her husband, my stepdad, and she came to live with us for a few months. Dad said she could stay until she got back on her feet. She said for a while and then she nicked all our money and went back to my stepdad. I miss her sometimes but I’m mostly angry with her. After I had last see her, she had another kid and I haven’t met that kid yet. My dad has been married 3 times, my mum, and another two women. I had a really bad step mum at one point she was really horrible to me, used to bully me all the time and she would get jealous if dad and I would spend time together. But she left about 5 years ago. She had an affair and they broke up, and I told my dad everything after they had broken up. I didn’t tell my dad anything till she had left because I did want to cause trouble, I’m not a person that likes confrontation I prefer keeping away. My step mum now she’s all right, she kind of knows that I smoke to put dad doesn’t. One of my friends was smoking as we were walking to school, he didn’t really offer me one I just asked for it, you know, I thought why not. Once two drunken 30 year olds 3 were bullying me and then one of them put me on the ground started punching me and kicking me in the stomach. I told my step mum we called the police and we’re still going to court for that. Monologue 4 In my afternoons I sometimes go to the gym, out with friends and stuff. There isn’t really anything to do around here, sometimes we go camping with the boys and get a bit drunk and jump in the river. My brother and sister and me all live with mum. They were together for 12 years and recently decided that they wanted to split, I’m fine with that, we are not the first family or the last, at least I get to see both parents equally, that is all I need. My relationships with them aren’t really good, we seem to have a different take on life, they seem to listen to you more as a child than as a person and cannot accept that someone younger than them with less life experience maybe more intelligent than them, which is quite provoking. You sought of feel manipulated in a way; I just go to my room and shut up because I really can’t be bothered to argue with my mum or dad. I’d like it to change in a way but I like my own personal space. I would like to have an adult conversation with them, but it’s quite hard to have because we end up arguing. They don’t get the economy or the politics of today, they are quite young but very old fashioned, so I feel that they don’t even try to get me. They force you to believe what they want, 4 not respecting me as a person, so I can’t talk with them because I have a different view and they don’t like that. Monologue 5 I’m 14 I just moved here, I’m originally from North Wales. Mum and me moved here because we had loads of problems with my dad and at school. And here it’s like a different country. My dad’s not a nice person he is selfish and manipulative and used to take drugs when I was a baby. About a year ago I want to live at his for two months for the summer, he wouldn’t let me call mum saying that her phone was switched off and all, and he made it seem as mum was brainwashing me into not liking him. But that’s not true because my mum brought me up and I know her, he was the one trying to brain wash me. I kept having panic attacks and all the sorts, it was horrible. I was depressed and mum was depressed. I can talk to mum about everything really. I was going out with this guy for about 3 months, the same age as me from my school. He was pushing me to have sex put I didn’t want to and so he broke up with me. I find out that he’s flirting with my friends and they come and tell me that he tried to kind of seduce them. So I confronted him and he said that if I loved him I would have sex with him either wise he would shag someone else. So out of jealousy or whatever I did it, I was so stupid to do it. And I went home depressed. I told mum and she called over his parents and told them what had happened, he was there too. I see him around but he isn’t allowed to speak to me and frankly I don’t want to either seeing that he blackmailed me into it. I understand 5 now that it is a mistake and that it is not entirely my fault but I’m still kind of angry for being that naïve. Monologue 6 My schools ok, but a lot of people get bullied, that’s if you’re not strong willed. I stood up to these people and they left me alone. People call me a chav but I don’t really care; this is how I like to dress. My brother used to dress me like a chav when I was little and this is was I’m used to, I have got back into it because these are the clothes that I feel most comfortable in. I live with my mum, my dad lives in Spain, haven’t seen my dad in five years. I do want to see him, but like the last time I was about to meet him he cancelled and then he went to live abroad, and then two weeks before my birthday he said he was going to take me to the Chelsea match, so I waited by the door for two weeks and he didn’t turn up. I heard my mum and sister talking and mum said that dad doesn’t want me to go to Spain because his wife doesn’t know about any of us. You see he left us when I was born, my twin brother died a few days after we were born and so dad left. But I found out that he has another family in Essex and the one in Spain. My brothers and sisters in Essex found out about me, found me on Facebook and contacted me because since I was six I was a barrier between my mum and sister. But now I know because my mum has nice friends around her that I should chill out and take care of myself a bit more. Adult Monologue 1 6 In my day the concept teenager didn’t even exist. Our parents were really strict, we weren’t allowed to meet boys or go on dates or anything like that. Us girls had to stay in the kitchen while the boys went out to work with their dads. I was the youngest out of 10 kids, my brothers and sisters were really proper so I came out the wild child, and I was the black sheep of the family. The 60’s as I remember them were absolutely amazing, all that good music. That’s what my childhood was about because that was the era. We weren’t allowed to listen to the rolling stones because they very improper but we could listen to the Beatles. I once went to a jimmy Hendrix concert it was amazing, I wasn’t allowed so I lied to my parents about staying over a friend’s house or something. I grew up in Barrowcliff it was much better than that it is now, but the east of Barrowcliff was still quite deprived. There was still not much to do back then for teenagers, but we were not really allowed to do anything. I didn’t have a much a relationship with my parents, because of how it was back then you were either a child or an adult nothing in between, so they didn’t really respect your opinions. By 19 I was married and then I did my degree because I wasn’t allowed to study before, when I live with my parents. Adult Monologue 2 There was not much to do here when I was young, so it was probably the same as it is now days, we played a lot of football, drank alcohol and smoked. As a boy I was allowed out much more than the girls, like my sisters weren’t allowed to go out unless I was with them and I 7 was younger than them. So I remember they would lie that they would take me out for a walk or to play and they would meet up with their friends or other boys. We didn’t have many drugs around, only a bit of weed but that was mostly around teenagers that were 19. I got bullied at school a lot, because we were poor, my dad was a fisherman and when there was much work we barely had money to eat. So I didn’t have the latest shoes in fashion or the popular games. I always had some kind of hole in my shoes, I remember when Christmas came up I got a new pair of shoes. I went to school after the break and the other students would ask me what I got, I told them and they forced me to take my shoes off. They then destroyed them and through them in the bin. So when they left I took them out of the bin and wore them. I went home with a destroyed brand new pair of shoes that my parents could barely afford and of course I got blamed for it. Adult Monologue 3 I grew up in North Yorkshire; we used to move around a lot. Moving schools moving homes affected me badly. I was a very naughty teenager, I started smoking when I was nine and was never home, I hanged out with a lot of older people so I would do what they were doing, which was more appropriate for their age. My parents couldn’t care less, they were never home always out at work or out in general. I would eat beans on toast everyday for lunch and tea, that’s until I learnt how to cook. My parents divorced when I was 12 I lived with mum, unfortunately if she could she would sell me to go out. We 8 never had money, she would go out with wealthier men so support us. Or she would sell furniture in the house and spend the money on herself. One day I came home and she had sold my bed so I had to go live with my dad. I was closer to dad than her she was always patronizing, I felt that I could talk to dad about anything and he respected my views. By the age of 17 I was married with a child so I didn’t really have childhood. 9 Annex F Performance Lecture Video of performance lecture can be found on the DVD attached. • • • • Material used in the performance lecture: Information Packs Feedback sheets (Scanned copies of feedback sheets provided). Transcripts used (See Annex D for TBC and FT transcript, Sidewalk transcript). • PowerPoint Presentation Slides (On CD-ROM attached). Name Game played in the performance lecture ‘Where does your partners name come from?’ The participants paired up and they were given a few minutes to find out where their partners name derived from. These stories could have been true but could also have been ‘fictional’ for the purpose of the game. Once the participants were ready, each partner in the pairs presented the story behind the partner’s name. 1 Scanned Copies of feedback sheets 2 3 4 5 TBC and FT Debate Myself: “So what would you have done?” Audience Member 1: “If it was Mary she’s probably had a ‘go-out’ session but then she’s probably gone back home because otherwise she would not be worried about her mum and she wouldn’t stay out all night”. Myself: “Maybe so, but what if she didn’t go back home, because she was fed up…what could we suggest as to a realistic solution?” Audience Member 2: “Mary needs to find some support from somewhere, to enable her to go out and live her life”. Myself: “Great but what kind of support?” Audience Member 2: “She could go to teachers, youth workers, just to tell what the problem is”. Myself: “And then what?” Audience Member 2: “And then they will suggest, support contacts, so she can get support from somewhere, but more importantly for her mum to get help with her issues”. Myself: “O.K. does everyone agree with that…is there anything else that anyone would like to say?” Audience Member 3: “But that does not attack the immediate problem, the immediate problem is that Mary’s about to leave and not come back. I mean what you suggested is great, if you had lots of time to solve it but this is something tough to solve. So should Mary just say, “I’m going to come out with you, we’re going to the pictures”. Audience Member 4: “I was just going to say that, rather than going their separate ways they should go somewhere together”. Audience Member 5: “Though, that’s almost condoning what she’s doing!” Audience Member 2: “I think Mary is just threatening, I don’t think she would actually stay out, I just think she is angry and is saying this because she is at a desperation point”. Audience Member 6: “Maybe she should go to the Sidewalk leaders and with other youth workers they could actually work through her issues and help support her in whatever she is doing, so she feels on 7 top most of the time rather than feeling oppressed” (Young Voice Performance Lecture, 2011). The reading of the monologues exercise The audience members picked up their envelopes that each contained a different monologue and quietly read them to themselves. As they read them they were asked to think of what kind of person the verbatim subject is. Once they read the monologues each audience member had to present their own description to the rest of the audience members by only using one phrase. When this was over, the audience were asked from the descriptions heard, which monologue they would have liked to hear. When the audience decided, the member who held the monologue that was chosen to be read was asked to read it out loud for everyone to hear. After this, the audience were asked to describe the ‘oppressions’ reflected in the monologue. Discussion Myself: “What are the issues reflected in that monologue, what is the young person trying to say, what is their oppression, could I hear some views?” Audience Member 4: “That the people that represent the country and represent his age group at all”. Myself: “What is his oppression though, what is oppressing him, what is putting him down?” Audience Member 7: “He doesn’t have a voice, doesn’t feel that he is being listened to”. Myself: “Some more views… does everyone agree with X?” Audience Member 1: “Yes”. 2 Audience member 2: “Yes, I mean he is angry and he has got a right to be angry. He doesn’t understand why adults are basically having a different rule, a way of thinking”. Audience Member 8: “I think he had great potential for a trade union leader! What he is talking about here is the different classes in society and the power money actually has, and if you don’t have that then you are down in the bottom of society, so there is a real insight here, how old is this chap?” Audience Member 6: “It doesn’t say!” Myself: “15… that person was 15 years old”. Audience member 8: “15? Very few 15 year olds would have that conception”. Myself: “That maybe, but no offense, in that specific youth club most of the young people thought like that”. Audience Member 5: “He’s also talking about the social isolation of youth, youth culture”. Question Time debate Myself: “First question please…is there anything that you would like to ask about the method?” Audience Member 9: “Did you speak to any young people within this course that did not feel that they had any oppressions, they were just ‘normal’ young people, with ‘normal lives with no baggage, that just didn’t feel they were oppressed in any way?” Myself: “I met young people like that, but those young people were in that kind of group that, and I don’t like to give labels but they were in the sense that they just felt that they didn’t want to say anything, they were the kind of people that didn’t find it necessary to speak about their concerns but instead keep them to themselves. So In that sense those are the kind of people I came across, but after the Aesthetic Process, they did feel comfortable with talking about their own issues”. Audience Member 9: “Sometimes when we work with young people we talk about all these ‘oppressions’ and it is true but there are some young people that are just ‘normal’ young people living normal lives, they are fine and just get on with it, and that’s fine and that’s real for them”. Audience member 2: “That could just be though that they have developed coping skills…and they have the support that…” 2 Audience Member 9: “It could, or it could be that there are some young people that do not have ‘oppressions’, that have ‘normal’ nice families, and live ‘normal’ nice lives”. Audience member 7: “But they are the people that have been nurtured and as X said are supported, but they can still have stress…” Audience Member 1: “All young people have some kind of stress in their lives, whether they are coming up t their studies, that’s probably their focus, I don’t think any single young person goes through life without anything…I don’t think that there is such as a ’normal’ young person”. Audience Member 9: “I disagree, there is a wide thing that what you would call normal, and I thing that we do need labels and then we have to break against those labels, I mean labels are useful, and it is valid, but what I’m saying is that there are some young people that don’t have those big issues, that don’t have big oppressions in their lives and don’t think that everyone’s oppressed and everyone has big issues…and because of our work we see the worst of this that every young person is oppressed, and every young person is drinking on a Friday night and that isn’t the actual reality of it, that is what I’m trying to say that there is a section in the middle of ‘normal’ young people”. Audience Member 8: “I want to give an illustration of what I will be getting at – My father was a diabetic and when I was a youngster I had this belief that father’s did not eat sweets, because my father did not eat sweets I believed that no father’s eat sweets and that was normal, I thought that was normal – So what I am saying is that we can have youngsters in the situation that they believe its normal because they really have not experienced anything outside that…” Audience Member 9: “So we perceive our reality as being ‘normal’, and then you get out in the real world… but what are you comparing that to?” Audience Member 6: “He has said a good context though, I think there are 7200 young people that are under 16 so it doesn’t seem to me that 7200 people present their problems all the time, to say that all young people are oppressed I would graceful take an issue of that in a pure contextual analysis”. Audience Member 5: “I would just like to argue that all young people are oppressed, in the sense that they have to pay taxes, but cannot vote till they are 18, the fact that the media uses the words Yugs, Thugs, Hodies to represent young people… just to demonstrate what I mean I was doing some work with a couple of youth councils, and there was a group of them that were upper middle-class and at first they felt that they had nothing to say, but when we dug a bit deeper there was a few that said there council uses one of these mosquito buzzer things to amplify the sound that can only be heard 3 from young people, so they can keep away from the area…and due to the perception when 2 or 3 of them were walking down the street people were petrified of them and moved out the way, or didn’t want them to sit down in areas because they were a threat to them. So I think that there are different levels of oppression and that each young person is oppressed in a different way, there are some people that protect their oppressions and that why they are such people as youth workers to voice their concerns…” 4