Theatre and the Community

Can theatre help to build active citizens and cohere in a divided community? Our experience shows that it is possible to build a somewhat fractured community through the power of the theatre arts. Our projects are always based on strong community themes drawn from the history and heritage of the neighbourhood from which the players and crew are drawn. The production might, for instance, be based on a local figure, who had made a positive contribution to the town, region, country or even the world. This type of heritage theme works particularly well as it binds the di- verse communities of a neighbourhood or town to common roots. The impulse here is to provide an active creative project on a theme that all participants can feel involved in. As an example, we have recently produced a community play for the small town of Thetford in rural Norfolk.

The town celebrated the 200th anniversary of its most famous son, Thomas Paine, the radical writer on human rights and a foun- ding father of the USA. We persuaded the town’s commemoration committee to include a specially-written play with music on the life and works of the great man. We were given the brief to create a company of actors and stage crew from a town that had little or no theatre provision. It is a town suffering from high unemploy- ment, poor prospects and a rather fragmented community of local English people and those from Poland and Portugal. We recruited performers and crew from all communities – including some recent immigrants who could not yet speak English well. The result is that barriers are broken, new friendships forged and a sense of pride in the production and the heritage theme that lies behind hit are built.

Writing a bespoke production means that one can tailor the script to the abilities of the community actors. That does not, and should not, mean any kind of ‘dumbing down’. We believe that it is very important to set high quality standards so that both the process and outcome of the production provides a series of achievable challenges and a real sense of achievement. We also use a lot of original music. Again songs can be tailored to the abilities of the team; there is always a sense of special achievement to play or sing an original song and lyrics. The same was true for a city-wide musical play 0-800 in 60 minutes. It was an out-of-school project for ten city schools in Cambridge, the theme was the 800th anniversary of the famous university. The play provided young people from a very wide and diverse range of backgrounds to engage with local history, build up a sense of ownership and pride in their famous institution and encourage some of them from disadvan- taged backgrounds to think of Cambridge University as part of their own future.

Original productions based on heritage and history, provide the ideal focus for community-wide creative projects which provide for many a first taste of the magic of musical theatre. We know many young people from disadvantaged communities who have gone on to be involved in youth theatre groups – they have got the lifelong theatre bug. Community theatre is a powerful tool in building, and sustaining, creative teams and a strong sense of unified purpose; it can also be used, as we have seen, to bolster a sense of local pride in one’s collective history and heritage.