#singbeforeyouspeakagain

There was a good turnout tonight for the second quarterly meeting of Year 2 of Neighbourhood Theatre.  The meeting began with an update of recent projects and events.  These included Sing Before You Speak Again (SBYSA), the beautiful show that was created in response to Wings (more details in the blog below).  This has since toured to some of the centres and homes where the creative team ran initial workshops and created the show’s songs and lyrics, meaning many of those who’s stories are told by the piece have been in the audiences.  

Members who were part of the SBYSA company talked about the experience of being in this show, and other members who had seen it also shared their responses.  This felt like a really nice way of honouring the company’s work, and the people who’s stories were being told in the songs; and a great way of sharing feedback about the project.  Although SBYSA is not explicitly about Stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, Aphasia or Dementia, it is clear that the show has opened the eyes of many - cast and audience members alike - to members of society who are not always given a voice, and created more awareness of the people who live with these conditions.  

NhT member, Jennifer, who performed in SBYSA, talked about how, when she was performing, she was thinking about someone she knows who has suffered a stroke, and how she “was trying to give a voice to this particular person” through her performance.  It is striking to think of the varied ways in which this piece has reverberated through people’s lives.

Imogen then talked about Suppliant Women, a recent production in the Main House, for which there was a community chorus of women, drawn from Southwark and Lambeth through NhT members’ contacts.  The play itself is 2,500 years old, and tells the story of fifty women who flee their homes to escape forced marriage and seek asylum in Greece.  Two thirds of the audiences who saw this show had never been to the theatre before, and 80% had not been to the Young Vic before.

It is clear from the subject-matter of Supplicant Women that it tackles issues which connect with marginalised peoples but, like SBYSA, it has created far-reaching - and perhaps less predicted - reverberations.  NhT member, Ben, talked about the importance to her of being a black woman in the cast, and “being the change that I want to be in theatre”.  She spoke of how she felt as a young person going to the theatre and wanting to see “kids that look like me and sound like me”, and how it “is nice to look and see yourself reflected back at you”.  This last sentence sums up the particular importance of the Young Vic’s integration of community work with their programming.

Lily then talked about the two-week How to Win Against History workshop currently happening (see below for more information), and Imogen talked about new show The Jungle, opening tonight.  The Jungle is a new play from Good Chance Theatre, about the Jungle encampment in Calais.  NhT members had been invited to a dress rehearsal of the show earlier today and one member talked of how “she didn’t know [before seeing the show] what it was like in the Jungle” -  a simple but clear statement of, again, increased awareness of another part of our society that does not always get a voice.

There are lots of exciting events to come for NhT members, including a Costume workshop on the 18th December, in response to members’ requests for more contact with different departments at the Young Vic, and further insight into the creative process.  

In January, new Artistic Director, Kwame Kwei-Armah, takes up his post, and will be attending the first Neighbourhood Theatre meeting of 2018, on 6th March.  Members are invited to have questions ready to put to Kwame. 

The show Brothers Size is returning to the Young Vic, and NhT members are invited to its press night on 26th January.  Alongside this production, there will be a community project run with young men in prisons rehabilitating from excessive drug use to create a new piece of writing.  The text created will then be performed by young men outside prison at risk of offending.  

It was a privilege to be a member of the audience for a performance of Sing Before You Speak Again, which I have been watching develop in rehearsals since the very end of August.  The piece is a community show, an original staged choral song cycle, inspired by the Main House show Wings, and, as director Tom Martin explains, “written after a series of workshops with stroke recovery groups, Parkinson’s community groups and dementia healthy living clubs”.  It is performed by a choir made up of non-professional singers from our local community.    

Throughout the rehearsal process there has been a clear sense of the piece’s rich composition, both lyrically and musically; as well as the skills, ambition and commitment of the choir and creative team.  The performance itself surpassed even this.  Even since the last rehearsal I attended ten days or so before the performance, the collective voice has strengthened and gained confidence, and this was further enhanced by the choir’s command of Tom’s detailed staging. In addition to the staging, the design and lighting choices meant the piece also looked particularly beautiful, and highlighted the poeticism of the lyrics.

by Wendy Fisher

What a wonderful opportunity we’ve had to be part of this fabulous production, a companion piece to Wings by Arthur Kopit staring Juliette Stevenson the story of a wing walker who has a stroke. Our composer Joseph Atkins and lyricist Deanna Rodger have taken some of the most moving stories of people who have had strokes and with our Director Tom Martin brought them to life by setting the verbatim interviews to new music. These are stories we don’t often get a chance to hear – indeed they are the hardest stories for people who have had strokes to articulate often until they are set to music. Music seems to tap into a part of the brain that sets language free, the rhythm allowing words to flow where they are normally stumbled over.

Our choir of keen and willing volunteers that have never worked together, have been meeting twice a week for the last eight weeks and have learnt nine new songs and the staging to go with them. Not many of us would call ourselves singers so walking, singing and working in different groups has often been challenging but we’ve gelled so well as a group that everyone supports each other. Several of the group have themselves had strokes which makes the whole experience even more pertinent and on many occasions moving.

Sing before you Speak Again will take us through a range of emotions with the hope that our audiences leave with a little more understanding of what having a stroke feels like and the often disorientating effects.

By Tom Martin

Sing Before You Speak Again is an original staged song cycle about brains and how they change, inspired by the Young Vic show Wings as well as conversations with people with neurological difficulties from the Young Vic’s Two Boroughs catchment. Here’s a little bit about how we’ve made it:

To find material for this show, I took lyricist Deanna Rodger and composer Joseph Atkins on story-finding expeditions to stroke recovery groups, Parkinson’s community groups and dementia healthy living clubs, all local to the Young Vic. We kept these workshops very relaxed, getting to know the participants over a game of Desert Island Discs (what one song would you want to be marooned with, and why?) before warming up our voices and getting our Brian Wilson on with a two-part arrangement of The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations. Then we had tea and biscuits, and recorded lots of conversations about music and memory.

For us, this was a chance (and a privilege) to root our work in personal testimony, and it turns out that asking people about their memories of music generates a remarkable common ground! We were amazed by the stories we were told, by the most incredible, unassuming people: a session musician who had recorded with the Rolling Stones; three women with vivid memories of growing up in Barbados; somebody whose stroke had literally saved their life.

Out of these recordings and notes, Deanna began work on a series of songs capturing some of the moments or feelings or struggles in these stories. Some of the text is verbatim, but most of it is poetic - we were keen that the lyrics not only worked on a dramatic, emotional, and personal level, but also engaged poetically with the initial thesis of the show: how brains ‘change’. The Knowledge, for example, is a song about a cab driver and their passenger, inspired by meeting a participant who used to drive a black cab - while still able to drive, his stroke had blocked his access to The Knowledge, the encyclopaedia of London routes all cabbies are required to know. The song tells the tragicomic story of a brain losing its navigational ability en route, but also explores how education and experience determine the lenses (historical, logistical, emotional) through which we view our surroundings.

In Deanna’s poetic world, memories become motors, houses become ships tossed about on a cold sea, and brains become balloons to be popped or let go. With these lyrics in place, Joe and I worked on structuring the show using the dramaturgical language of musicals. (As a director of mostly ‘straight’ theatre I was surprised at how easily terms like ‘the I Want number’ and ‘act two closer’ fitted into my vocabulary, although I still don’t know how to pronounce ‘reprise’.) Joe then returned week on week with brilliant arrangements inspired by our workshop participants’ favourite artists - The Beatles, Bob Marley, and Joni Mitchell - but levelled up with the richest and most challenging harmonies. Our choir is made up of 19 non-professional singers from the Two Boroughs catchment, some of whom we met in the initial workshops, but they have more than risen to the musical challenge Joe has set them.

In preparation for the project I shadowed a number of dance classes for people with Parkinson’s and dementia through Rambert Dance, and spent time with dance and music practitioner Anna Gillespie. I discovered through this process that what we in the theatre consider to be the most basic of acting warmups - self-massage and stretches, or basic facial and breathing exercises - actually have a massive effect on the proprioception of people with neurological difficulties. Proprioception is the sense of the relative position of one’s body, and adding a rhythm to these exercises compounds their effect. ‘Music organises chaotic time,’ I remember her saying - it helps people locate their position in a world that sometimes feels out of sync. The staging of the show, then, is drawn from these ideas - bodies set adrift, finding direction, mooring together, anchoring themselves and each other.

Also, there’s going to be a picnic. You should come!

Tonight saw the first rehearsal of NhT’s next community show, Sing Before You Speak Again.  Twenty local people - including 8 NhT members - gathered to form a community choir for this ambitious new show.  Director Tom Martin, writer Deanna Rogers and composer Joe Atkins, have been running workshops over the summer with people living with Dementia, Parkinson’s, and the aftermath of a stroke, encouraging them to tell their stories.  The result is a ‘song cycle’, a series of songs with lyrics by Deanna and music by Joe, that the choir will learn over the next ten weeks of rehearsals.

Appropriately, tonight’s rehearsal started with an ice-breaker centring on the importance of music, and the significance of specific songs in people’s lives.  Based on the famous Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, participants had to choose the one song they would take with them to the island, and introduce themselves by briefly explaining their choice.  This was a great way of getting a glimpse into each individual in the room, rather than just finding out their name, and a lovely foundation for a project that has people’s real lives at its heart.  This was followed by a thorough vocal warm-up, led by director Tom Martin and Musical Director Joe Atkins.

The company hit the ground running as they then plunged into learning the show’s opening number, a four-part harmony “nervy jazz waltz”.  Deanna’s lyrics for this song echo and loop, teasing us with hints of people’s stories, key moments in their lives.