Our Approach
This is what we set out to do
“I was thoroughly impressed by the way the company moved from actor to character and felt immersed in the piece. The style of staging, the performance and the minimal use of elements of design to create an effective performance was outstanding and a great message to the students about how to create good performances with very little. The way the com
pany involved the young people on so many levels – this was a true piece of ‘Theatre in Education’ as the young people not only grappled with a sophisticated theatre form, they also learned valuable lessons about themselves, working in a team and what it means to be human.” Lara Ramratten , Head of Performing Arts, Leeds
Getting inside the story
We take many different approaches to making theatre but what we are consistently doing in all our work is telling a story. In our devising we are taking stories apart and finding out what they mean and how to show it and where the heart of the story lies and where to end it. We see stories as complex structures which contain many different meanings and allow many different ways of telling and interpreting it and our task is to get inside the structure and maybe get lost for a while before finding the way out to performing a story which resonates for ourselves and our audience. Learning with our audience
The longer you can live with a story the more it can tell you. So with this in mind, we work on a story for a long time trying it out in an participative theatre form before drawing it together into a performance for a touring show. Working in an participative method allows us to invite the audience to step into the story with us and experience it from different view points and encounter characters at crucial dramatic moments. This is how we reveal the meanings of the story for ourselves and our audience. Encouraging collaboration
There is room for everyone to join in the process of investigating a story and in schools we encourage teachers to join us and youth workers and theatre managers in their organisations. We see it as beneficial for all of us to engage them in a learning triangle embracing the audience and ourselves so that they value the work within their own agenda. By bringing teachers into the learning triangle we have developed a professional development programme which is responding to their desire to deliver participative theatre programmes themselves.
