What should the creative response to climate change be (if anything)? Continuing the discussion from the Tipping Point conference in Newcastle

Convener: Simon Day

Participants: Tom Ross-Williams, Dan Barnard, Velentine Teferie (?), Rachel Briscoe, Fran Hyde, Sarah Pinshon (?), Ed Jaspers, Hannah Myers, Lucy Neal, Matt Ball, Tom Brocklehurst, Jacqueline Coombe (?) plus others.

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Summary

A few of us who'd been in Newcastle and had an inspiring, frightening and confusing time in equal measure, passed on some thoughts:

l  Go next year. It felt like an important event attended by some fascinating people.

l  Scientists are more into us than we might think. Felt a genuine enthusiasm for the potential of what we can do in collaboration with them and the meeting places between disciplines.

l  ACE are responding to the issue, with sustainability agenda affecting NPO's soon, and expected to affect GFTA's within a few years.

l  If some of the climate scientists are right (the ones who think we're in trouble) we really ARE in trouble, and something's got to change about the way we are living. 

MAIN DISCUSSIONS

“Tell it slant...”

Generally agreed that no one wants shit plays telling us to fly less, or to turn the lights off. A Dickinson line quoted at Tipping Point by Jay Griffiths says it well: “Tell the truth, but tell it slant”. Consciousness raising of climate change as a backdrop, if not the centre, of a dramatic fiction was put forward as well - specific example of a forthcoming Pamela Carter play was given, where a family melodrama is played out against a literally rising water-level onstage.

Visions of future and creatve process

Efficacy of culture in affecting behavioral change led to suggestion that to imagine a future, to imagine change is a prerequisite to realising it. Preeminence of dystopian visions of future in popular culture recognised, and it was wondered what role we might have as makers in working against this.

Form as vehicle (or barrier) of engagement

John Fox's (Welfare State / Dead Good Guys) moving and erudite speech at Tipping Point was paraphrased, initiating discussion about whether form of theatre itself should be questioned. Is creating and sharing participatory work, by it's process, better able to engage people effectively with the issue and bring about change? SW based Kilter were mentioned as exemplars of this approach. A counter point to any fundamentalist answer to this was well put: surely there's a place as well for a well crafted intelligent 'traditional' play that can make you reflect on an issue – the role of any/all cultural forms shouldn't necessarily be discounted through simplistic division of passive vs. active audience role.

READING LIST

Robert H Frank – Darwin Economy

Rupert Sheldrake – The Science Delusion

Hopkins – Transition Companion

ACTION

Re. ACE's sustainability agenda, a response was discussed to likely affect for 'smaller fish' through GFA programme in future. Amongst some, a willingness is there to own or to initiate a dialogue before restrictions, requirements, criteria etc. are imposed, and ACE representatives in Newcastle indeed did seem to invite this. Desire seemed to be there as well to resist entirely instrumental action, to perhaps keep responding with the heart as well as the head to this issue.

So....

Between Rachel Briscoe and Simon Day, a follow up meeting will be arranged to be held within one month. We'll publicise this through all channels we can, and in the meantime, please email us via Improbable if you want to be involved. Simon will also annouce this through Tipping Point somehow. Focus will be on two things: to sort out our approach to ACE on this, and also to continue more general dialogue about how our creative practice itself can be seen as a rehearsal for a positive futur

The politics of theatre/the theatre of politics: Making the change we want to see.

Convener: Aliki Chapple

Participants: Nir, Camila

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Nir spoke about a project his company is working on which is controversial and very political and how he is frightened of masking himself vulnerable in this way and the reactions it will provoke. We talked about needing to honour strands of  our personal and social experience and identity that are in tension, or even direct contradiction with each other.

We said that all theatre is political, because it is social, and human –even though there is a more activist strand of theatre that is self-consciously political. Camila talked about holistic making practices and the relationship between form and process. We also talked about the echo chamber of left-wing arts circles, and how we all to often preach to the converted and wear our convictions as a badge instead of examining and challenging them.

“We’re playing Hamlet to the Hamlets in the audience, we need to play it to the Claudiuses”

We agreed on a need to open discussions, and to keep work open to audiences instead of walling ourselves off.

We bogged down because Camila gave examples of work she thought was politically holistic with the process reflected in the result, and Nir and I felt very strongly that the examples she gave didn’t illustrate that

But we agreed that the accessibility /inaccessibility of form and the nature of the making process were as important as content to the political identity of work.

Actions:

We all make work we consider political; we’re going to do our utmost to see each other’s and feed back/ reflect.

Email addresses and company URLs were exchanged.

Theatre and Policy: How can theatre aid the making of policy?

Convener: Sam Pallis

Participants: Valentina Zagaria, Pascal Pocheron, Arabella Lawson, Tom Latter, Lauren Cooney and Tom Ross Williams

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Intial Questions

We started off by discussing:

What can theatre offer to policy and policy makers?

What is policy missing that theatre can provide it with?

How can theatre help people engage with politics and policy making?

So much of policy making is focused on capturing people through the tangible, facts, statistics, but what about the people?

The personal can’t be quantified through facts, people life’s aren’t facts.

How could we present people’s views in a theatrical way?

Performing in people’s houses, centers where the policy is actually take place

Make policy makers confront the environments they are legislating for

Why is theatre better at doing this than film, or other forms of art?

Because it is live, you are in dialogue with the audience, the audience are living the theatre piece, everyone has to engage with it in some way.

Theatre as research

Do a project around a question/problem then explore in the community, explore in a theatrical way and then find a way of presenting the work in a performance as a way to demonstrate what you have found. This could then lead to a policy that needs to be made, or questioning a current policy.

Theatre and change

Why do people find  it hard to see theatre as an agent of change?

Theatre can question and can get people thinking, but it can go beyond this?

Can theatre legislate?

Putting people’s voices forward as a way to inform policy decision.

Theatre can help to formulate policy e.g. Boal, Teatro di Nascosto’s Charta of Volterra (refuges and members of the European parliament created a performance together on the stories of the refugees which was performed at the Europeoan Parliament and which resulted in the Charta of Volterra on how to change refugee law)

Theatre can provide creative solutions to problems, look at open space- theatrical thinking brings people together.

What are our expectations for change?

Change can take a long time or happen very quickly

I have gone to see a piece of theatre, and only after reflecting on it for a long time it has changed the way I think about theatre and myself

Change often takes a long time to come to the surface, it works in people’s minds and only comes in action later

How can we capture change-A BIG QUESTION

How do represent people experiences in a theatrical form?

Does it need to be performed by ?

How could a project start?

1. A policy maker is interest in finding out something, how a new facility is working, or whether they demolish a building-Policy question-then see what people think about it
2. Starting from the community and see what question form through doing that?

Taking an anthropological approach go into the community and see what you find. Can an anthropological approach work for the first option? Can you make a question which comes from policy makers open to the community?

Incentive?

What is in this for policy makers? Or bodies that are interested in certain communities?

Do you have to use the language of policy makers to get them to listen? Yes. But then we have duties to try and change the way policy makers think. To bring people back into policy.

Too much of policy denies the personal but the way that politicians act is informed by their personal environments. The personal is not seen as objective but the personal is all we have, it is what drives us and must be acknowledged as a valid way to view a situation which effects people.

Why would people want to participate in this? Offers them a chance to influence policy? What about if they are not interested, or never even heard about the issues you are discussing?

Theatre can act as intermediary between people and policy makers

But should be asking why people aren’t engaged?

The evolution of the human species – Part 8

Convener: Rod Dixon

Participants: Lian Bell, Monika N Kelly, Eve Leigh, Daniel Bye, Kate Maravan, Dodger Phillips, Dick Bonham, John Ward, Danny Scheinmann, Sarah Corbett

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

The starting point was a course I attended about 2 years ago looking at the evolution of Human Values with phase 1 being a mothering age where everything was about nurture, reproduction, safety and abundance – Dodger explained that Engels wrote about this in his book The Theory of Mother Rite.

In subsequent phases from hunter-gatherer to arable farmers etc etc the patriarchal has dominated the maternal.

Capitalism is the 7^th Phase and I called the session because I believe, and want to explore the idea, that we are entering Part 8 or Phase 8 as a post-capitalist set of global values.

Eve stated that she has a friend who believes we are entering a stage he calls ‘The compassionate revolution’. Essentially the idea is that we are heading for an age where what are largely seen as ‘feminine’ qualities – such as that it is strong to be vulnerable, that to be empathic is valuable – the antithesis of how capitalism requires us to operate in other words. We discussed the problem with the word ‘feminine’ as having gender limitations and connotations and we need to find a new word for this kind of ‘softer’ set of values – a word which encapsulates this new phase. If we are now in the Age of Information perhaps Part 8 is The Age of Love.

Phase 8 is not a return to a ‘golden age’ although there will aspects of our previous existence which might be forced upon us by necessity – such as living in smaller community and living on the planet in a more spiritual, more respectful way – where the planet is no longer seen as a resource bank which is inert but as a living organic being that we steward for future generations.

Dan Bye referred to the book by Foucault called ‘Discipline and Punishment’ – I can’t remember the context – sorry Dan – I will read the book and then remember….anyone reading this – read the book and we’ll have a conversation about it.

We started to talk about the importance of optimism and that in order to ‘be the change’ we have to believe, with real hope and conviction that moving into Part 8 has started – as part of occupy movement. Sarah told us the story of being at the storming of the square in Madrid – which predates Occupy Wall St – and how wonderfully empowering it was. She told the story so beautifully it reduced her to tears – and made my tear ducts twitch (if that’s the correct verb for tear duct activity).

I then introduced the idea of Balanced View or Open Intelligence – Google it – it is about the fact that we have learned to see everything as points of view  - we interpret all the data we receive in beat ourselves up constantly for failing or being wrong. The Balance View requires us to take short moments that stop thought and recognize that we are all just energy and that being wrong or right is just a point of view…. Oh just Google it and reads the websites if you want to know more. It is a practice that is changing me and I feel is part of moving to Phase 8.

Essentially this conversation literally blew my head off – Dan Bye stated that the phase of conversation where we talked about brain activity – the primitive brain compared with the cognitive brain has inspired him to make a piece of theatre about some aspect of this conversation…. So D&D has done it again – inspired!

Sorry - what a rubbish report and inadequate account of a very stimulating conversation – I wish I’d recorded it but I didn’t.  All I can say is thank you to all who participated in it

Left Vs Right Talk?/ How to have a conversation with a Conservative (To want a better name)

Convener: Chris Rowland

Participants: Kirean Hurley, Pat Ashe, Lauren Cooney

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

The reason I came up with this discussion was to talk about segregation between the left and right communities and the difficulties of starting a conversation between the two.

I remember a friend telling me, when the riots happened  that there was opinions on his twitter feed that he disagreed with, so he was un-following these people. But then he thought about this as possibly damaging in the way that he was stopping possibly vital conversation and possibly segregating himself off to a liberal only newsfeed.

And also about arguing with family/friends about politics and the difficulty of feeling that you should have that talk at least occasionally instead of avoiding it.

I wanted to propose how to do such a discussion why?  And examples of projects where people with opposing views are involved.

Kirean started by stating that some people may want to be dialogical and open within such discussions, but that we shouldn’t apologize for our views and should be able to say that they are wrong. It maybe useful to look from their view but this doesn’t mean we should accept their paradigm.

We ourselves are consistently bombarded by right wing opinion from  billboards,  commuter newspapers, marketing, news etc. So why can’t we make a stand for our own politics, WE SHOULD NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR RAISING DEBATE AS OUR OPINIONS SHOULD BE AS VALIDATED. Their opinions, after all, are displayed so regularly. It may seem like a interference or intrusion but this maybe what is needed if  we want to sustain such opinion.

There was a debate recently on ‘Whose street? Our streets!!!’ and how this interfered with the right wing politics+ whether this was fruitful or not.

There is difficulty in maintaining space for doubt/uncertainity/ whilst sticking by broad certainties that one believes. It is like having two heads one for trying to persuade/argue/maintain certainties in the discussion and one omnisciently watching over to try to open up the debate. Tension between the certain and un certain.

Franco + Eva Mattes  Nike Plaza project is interesting when thinking about the reclaiming  of brands by consumers who have no say in what they are marketed. It opened debate around ideas of ownership and brands within local community as well as internationally, with Nike also threatening legal action because of the use of their brand by the Mattes  (check out their website it’s amazing)

A South American country banning billboards within cities – IF ANYONE KNOWS ABOUT THIS PROJECT PLEASE WRITE IT DOWN HERE

Discussion (In reference to article within Live Art Almanac Vol 1 IF ANYONE KNOWS THE TITLE PLEASE WRITE IT HERE                       

                          ) moved onto the right claiming the idea of the dream as their own and the left being unable to dream anymore.  This being about selling political ideologies to the public.

Referencing Chris Thorpe’s Edgelands 2011 speech at the Forest Fringe

‘I want to talk like the fascists do’  We talked about how to reclaim this liberal voice in definite terms without disregarding our own ethics/morals, and openness to a multilayered answers/narratives etc.

David Starkey being wrong/’rightwing’ but also a charismatic cunt who gets his voice heard.

The Centrist left not having the bollocks/articulation/information to argue against cuts as they see it as a thing we have to deal with instead of a thing that doesn’t have to be accepted so can be fought against.

We talked about the Left being based on dreams itself, though‘we need to make it much more accessible’.

Debbie Pearson’s project ‘Talking to a Conservative’. Unsure about why someone would or could think in this way Debbie tried to understand this perspective by interviewing conservatives on film.

At this point Pat and Kirean left and Lauren joined in.

She immediately stated that Conversations don’t work because your always going to have to vocally compromise. It’s too difficult, people don’t want to discuss this. I suggested that we don’t have to have successes or failures that it’s just a method to create discourses so one doesn’t segregate off. This is obviously still up for discussion.

We talked about annoyance at political theatre just philosophizing and taking minimal action and the differing/unsatisfying outcomes . The most successful show she had seen didn’t feel like it had a direct political agenda. The show itself was called Third Ring Out which was shown in Edinburgh last year. You and a few others were in a crisis room and given an area of the country to distribute services to during a crisis/humanitarian disaster. Depending what your decisions were, consequences would follow. There was also a second room which displayed a map of Edinburgh where anyone could place an action that could potentially happen in the city, philosophizing about the outcome.

This was discussed with the idea that being practical and being placed into situations being much more important then theorizing, which then has to be interpreted to practice.

The Occupy movement annoying people because it does something in a space, rather than just discussing the problem.  Though this is in turn a discussion point. What can we do other than discussion?

We talked about Simon Jenkin’s article in the Guardian ‘Adele and her ilk have mangled the ancient art of rhetoric’. About Adele being stopped from ending her speech by ITV. The article went on to talk of discussion as an artform in itself. We have gotten like bad at talking about shit and that. tha Ancient Greeks were well better YAAAA???? .  We  need to be taught to articulate? – educational reform in debate and discussion rather than told what is right etc. How do we source our information? How do we keep ‘well’ informed?

Discussion of a book that documents an academic conversation between two people one Israeli and one Palestinian with similar standing, both being authors, thinkers, journalists etc. This is possibly a good model for what an academic discussion should be. IF YOU KNOW THE NAME OF THE BOOK PLEASE WRITE HERE:

Does this academic writing confine our opinion and neuter our rage?

Lauren then talked about when she talks to her sister, someone she confesses to not understand, they often disagree. But then there are moments where she feels like she has got through to her. Her Sister replying stating how she can understand her view. A Zing/chemical reaction is made that comforts and a feeling of togetherness is gained. Conversation seizes and the pair feel on a even keel to be together. This experience was compared similarly to the ritual of greeting friends/family and then talking your worries out and about events that are/have happened recently to you – till you reach the point of feeling comfortably in each others presence.

We talked about her earlier point that conversations don’t work and how the paragraph above might contradict that explaining that why do you have to be consistent and the duality of the situations/ contexts you can dwell within.

To facilitate a conversation fairly and to the aims and objectives stated earlier could be a full time job.

Ted talk on talking to someone of a opposing view as yourself.

Theatre Uncut 2012

Participants: Kieran Hurley, Rod at Red Ladder, Emma, Monica Nappo, Topher Rowland, Frabcesca Hyde, Valeria, Daniel Bye, Amardeep Sohi, John Matthew Ward, Aliki Chapple, Tom L Frankland, Rebecca Mansen jones, Ana Brothers, Valentina Zagaria, Annie Rigby, Mark James Maughan, Pascal Porchreon, Lauren N Cooney

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Theatre Uncut 2011 took the form of 8 plays written by Mark Ravenhill, Dennis Kelly, David Grieg, Anders Lustgarten, Clara Brennan, Laura Lomas, Lucy Kirkwood and Jack Thorne. These were available to download from the Theatre Uncut website and could be performed by anyone anywhere rights free for one week. There were over 75 performances of the plays across the UK, Ireland, Germany and the USA.

This year Theatre Uncut will include international voices writing about the financial/political situation in their own country.

Theatre Uncut 2011 was a response to the proposed cuts in public spending outlined by the coalition government in October 2010. This year there is not such a clear moment of focus for inspiration. So what is the focus of this year’s plays?

Is it a response to the current state of global capitalism?

There is an important sense of being part of something bigger (parallels with the Occupy Movement)

How can we work with the communities that are worst affected by the current financial situation? By taking these plays into schools, work places, pubs, community groups etc and inviting the communities to read or perform the plays themselves.

How can we give voice to the audience, allowing them to share their response?  Create spaces for debate. Invite local writers to write plays in response (as was done in Lancaster last year). Use popular education and forum theatre techniques to physically engage the audience.

Where is it possible to perform these plays? In the street, shopping centres, the foyer of the National Theatre, playgrounds as well as theatres.

It’s just as important that this conversation happens in theatres as it is outside.

Would the writers be happy for their work to be translated so many more people can hear the work?

How could we engage a digital audience? Why would we want to do this? To reach many people who wouldn’t otherwise have access to the plays. Ideas were, film the plays, release trailers/teasers, live streaming from various locations.

How can we best organise the management of the project this year? Create online forums for people to discuss and support each other through the process.

Theatre Uncut is clearly a political project. How do we engage people that wouldn’t usually go for political theatre? It doesn’t need to be sugar coated. It wears its heart on its sleeve.

We need manpower now…

We really need a producer. Do you know/are you the right person for the job?

We also need a press officer who will be supported by Elin Morgan of Prospero Communication as consultant.

There is a lot of documentation from last years project in the form of film, image and printed material. This needs to be collected, collated and edited. Can anyone help with this.

Some people offered their help for certain elements (like sorting out the shoddy website) and contact details were gathered for support in the future.

If you are interested in the project and would like to offer support, or just hear more then please do get in touch emmacallander via Improbable

Theatre Uncut is a voluntary organisation all time and work is donated.

Audience Agency in ‘Political’ Theatre in Rehearsal and Performance

Conveners:

Tom Ross-Williams: (Populace theatre)

Becki Hillman: (In Good Company)

Participants: Tom Brocklehurst, John Ward, Susana Davis Cook, Rod Dixon, Christina Caralina, Nicola Sianhope, Fran Hyde, Eve Leigh, Lauren Cooney, Emma Callander…

 

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Questions/provocations/models of practice/thoughts relating to the group discussion:

-       come to me with a solution, not a problem

-       how do giving answers/asking questions lead to political agency in performance?

-       positivity/negativity for politicisation in performance

-       the efficacy of ownership/belonging for a theatre of action

-       Theatre Uncut and David Greig: his short play last year needing audience to participate – and empowering model? (Engendered emotional responses from audience members who empathised with what was going on and had to perform role-play)… …(but is an audience reading from a script in unison always empowering?)

-       Third Ring Out (performance) – educative, gaming model of performance, which began anonymously but became more involved/actively engaged

-       An invitation to become active/the active engagement of the audience must not lead to nowhere! (Where can it lead? – into other actions/networks/practices/social movements or groups? Into further productions? – how can we facilitate further engagement, what obstacles might we encounter as practitioners and how might we overcome them??)

-       Collective identity feels safer for an audience to practice agency (builds confidence). How can we engender this in rehearsal/performance? By splitting people into groups? Inviting them to socialise? Involving them in process……..

-       Is the word ‘political’ a turn off to theatre audiences (and what audiences do we want to politicize?) Is it unsexy/not escapist enough?...Automatically unpopular? Or is this relative to historical/political/economic contexts? Where is it sexy/popular? (Scotland? Other…?)

-       OR reclaim the word ‘political’???

-       Is being told something or being preached at always something we shy away from or do we accept it in contexts that aren’t ‘political’?

-       Is theatre encountering its biggest period of ‘formal explosion’?!

There’s much more but I am running out of time!....... thanks to tom and participants for great discussion! Becki

-       Donation  only political theatre

-       Don’t turn the lights out on the audience

-       Giving people a shared experience

-       But give audience a  role in political theatre is important

-       Leave a show feeling galvanised rather than  pacified

-       The power of obstruction – audience unified by having to solve a problem  of sharing a tight space

-       Encouraging audiences to be disobedient

-       Audience  - Soho Theatre  (manipulated  but disempowered?)

-       Nature of the offer given to the audience

o   If we are told what to think do we turn off?         

o   Demanding to share viewpoints  to incite reactionary thinking/action

-       Connect  audience to tangible  stories rather than abstract ideas

o   Like the demolition of local building

o   Localised is political theatre

-       We can learn from other forms – circus/stand-up/dance

-       7:84 Black Black Oil

-       What is your language

o   Political issue explored through a ceilidh

-       Shalom Baby – political  moment a gay kiss in Stratford East

-       “Be the change you want to see in the world”

Leave the theatre with the world “yes!”

How do we avoid stereotypes in political theatre?

Convener: Eve Leigh

Participants: Dan Bye, Kieran Hurley, Valentina Zagaria, Pascal Porcheron, Nir Paldi, Mark?, about a dozen others over the course of two-and-a-half hours (!).

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Sometimes, as in clowning or traditional British comedy, stereotypes are useful and fun – it just depends on who’s being stereotyped. It’s important for theatre practitioners to continually check their assumptions about characters against stereotypes or traditional matrices of power. We heard stories about successful pieces of political theatre – most of them seemed to involve engaging directly with the landscapes or populations that were both their subjects and audiences. This raised questions about authenticity – if privileged people make theatre about marginalized people, are they crowding out the possibility of marginalized people telling their own stories? Are they likely to regurgitate clichés rather than producing compelling original work? But on the other hand, if we’re all confined to making work about our firsthand experience, isn’t that boring and limiting? Doesn’t that negate the power of empathy in theatre? The conclusion we seemed to come to was that making theatre outside one’s own experience requires vigilant assumption-checking and dedicated research.

How can I persuade people who don’t already agree with me to see my work?

Convener(s): Dan Barnard

Participants: Becky, John, Daniel, Christina Elliot, Rebecca Manson Jones, Vicky Graham, Cristina Catalina

(lots of other brilliant people whose names I epically failed to record – sorry!)

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Really learn about the audience you are targeting – read their newspapers, really try to get into their heads.

Do pop up performances of tasters of the show

The most persuasive thing that makes someone see a show is if someone they know and trust recommends it to them.

Try piggy back emails with organizations that have your target audience.

Talk to Audiences London about your objectives and see if they can help.

Give lots of people 5 tickets to sell – they might well sell them to friends and relations who aren’t directly interested in the subject already

Be nuanced – what if the character you want to like in the play is often shown to be wrong?

Don’t put your conclusion in the marketing – let people work towards it with you.

Politics by stealth/Trick people!

Where is the show happening – take the show to the trouble spot – don’t expect people to come to you.

Taking a show outside London (or to outer London venues) can mean you connect to a different audience – in London there is so much choice that the audience is often even more self-selecting

Think about making the theatre aspect only part of a wider campaign.

The flip side is that if people care about an issue they might come to a show when they wouldn’t normally go to the theatre.

Take the show to the audience you want, make it free or cheap and create a forum that allows people to leave (part of the fear that puts people off theatre is that you are trapped).

Is theatre the best medium for the thing you want to say and the audience you want to reach? Always ask yourself this question.  Also, can you make the same piece work across different platforms?

Allow the process of making the show and researching a show to change your own mind – if you’re asking people to change you must be prepared to be changed yourself.

With theatre you can reach fewer people, but perhaps in a more intense way.

Much discussion of the notion of preaching – people don’t want to be preached at. They might not even want to pay to be questioned.

Outdoor theatre or theatre in contexts that people are comfortable in (e.g the local pub) is another way of getting to harder to reach people.

If you devise or write a show through interviewing local communities or the audience you want to reach, if you involve them in that process and create an attachment to the project, they are more likely to come and bring their friends.  Consider running open rehearsals that people can wander into from the street.

Consider having a non-political title and a strong marketing aesthetic that appeals to the people you want to reach.

Stratford East got local community members to programme six months of work – this work attracted a whole new audience.

Plan in detail your marketing strategy, targeted to those you want to attract

Consider having an evening of live music of local bands after your show so that people come to the whole evening.

More popular forms of entertainment are more participatory – if theatre could be more participatory would it attract a different audience?

Can you market one angle that is part of a show that gets people in who might be less aware of the other? Example of a show with subject matter including Jewishness and Gender – many Jewish people came and some of them had not thought about the Gender issues before.

Put thoughts about the audience at the heart of the creative process – potentially this could be part of the dramaturg’s role?

Idea of working with problematic collaborators – e.g an evening of three shows with different political perspectives so that audience of one watch all three.

Offer people structures to take any political activism the play stirs in them onwards.  A specific suggestion of postcards with : If you have one minute, if you have 5 minutes, if you have a day, if you have a week, if you have longer – what you can do.

Also the idea of making post show discussions a forum for debate where experts or activists talk or debate the issues of a show – and they offer other ways of engaging with the subject. This sort of information and debate could also take place online.

In terms of getting non theatre goers to go to the theatre, a study that Royal and Derngate carried out concluded that it was pointless to try to engage those who never go to the theatre and that you should focus instead on trying to get those who come to the theatre 3 times a year to come 4 times a year – and so on – that this was much more attractive.

Also, look at what other forms of popular culture have and see what you can steal from them to make theatre more attractive.

The idea of a theatre reward card  (like Nectar etc) to encourage people to go to the theatre more – the more you see the more you save