Winter Sparkle

Today I had the privilege of coming to a family session of Bamboozle's Winter Sparkle. It was the installation we had helped prepare back in December when we were working at Bamboozle's Burnmoor St Studios.

Five families attended the session. As seems to be the custom, an opening circle was created next to the igloo installation and a welcoming name song was sung to everyone in the circle, including the artists, carers, pmld participants and their siblings. We were then invited into the igloo, and after an introductory song the siblings were invited to explore the different areas before going to another room to make a special gift for their brother/sister. The parents and pmld children remained in the igloo space where there were distinct inviting spaces each having a particular character to explore. There was a "spa tent" where participants could lush on furs and have hand and foot massages, an icicle igloo with icy lights, silver shiny things and a cold breeze, a bear's tummy cave, which was warm and red and cosy, a larg tong drum on which participants could lay, while musician scats played rythmically (this was a big hit!!!). Additionally participants were individually serenaded with live violin. A number of large bean bags and cushions were placed within the space which enable some participants to come out of their chairs and be moved around the space quite easily. Bamboozle also has it's own wheel chair hoist. For those who were not able to leave their chairs that day - there were icicle and bear's tummy hanging leaf installation that they could sit under with similar effect to being inside one of the caves.

A wonderful appearance by the ice maiden character gave the installation another theatrical dimension, as she visited each participant in turn -her performance was very embodied and expressive although there was no text.

The siblings re-entered the space and presented their gift each in turn and the show closed with a spectacular snow fall. ( I had previously spent two days cutting up all manner of things to create this snow....)

It was a gorgeous experience, relaxed, chatty, beautiful, sensual, aural, ritualistic. I had a lovely time chatting with some of the


Note to Sensorium - get a wheel chair hoist and large beanbags and cushions. Think about effects that can be enjoyed at chair height. Explore the "family" dimension and possibilities of this work back in Australia.

Jilly the Jellyfish performs up a storm

Today I was lucky enough to accompany a fantastic Bamboozle crew to 4 performances of Jilly the Jellyfish to pmld kids in a Northampton Special Needs school.

I was impressed by the speed of the "get up" - about an hour to assemble Jelly fish, costumes and props.

The session began with a name song in a circle outside of the jellyfish (re-inforcing that notion of airlock between "normal reality" and the magic of the performance space that we had observed with Oily Cart.

The children were then asked who would like to "lead the way in" - which always elicited an enthusiastic volunteer.

The performance began with a simple introductory song "Swimming, swaying under the sea" - the children were encouraged to enjoy the sensory and moving qualities available inside the tent - including marvellous jellyfish attached to slinkies which achieved some great moves and which the children could set swinging themselves.

Jilly the Jellyfish then emerged in a lovely surprise from a camouflage pile of seaweed and introduced herself to each child.

Meanwhile the other performer slipped on an anenome puppet

 the puppet had a very playful quality and could interact with children from closer or further, it was curious and able to build a relationship with each individual according to their comfort level and communication styles. It certainly was excellent at engaging. A second anenome puppet appeared from outside the tent and this was again a lovely surprise for those inside the tent.

Then followed the exciting event of the storm - achieved by the high powered air blower, which was directed at each child in turn while the following was sung - The storm blew x away heave away haul away.

The children loved this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Following the storm was a blackout prefigured and spoken about and a more contemplative mood while Jellyfish lit by black light danced slowly to each audience member before dancing off.

Then an end song - Jilly the Jellyfish followed by a goodbye song where the children exited being serenaded by name.

Very simple, very effective - a deliberate choice on Bamboozle's part to return to a pared back format for pmld audience. The show lasted just over half and hour.

The performers (including musician Skats) all said that they love this kind of work. Skats mused that he would do it full time if he could - that he found it the most satisfying of all his work. What is it about it that is satisfying - I wanted to hear his answer (because this is also how I feel) - ...

He said perhaps it's because you get to connect with people that are hard to connect with and that you feel you make a difference, that this is most human. He said he can also enjoy playing music at a gig and feeling like you are in the zone, connecting with mainstream audience, but there was something about the other connection (with pmld or SEN children) that felt more satisfying. Perhaps the difference is that the ego is less present in this work I suggested to him - Hmm - yes - perhaps that's it ... it's like you don't need the applause to feel good.

BAG BOOKS - December 5th

Today our last day in London was visit to Bag Books HQ in Clapham - a charity which creates be-spoke sensory books especially for children with learning difficulties and profound and multiple learning disabilities. http://www.bagbooks.org/
The workshop Manger Sophie Baker , trained in fine arts with experienc in set design and carnival(festival parade) workshops leads a team of experienced "craft artists" and volunteers who hand make each book.

We had first come across Bag Books in the Carson Street Library and Bec Bradley and Francis had read a couple of the stories to a class of students. We had throught to make our own bag-style- book resource to accompany the performance of the Jub Jub Tree. During the residency it became apparent that this was not as simple as it had first appeared and we ran out of time. It felt surreal to be entering their workshop in real life!!!!

We were lucky to come in on a day when they were inducting some other new volunteers, so not only did we get to spend time n the workshop but we also heard from the CEO about funding and witnessed the telling of a brand new story Aladdin.

We learnt from Services Manager Stuart Cummings, Workshop Manager Sophie Baker and craft artist (of 8yrs) Magda about some of the considerations that go into choosing what elements are created for each page. Some principles:
Affordability
Ease
Durability
Safety
Repeatabiltiy( sure supply)
Time (goes with affordabilty and ease)

We were curious as to how books were developed - were they written first and then designed - or the other way around??? The answer it seems was both. Of the three recent new books - One had been written first(by Stuart Cummings) and then designed - and the other tow which had been written and designed by Sophie and Magda respectively had taken their impetus from a more "making" place. We asked " were there many books - that were adaptations of other books or stories?" - and the answer was not as many. For example there was an adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda - but this was very long with many pages and expensive to produce. (Hmmm - I remember the difficulty to reduce Jub Jub to 15 "pages")


In general stories worked well when they had 8-12 "pages" and one to two sentences corresponding with each page. Audiences tended to be between 6-12 also.

Bag Books was funded (this was part of Stuart's role) to train storytellers, teachers and librarians to be confident to use the books with pmld children.

It was fantastic to see the range of books and the different ideas for different pages. We got very excited about these small sensor pad things - which could record different sounds (they had recorded a squeaky door for the ghost train in the Fairground story)

As CEO Dean explained - each book is sold for around 30% of it's actual cost - and books take an average of 8 hrs to create. Book sales are only 15% of their annual income - the rest comes from charitable foundations, Lottery, Corporate and individual donations.

Lis'nTell - Louise Coigley

We were excited to be meeting with Lousie Coigley from Lis'n Tell www.lisntell.com as we knew that she was a profound teacher for both Amber Onat Gregory and Lucy Garland, early on in their learning journeys.

She is indeed a special lady, 25years of deep experience in the field of "live inclusive storytelling" with a particular fluency with pmld kids. her original training was a speech therapist, which also gives her a different starting point, although her experiences have also ventured into drama facilitation and training, storytelling and many other things.

Our conversation ranged far and wide from Steiner and his work on the 12 senses, to intentional communities( she lived in one for 6 years that included many adults and children with profound disabilities and was in fact set up for this group). Another topic of deep interest was the issue of choice and active participation of pmld kids in the storytelling experience - her term "Spontaneous Intentional Participation"  which she explained is what often happens when we give the children the space to have their own response - not guided, or prompted or even worse forced by us. How much more meaningful and transformative this is. We explained our experience at Carson Street School - the "embedding process" of familiarising the students with story elements, character and environment and talked about the positive effect of that on children's audience participation and also the level of feedback that performers then experience during the show.  She perceptively commented that perhaps the "embedding process" had an equal effect on the performers which is so true. It once again made me appreciate the wisdom of Ros Hamling's "hasten slowly'.

We showed her a dvd of the Jub Jub performance and asked for critical feedback.

She encouraged us to think about slowing the pace of the words even further - without doing that artificial T-H-E C-A-T S-A-T O-N T-H-E M-A-T thing. The way to slow the words without losing focus and expression is to carry the meaning of the words through full embodiment. In many ways - I was shocked in fact to recognise how we had not done that in our performance. Any way it felt like a light bulb moment and something to work with upon our return - bringing in my physical theatre and movement experience.

She also encouraged us to think of the ritual aspects of the performance - to make each of the moments of "water pouring" - To give a kind of gravitas and beauty to these moments.

We talked about the quality of mutuality that can be achieved between performer and audience member and that this mutuality was necessary for the work to translate - that this is part of its "JAZZ nature" - improvising around deep structure.

We also talked about the the spirituality of the work and impact of beauty and joy on learning.

We left our meeting feeling inspired and uplifted. Keen to see how we might be able to connect in the future.

November 24th – Under the Sea – with Seeing Beyond – Lucy Garland

Today we journeyed to Sudbury in East Anglia to watch a sensory storytelling session with pmld kids at the Hillside Special School at the invitation of Lucy Garland (Seeing Beyond). www.seeing-beyond.co.uk

Lucy was a colleague of Amber’s who is now based in Norwich.

Under the Sea was a new show that Lucy developed and performed with another colleague Kimberly Moore. The school had “bought” the show for the day and Lucy and Kim set up and performed 3 shows in the space of a day. Lucy and Kim were given lists of names but little other information about the children who were attending. In this case there had not been pre-show preparation.

It was fantastic to see the show and observe the children’s reactions – who obviously loved the show. The show was based around a simple narrative of a young girl, trapped in a hot and smoky city who longs to see the sea – she follows the seagulls who take her to the seaside where she dives in and then is helped by a jellfish who advises her to go inside a bubble and journey deeper under the water.

Observations – Lucy began the show with a simple song that enabled each child to be named and greeted. Pretty much each line of the narrative was accompanied by a-hands on sensory experience. The 2 hander enabled also some visual storytelling to continue while objects and experiences were handled by each child so that there was an alternative focus for children who were not involved in the hands-on experience at the time. Music was also key within the show – with original songs being sung to highlight each point of the narrative. These songs tended to continue while the children were experiencing different elements of the show. After each sensory experience the story point was repeated before moving the story forward.  Eg: Tamara jumped into the water with a splash – then all the children had the opportunity to experience the water mister on their face and hands – after the circle had been completed – the story point was repeated by the performers – Tamara jumped into the water with a splash.

Lucy had experimented with a shadow screen which was a great device for changing scenery and bringing objects out of from behind the screen to the children. She had assembled some wonderful objects and effects – including a section under black light with a glowing fluro coral reef. The children then got to experience the coral reef through the device of a hoop which had tied on fluro material strips that were illuminated by a small black light torch. This was a magical effect. There was also a bowl of glowing sea anemone type balls which each child got to handle. The jellyfish was created using a clear umbrella fringed by long threads which was big enough for each child and a carer to sit within. There was a lovely scene behind the shadow screen which utilised a laser pen and a battery operated fibre optic lamp.

Shadow sillehoutes were used to create a city scape, seagulls flying and various kinds of fishes. These worked really well. I particularly enjoyed the effect of the fishes swimming further and closer with the use of a specific torch behind them. The screen itself had been created by making a small stand up frame with an insertable pull down blind and a overhead projector behind it. Again this was interesting as we had talked about utilising shadow puppetry and screen in our work.

The school itself seemed to be an interesting place and a shame we didn’t get to finish our tour with the deputy Gail. I was particularly struck by their use of a “ Reference Object” outside each door – eg: a wooden cooking spoon on the Kitchen room. Apparently the thinking behind this – is that for some children  having a object with a particular smell, feel and look conveys more powerfully the purpose of the room – than a drawn object  - which for some kids always looks, feels and smells like paper (or laminated paper). The child then has a matching object in a special bag that hangs on the back of their chair and matches their object with the door object when they go to enter a particular room.

In walking and talking with the deputy I was also struck by how progressive their approach was in general and this would support the students to experience new things. In the case of  Lucy’s sensory storytelling – it was her third visit to the school – and none of the children seemed overly  disturbed by the turning off the lights to experience the uV scenes or other events that I might of expected some children to have adverse reactions to.

Tuesday 22nd November - Exploring cause and effect with TPO and an ASD friendly performance

Today I had a good yarn with Oily GM Roger about Oily Business model, board politics, relationships with Trust organisations, funders and corporates. Some very interesting stuff. I made lots of notes – and there is grist for Sensorium’s collective mill. One of their corporate partnerships  has been with Cusson’s Imperial Soap manufacturers – their R & D department (a bunch of chemists and noses) has been able to come up with all sorts of smells that relate to Oily’s shows – including providing the smells of Mole’s Hole....- now that would be a good relationship to cultivate....

We were on our way to a seminar about making mainstream performances friendly to Austism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) audiences and making performance for  ASD audiences.

The seminar was organised by For Crying Out Loud – www. Fcoletc. – who are a most interesting organisation involved in producing all sorts of artist led projects all over the world  – including the elastic band installation at AWESOME in Perth.....   Check them out.

Anyway – FCOL have been involved in a partnership with an Italian Children’s Theatre company called TPO who work alot with interactive digital technologies (also very interesting – also have been to Australia quite extensively including the NT with INCITE arts www), for a number of years. In 2011 they were bringing out a work called “ DANCE PLEASE” .  Because of the interactive nature of the work and the element of audience participation,  FCOL had identified the potential of this work to be accessible to ASD audiences and so had created a team to pilot this possibility. This had been done in 2 stages the earlier stage taking place in 2009. The team included Slavka Ivanovka (theatre education consultant and mother of ASD son) and performance enabler – Spencer – (a performer/director who also works as a SEN Education Assistant). Slavka , along with ASD specialist Kirty Hoyle (ACCESS Manager at the Unicorn Theatre) created a special training day for the TPO technicians and performers about ASD children – their common triggers and behaviours and giving some indication as to what the performers could expect from an ASD audience. Spencer had worked with Slavka to prepare the students for their experience of the performance. This had involved Slavka creating visual stories for the show and theatre which could be used to orientate students. They also created a performance orientation session immediately prior to the show in which they took the students through the various sound and light cues/states that would be used during the show. The pilot involved 4 different groups of children with ASD. Each group was very different and the team experimented with leaving students in the performance environment after the orientation session and taking them out before bringing them in again for the show. Spencer’s role was to assist the students in the unfamiliar environment and to be a liaison between performers, students and carers,  encouraging the carers to permit participation at the students own level and assisting to manage any challenging behaviours.

I was struck by the term – “Performance Enabler” and could envisage that term being useful to our work in OZ – imaginging that this could be a training we could develop for Education Assistants and/or others – as specific addition to their skill base and a recognition of their key role in facilitating student enjoyment of performance.

I was also struck by the fact – that the desire of a range of arts companies and venues to make theatre accessible to previously excluded audiences (ASD and pmld) is really gaining momentum in the Zeitgeist – however that even in the UK – the work is really only beginning – and that in London at least – apart from  OILY – there was not much experience in this territory.

After the seminar there was an opportunity to play with TPO’s technology which was very inspiring. It was exactly about the cause and effect stuff that Sensorium Crew had earlier gotten excited about. Apparently it happens through the live filming of the camera. The camera and computer can be programmed to make different responses to different sound or movement cues that are generated by the audience or performers.

The seminar was chaired by Amber’s friend Kirsty Hoyle who was very warm and delighted to meet  - she had tried to find us at the Unicorn but we had by then moved to the Smallwood Studios. Anyway she was most interested to meet us and talked about her interest to program work for pmld audiences – including international work – given also that OILY is not making a pmld show in 2012......

Another really cool manifestation of of our small world was that SLavka knows Rachael Riggs and Adam Bennet!!!! – She gave me her card and said to meet up and as it happens we ran in to her at the most excellent show at the Little Angel Theatre the next night!!!!!!!!