TY - ADVS
T1 - Cultural Capital in Telling Tales: 'Responsive' Play Scripts and Palimpsests
AU - Newall, Helen
A2 - Baker, Matt
A2 - Tunney, Russ
N1 - Playscripts and performance artefacts have been clustered together since they share an overarching concern as exemplified in the research questions:
Research questions:
1. How might relationships between a palimpsestic landscape/cityscape and its current inhabitants be imagined in ‘responsive’ playscripts?
2. In what ways might local participants, audiences, theatre artists and members of the general public benefit from a programme of participatory community theatre projects arising from this investigation?
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Cultural Capital in Telling Tales (CCITT) is a two-phase investigation by Theatre in the Quarter (TiQ), Chester, into the creation and production of plays responsive to and rooted in community reminiscence and/or folklore, while appealing to general audiences. TiQ creative team: Newall (writer; lyricist), Matt Baker (composer), Russ Tunney (director). Newall’s playscripts respond to practitioner/ theorist Mike Pearson’s critical investigations of traces in the landscape of ‘complex articulations of history and place’ (Pearson & Shanks Theatre/Archaeology, 2001: 39). CCITT scripts explore place, inhabitants and histories discursively and offer findings in fictions that tell truths. Rooted within named places, Newall approached project research as for ‘site-specific’ artefacts. The production phase saw the realisation of responsive scripts in bespoke performances articulating community concerns around local history (disappearing landscapes; memories and aspirations) and interest in national events (London Olympics 2012). Community participation was paramount: scripts included local choirs as chorus, and the Forgotten Fortress tour included villages closest to historic hillforts on Cheshire’s Sandstone Ridge. Productions toured subsequently across Cheshire and Lancashire; Liverpool Anglican Cathedral; Hampton Court Palace; and Chester Racecourse (attendance: 20,000).
Research questions:
1. How might relationships between a palimpsestic landscape/cityscape and its current inhabitants be imagined in ‘responsive’ playscripts?
2. In what ways might local participants, audiences, theatre artists and members of the general public benefit from a programme of participatory community theatre projects arising from this investigation?
Insights:
Phase 1: Responsive scripts foreground archetypes and narrative repetitions, enabling communication of research insights into past-in-present
Artists must prioritise critical and creative imperatives, while responding to diverse funders and participants (IFTR, 2011))
Phase 2:
Responsive scripts enable production models to accommodate diverse – even contradictory - needs of professionals and amateurs, and create popular forms aesthetically challenging to audiences.
Scripts include:
Silent Night (2008)
Home for Christmas (2009)
Forgotten Fortress (2010)
James & A Jacobean Christmas (2010)
Giants Opera (incorporating Across the World) (2012)
AB - Cultural Capital in Telling Tales (CCITT) is a two-phase investigation by Theatre in the Quarter (TiQ), Chester, into the creation and production of plays responsive to and rooted in community reminiscence and/or folklore, while appealing to general audiences. TiQ creative team: Newall (writer; lyricist), Matt Baker (composer), Russ Tunney (director). Newall’s playscripts respond to practitioner/ theorist Mike Pearson’s critical investigations of traces in the landscape of ‘complex articulations of history and place’ (Pearson & Shanks Theatre/Archaeology, 2001: 39). CCITT scripts explore place, inhabitants and histories discursively and offer findings in fictions that tell truths. Rooted within named places, Newall approached project research as for ‘site-specific’ artefacts. The production phase saw the realisation of responsive scripts in bespoke performances articulating community concerns around local history (disappearing landscapes; memories and aspirations) and interest in national events (London Olympics 2012). Community participation was paramount: scripts included local choirs as chorus, and the Forgotten Fortress tour included villages closest to historic hillforts on Cheshire’s Sandstone Ridge. Productions toured subsequently across Cheshire and Lancashire; Liverpool Anglican Cathedral; Hampton Court Palace; and Chester Racecourse (attendance: 20,000).
Research questions:
1. How might relationships between a palimpsestic landscape/cityscape and its current inhabitants be imagined in ‘responsive’ playscripts?
2. In what ways might local participants, audiences, theatre artists and members of the general public benefit from a programme of participatory community theatre projects arising from this investigation?
Insights:
Phase 1: Responsive scripts foreground archetypes and narrative repetitions, enabling communication of research insights into past-in-present
Artists must prioritise critical and creative imperatives, while responding to diverse funders and participants (IFTR, 2011))
Phase 2:
Responsive scripts enable production models to accommodate diverse – even contradictory - needs of professionals and amateurs, and create popular forms aesthetically challenging to audiences.
Scripts include:
Silent Night (2008)
Home for Christmas (2009)
Forgotten Fortress (2010)
James & A Jacobean Christmas (2010)
Giants Opera (incorporating Across the World) (2012)
UR - http://www.cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk/microsites/habitats_and_hillforts/discovery/forgotten_fortress_video.aspx
UR - http://www.cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk/microsites/habitats_and_hillforts/discovery/forgotten_fortress_video/forgotten_fortress.aspx
M3 - Artefact
PB - TiQ
T2 - Theatre in the Quarter plays
Y2 - 1 January 2008
ER -