Collaboration for Sustainable Theatre Touring

In late 2018, Under the umbrella of Julie's Bicycle and ACE's Accelerator Programme, we brought together a wonderful collection of forward thinking touring companies and receiving venues - the Sustainable Touring Group - to look into how we can all help make theatre touring more sustainable. We recently put our focus on collaboration, and dug deep into the areas and issues we can and need to work together on - with some revealing results!

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A roadmap for sustainable touring.

We dealt with marketing - where something as simple as a bit more of a conversation between touring companies and their tour venues could save tonnes of wasted, unwanted flyers being shipped around the country, not to mention the unnecessary cot of disposing of them!

And we looked at some some things that are perhaps not so obvious from outside - not many venues are yet set up to monitor how much electricity a specific show uses - if venues and companies were able to see data like that maybe they’d be more interested (and more able!) to reduce the power a show uses, or even it out over the evening to reduce big peaks, which the power companies would really like, and would help them balance the grid as more renewables join the mix. Speaking of which, how many theatres and companies have a renewable-only power contract? Not enough! Maybe if we clubbed together we could negotiate an amazing deal across the board!

It turns out that a lot of the things we’re all trying to work on become much harder if they’re not instigated right from the start of planning a tour - so we need to move the sustainability conversation right up to agenda. We need both parties to make a shared commitment to work together sustainability in the deal memo, well before we get to sign a contract - so much of our work on both sides is already well underway by then, and we need to set the parameters, and be clear what we care about with each other, before it’s too late and we’re snowed under with the admin!

There are areas we can’t action much yet - we’re beholden to national government policy and waiting with bated breath for better public transport and green trucks - but are many things we can, must, and I believe will, do, and fast! A lot of this really isn’t rocket science, it’s just a better way of working, of doing what we love, and of reaching audiences with brilliant, life changing work!

The Sustainable Touring Group is made up of the brilliant Blackpool Grand Theatre Blackpool, Improbable, Lyric Hammersmith, New Adventures & Storyhouse, alongside Metta, and is supported by Julie’s Bicycle under the first cohort of the Accelerator Programme.

Accelerating!

This blog was first published at Julie’s Bicycle.

Reflections on the Accelerator Program

At the end of 2018 we joined the first cohort of Julie's Bicycle's Accelerator Programme. We started with the luxury of a short residential course, where I met the rest of the group as I climbed off the train and made a bee line towards a likely looking gaggle of strangers soaking up the last few rays of winter sunshine outside Stroud station. We spent the next few days at the stunning Hawkwood College, wandering the idyllic, frost-jewelled fields of the cotswolds, feasting on the heartiest vegan food I've ever tasted and quaffing organic red wine from the honesty-box bar by night. But that was just the surface.

As a group we came from all over, with representatives from major theatres, City Councils, artist-collective-organisations, museums, huge music festivals and touring companies like my company Metta Theatre. Our organisations have all put environmental sustainability at their heart, and we all share one huge ambition - beyond getting our own houses in order, we all recognise the vital role that the creative sector can, in fact must, play in enabling and shaping the systemic change necessary to keep global temperature rise to 1.5ºC. The recent IPCC report had just made laid out in no uncertain terms that "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" were necessary, and in a 12 year hurry [https://www.juliesbicycle.com/News/ipcc-report-creative-response-2018]. It was time for the cultural-sector to start helping cause a culture-shift, and the Accelerator program is the next step in Arts Council England's efforts to support the sector do just that. ACE has teamed up with Julie's Bicycle to support and develop two cohorts of sector-leading organisations over two years - we were the first cohort, the guinea-pigs, and we started by spending these few sunny days in Stroud discussing issues of climate science, systems thinking, macro-economics and culture change as we went on a whistle-stop journey through a condensed Creative Climate Leadership course. It's not surprising we had to raid the wine cooler of an evening, our heads already spinning before we even found the corkscrew!

The next phase of the Accelerator programme was to take what we'd learnt back to our respective organisations, and to start putting our ideas into practice. We'd all gone to Stroud with ideas of how we might help develop and accelerate this culture shift - and I for one know that my ideas were churned around all over the place in the hot-house of those three days, only to emerge all the stronger for it. Metta has now teamed up with some others from the cohort as well as some from outside to form a Sustainable Touring Group - a small research and peer support group which will foster, encourage and support both touring theatre companies and receiving houses in greening the mid-large scale UK theatre touring sector. We're developing a model Sustainability Action Plan For Touring - like those action plans all ACE NPO's have had to create and are genuinely starting to see the benefits of [https://www.juliesbicycle.com/resource-acereport1718], but specifically for touring. We're taking a pick-n-mix approach - no two tours are quite the same so no-one could make a simple one size fits all blueprint; rather we're pulling out all the great thinking that's already been done and looking at how it applies to life on the road. We're producing a multi-part plan, with different parts useful to different people. We're digging into the research, writing up case studies, compiling fact sheets, talking to suppliers - highlighting the quick easy wins others have found that everyone can do immediately, and starting to demonstrate demand to our suppliers to encourage investment in the technologies we'll need tomorrow.

There was an energy in the air as we left the crisp, clean air of the Cotswolds at the end of the week, giddy with anticipation and ready to change the world. A short train journey home, and I was jumped on by the kids, who joyfully reminded me that life must go on alongside these lofty ambitions. Metta is truly a family business - my wife Poppy and I run everything from our kitchen table, darting in and out for the school run or to meet the Artistic Director of the National Theatre almost interchangeably it sometimes seems. On a good day we remember to eat lunch. I arrived home just as things were getting busy with pre-production for our latest show - In The Willows - and the tsunami of admin pushed my sustainability work onto the back burner. We managed to squeeze in a first meeting for the Sustainable Touring Group at the Lyric Hammersmith, but then I blinked, and all of a sudden it was the end of Feb. We'd opened an incredible show, audiences were loving it, and while I'd managed to keep sustainability as a prominent criteria in most of the decisions I'd had to make (as producer and set & lighting designer) I hadn't always managed to keep it the top priority for everyone else, and our sustainable touring group had slipped sadly down my to do list. March, and keeping a big show on the road turns out to be a lot of work. Who knew (ok, I should have done, we've done this before...) I managed to snatch a few moments for quick pockets of sustainability research here and there, but now April has come and gone as well.

The logistics and economics of running a company with a tiny infrastructure are stacked against changing anything that already seems to work. There simply isn't time or energy. You seem to spend your days firefighting, and it's hard to prioritise thinking about change over simply making sure the show actually happens tonight. But looking back, we achieved some great things with Willows - we have the biggest show we've made using a fraction of the power that would have been required only a few years ago. It will be seen by more people in more places than any of our previous shows, whilst the environmental footprint from creating it is roughly the same. We have one rather full truck on tour, yet the show is frequently compared to those touring with several pantechnicons.

We've brought a beautifully diverse story of empowerment and hope to audiences across the country, touching people deeply and spreading joy. That's the power of theatre, and exactly why theatre must keep engaging with environmental sustainability. Metta's work has always dealt with issues of social justice, and at the end of the day environmental sustainability is important because it's an issue of social justice. We've successfully embedded diversity and accessibility into the way we run our company by writing those issues into the stories we tell. Now we need to make sure that we also consider sustainability in every decision we make, and making it an integral part of the work itself is the best way to achieve that. We've done it before - most notably with our productions Well and Mouthful - but it doesn't always need to be so explicit. Willows has a deaf character, it's not a show about deaf people - we don't need thousands of shows about climate disaster, we simply need to remember that every human story is in some way a story of our interaction with the world around us, the world we depend on for life. And as we remember that, it will become easier to think about the environmental implications of every decision we make.

Since our group first met in Stroud there's been an incredible shift in the way society around us perceives the threat of climate change - first the school strikes, then 16 year old Greta Thunberg was invited into Westminster, and the Extinction Rebellion protests which garnered support across the whole country in a way unimaginable only a few months ago. Emma Thompson demonstrated the power of the arts, reading from a pink boat moored in Oxford Circus, part of Letters To The Earth. Metta has joined many other arts organisations [Cultures Declares Emergency], businesses, councils and local authorities in declaring a Climate and Ecological Emergency. And yesterday Labour steered the UK to becoming the first country in the world to declare an ‘environment and climate emergency’. Change is coming, and the arts and culture can and must help to shape and encourage it.

I can only hope that as the groundswell of public opinion builds it will continue to get easier to keep up with our sustainable touring group and the other amazing projects the rest of our Accelerator cohort is pressing ahead with. Fingers crossed we'll soon make it over a tipping point as the creative sector really starts to amplify the cultural shifts that are clearly getting started across the country and the world!

7 Practical Tips to Combining a Freelance Arts Career with Caring Responsibilities

I am a writer, director and run my own midscale touring theatre company. I am also a mother of two small boys aged 6 and 4. Both 'careers' are tough, emotionally draining and financially unrewarding but I chose and continue to embrace both of those roles. My husband is also a freelance artist and runs the company with me, which brings its own struggles. It's a reality we've both willingly created so we accept the many challenges that come with juggling making art and having children, but time and time again I'm approached by women artists anxious about whether it's possible to do both and who feel unable to start a family. I've written on this topic a lot over the years but I thought some tangible practical tips might help (and hopefully be broad enough to apply to those with caring responsibilities more generally, and to arts careers beyond the narrow scope of theatre).

All of this requires huge resources of energy and self-belief, and I'm well aware that those two things are themselves huge challenges for artists, even without caring responsibilities. But hopefully there will be at least one tip in here that may help you see that it could be possible for you. 

1. Create and cultivate a network of support (unpaid) Not everyone has family nearby who can help out with child care but you can create a family. When we just had one child I invented 'Noah club' and would share requests for help on Facebook for anyone who wanted to entertain a baby for a few hours. At that stage of my career I wasn't in a position to pay for childcare (even now the reality is that paid childcare equates to what I'm paid as a director so very often on a directing gig I come out on zero). I was happy for Noah to go to anyone and he became one of those babies that would happily go to anyone because that was all he'd ever known. I once dropped him off at a fellow director's house for an entire day (and this director was someone I had met literally once). It requires a level of trust in the basic goodness of humanity. But you know what - babies are very resilient. And hopefully your friends (and that random director you met once) are trustworthy. Crucially - I never felt guilty about this. Those people offered to give up their time freely and often were hugely grateful to test out their potential caring skills. Genuinely. And your child gets a wide and varied tapestry of life experiences. This is particularly easy to manage if you have a short meeting in a central location where you just need that hour or 90 minutes of clear head sans baby and a friend can just take them to the cafe next door or go for a walk. 

2. Create and cultivate a network of support (paid). It's not quite so easy to get freebie childcare once you have multiple children so once I had my second son we started offering money (we pay £10 an hour). The network got smaller but we now have a dozen fellow arts professionals who we call on for school pick ups and also longer stints. Again the children love it - each babysitter brings with them a set of skills and interests that gives them huge variety. 'Lego Tom' who's actually a very successful theatre director (even the best directors have quiet periods) recently came to live in our flat for an entire week while my husband and I were in tech opening a show in Exeter [extra tip don't run a theatre company / work with your partner because it does mean tech time is super intense for childcare]. They had the time of their lives and even had a sleepover at his house and a trip to the Lego store (thanks for that Lego Tom) and did some epic lego building.

3. Take them with you. This is a choice (Well this is all a choice) but it's eminently possible to take your children with you into many arts environments - before they're mobile or verbal it's easy enough to have them in meetings or even rehearsals. I'll never forgot the meeting we had with the Arts Council where 12 week old Noah did the kind of poo that leaks everywhere. I lovingly handed him to my husband who took him outside to change (though not before the poo had leaked all over his shorts) and carried on with our impassioned plea for funding. That's one instance where it was super helpful to be running a company with my husband. But create your own systems that work for you - I breastfed through press interviews, I breastfed through conferences, I had them in rehearsals when they were tiny. For me the visibility of my children in my process is as much a political statement as a financial necessity. Of course it's easier to create your reality when you're in a leadership role but there will be enough parents and allies around you that you can always ask for help. The culture around the visibility of babies and children in a working arts environment is changing and it can be a beautiful and empowering thing to have them present. It's still hard though so no one should feel like they're failing because they aren't simultaneously rewriting that Arts Council application whilst in labour [that is another thing I would not recommend* even if your labour lasts 48 hours so you've got some time to kill.]

4. You can cook fish fingers in the toaster (if you have one of those folding metal baskets that slot into the wide bits of toasters). That's just a straight up life hack but useful in the same way as anything that saves you time is useful when juggling a full time caring role with a full time arts career. 

5. Separate your guilt from their emotional distress. I have never met a care giver who doesn't struggle to navigate the guilt you feel when you prioritise your work over your caring responsibilities (or vice versa). This can feel very painful when confronted with a child in distress. After working a 90 hour week in Exeter, away from my children, opening my latest show I had 48 hours with them before embarking on another 90 hour week. They watched the show with my husband (while I sat hidden, in another part of the theatre so I could focus on noting the show) then we spent the following day together before travelling back to London on the train. During the journey a series of unforeseen events arose that meant I had to take them home then immediately turn round and travel straight back to Exeter. I let them know that I wouldn’t be putting them to bed that night after all (bedtime is so loaded with emotions isn’t) and my eldest child burst into tears. It broke my heart. But the reality is that now, three weeks later they have completely forgotten those extra few hours spent with a babysitter (thank you Adam) and it's a complete non issue for them. I can continue feeling guilty about upsetting my children or I can let it go. I haven't fully let it go yet - but I'm 70% there. Then I remember that my younger child will sometimes burst into tears if he can’t eat his breakfast with a specific spoon. We're not responsible for the emotional reactions of other people, and besides which giving children opportunities to feel and process difficult emotions is a valuable and necessary part of care giving. Or at least these are the mantras I tell myself to help work through those moments of maternal guilt.

6. Force yourself to take care of yourself. It's so easy to fall into sacrifice and martyrdom being a care giver and being an artist. Just being either one of those, let alone both. The overworked tired mother, the struggling penniless artist. I can fall into these roles/traps all the time but I know that beyond a certain point my emotional/mental health and cognitive function will start to suffer. And my work suffers and my children suffer. During rehearsals I get up at 6am with the kids and am either with them or rehearsing/in meetings, then with them, then after their bedtime catching up on emails until midnight. It’s pretty full on. And occasionally it's too much - you can never predict those nights when the kids wet the bed or wake with a nightmare. In fact you can predict they will always fall in the middle of your busiest rehearsal period. I can function happily, merrily, on 4-6 hours sleep for 6-8 week stints (being in rehearsals gives me extra energy - I’m sure other artists feel the same - that’s the time we’re most alive). But if I have only 2-3 hours sleep I'm a mess so I make myself go stay elsewhere for a night (thank you to my lovely twin brother Daniel who lives down the road) I don't work for an evening, I get off Facebook and I sleep. I might even have a bath! And then sleep. I appreciate it's even tougher to navigate self care if you're the sole carer, in which case I would say tips 1 and 2 are even more important. People will help you if you ask for help (and/or pay them). Don't burn out. And also in the same vein - stay hydrated and make sure you always have healthy snacks in your bag. And on your desk. 

7. Believe. Believe that you can do it. Because you can. The biggest gift my mother gave me (and my many siblings) was the gift of self belief. I have terrifying levels of self belief and I've had that all my life (thanks mum). I spend a lot of time encouraging other artists, especially women, to believe they have the capacity to do that thing, direct that show, start that family - all at the same time. And every time someone tells me I can't do something, every time that Artistic Director questions whether I'm 'ready' to direct on one of his larger stages, all it does is fuel the fire of my self belief and desire to prove him wrong. Anyone who doubts you gives you that gift to work harder and prove them wrong. If you doubt yourself, doubt your own capacity - then you can prove yourself wrong! You just create more capacity. Living through a decade of austerity means we're all a bit entrenched in a scarcity mindset - the idea that there isn't enough money, there aren't enough opportunities, there's just not enough to go around. I even worried when having my second child that I wouldn't have enough love - as though the love would have to be shared between my two children. But our capacity to love expands, it's infinite. Just like our capacity to create. Yes physical resources are tangible and finite, but belief in that idea is never helpful to the artist or the carer - it forces us into competition with each other (or with ourselves over our capacity to be both an artist and a mother). You do have the capacity - you will create the capacity. It is tough, it is draining but it is possible. Now go and make something happen. You can do it.

*You'll be glad to hear we got that funding, so spending two hours of my labour rewriting the application was definitely worth it. 

- By Poppy Burton-Morgan: Writer, Director and Artistic Director of Metta Theatre (Poppy’s latest musical In The Willows is currently touring around the UK until June 2019- go to www.inthewillows.info for more info.)

If you found this interesting then have a look at these other articles on freelancing’
https://www.toptal.com/ultimate-freelancing-guide
https://www.toptal.com/insights/future-of-work/millionaire-freelancing-career

Soprano Alexandra Bork Challenges the Opera Industry's Problematic Relationship with Gender Norms

Liana Runcie interviews soprano Alexandra Bork about her starring role in Metta's new opera I'm Not A Bit Like A Clown, at the TÊTE Á TÊTE Opera Festival 2018. 

Liana: You play a two year old in this opera.

Alexandra: Yes.

L: So what were your first thoughts when you were approached with this project? What has this all been like for you?

A: Well originally when Poppy showed me the libretto- well let's see-I guess I had completely forgotten the syntax of child (laughs) it was probably because I was the youngest in my family so I never really had the experience of having to babysit or really watch children that were really much younger than me umm so it was- I mean it’s obvious that a child’s vocabulary and grammar and observational pool are really a lot different but it was really eye opening seeing some things that that I didn't expect. So that unique challenge of trying to see what translates to an audience and what wouldn't would probably be the biggest challenge of working with this kind of text. I would say the most freeing thing about this was that the less I thought about it the better it translated, because a child wouldn’t necessarily, especially at two, wouldn’t have the ability to overthink what their self awareness is. 

L: When going through the script I was really caught by how the child never identifies as a specific gender. They speak of gender. They speak of girls, they mention boys. But when talking about themselves they more so use terms such as “I’m a pirate.” But they never really hark down on their own gender identity.

A: Of course as adults in a western context we very much when someone says pirate your first thought is a boy or something like that. It's interesting in that how the child is constantly going back and forth and in between things that we would associate with one half of the spectrum or another but in reality they [the things] technically don’t contain any gender. Even though the claiming of tutus being for boys or the girls making fun of the child for wearing a tutu in a way does polarize the gender in a way that none of the previous movements or none of the ones that come after do. That [movement] is the one that really sits on gender.

L: In the sphere of moving from historical opera and modern day opera I’m wondering about-I found that a lot opera historically has played with gender and has played with dame and with women playing men and gender has been transcended over and over again in opera historically. So I’m wondering how that translates now to the modern LGBTQA+ movement.

A: So one thing that anytime I say these things to either musicians who are not singers, or to people who are aware of opera but not the music sphere and they’re really shocked to hear that when we talk-and they’re like yes ‘Opera sounds like the ultimate gender-queer fantasy because historically it was based off of the Shakespeare times when women couldn’t be on stage because of the papacy and then women were played by men and then that slowly fell out of fashion in post-baroque era….and the castrati were replaced by women playing male roles which had been happening since the beginning of time as well BUT they became the primary replacement so all roles that were these kinda roles were written for women playing men you really wouldn’t get any men playing women in opera unless it was a male character dressing for comedic effect as a woman as a plot device. But until modern times-he would never really have an example of a cis bodied male historically be expected to perform on stage, as a character who no one else knows is female. And because of these roots it’s one of the most heteronormative and sexist and transphobic and homophobic art forms there is! And most people are very surprised to hear that. Again, because they think well shouldn’t this be really empowering because you have so much fluidity and like ‘there surely there can’t be gender issues in this.’ Well, actually, the big problem lies in these origins. So, people say well why is there not a problem with women playing male roles? Well that has to do with misogyny, because a woman can assume a man’s role because a women was considered lesser than a man so she can and her characters tended to be these lesser men. These young men, or confused men or ‘weak’ men by the audience’s standards who are in compromised positions or they were young lovers or they were fools or things like that. And again, in the trope-ness of that they can’t really assume full power.

However, people are so precious about singing and other things and refuse to reinvent it, which is the opposite of musical theatre and if you think of other theatre mediums. I think the reason why that is, may be because every single musical medium that came after classical music at least in America (which if we think of jazz, blues, musical theatre and a lot of pop styles of singing did come from America) were all in a lot of ways counter culture or rejecting a kind of musical art/performing standard of the time. They were evolving with the times and they had the ability to evolve with the times a lot easier, because the people that pioneered the art forms and the people that carry the art form today tended to not be majority until now; when the majority has co-opted a lot of those art forms and then you kinda see the issue of well, the art forms kind of lost some of its meaning but then the only upside is that because they're so popular right now things like musical theatre and pop music are able to reinvent themselves to an audience that isn’t just a bunch of old cis white men with money. Whereas opera is one of the art forms which would have never existed without patronage without government funding so ultimately who makes these decisions is the funders which are the old cis white men. And so those people tend to be the most resistant to seeing any sort of diversification whether it be gender or race in the art form.

Back when I was less aware of how I viewed myself in gender before I moved to the UK-I had so many issues as a soprano with people telling me you can't sing this repertoire or you can't sing that- and it having nothing to do with my voice but having to do with what people perceived about my assigned gender.

'the only way I would get asked to do any of these roles written for a-woman-to-act-as-a-man is I’d have to present as a cis woman in the auditions to be considered to sing a 'male' role.'

In the opera world there's a lot of 'male' characters I would not be allowed to play, with the argument that they were written for women. So roles written for women to play as men on stage. They’d say ‘Oh you can't sing those because they were written for a women.’ So yeah I’m basically not allowed to sing anything.

So even when I wouldn’t even pick opera but I’d pick songs written by Schubert or Strauss with no gender in them at all. They’d be like ‘Oh you can’t sing those’ I’d say ‘Why’ and they’d say ‘Cause that’s written for a women’s voice’ or vice versa they’d say ‘That’s written for a man’s voice and you’re singing with a women’s voice.’ Basically the gatekeepers just changed what the door is, conveniently.

'At the end of the day we’re all still singers and some people have changed how they sung because of their queerness and other people have not.'

So, I met some other non-binary singers and some trans singers and people that were both trans and non-binary and I’ve met trans non-binary and every shade of that gray area who were all in the opera world. And we’ve all shared our war stories about how much shit goes down and ironically they all find it so amusing but believable that the only way I would get asked to do any of these roles written for a-woman-to-act-as-a-man is I’d have to present as a cis woman in the auditions to be considered to sing a 'male' role. And nine out ten times I just get asked to sing the cis female roles, which I’m perfectly fine with cause they match my voice and they match my acting temperament, just fine. But so long with that talking with these other singers, it is interesting how different people have operated. At the end of the day we’re all still singers and some people have changed how they sung because of their queerness and other people have not.

I’ve had people tell me “Oh, if you were to ‘fully transition…’” which again, the word ‘fully’ is a hilarious term, “...then the head of the department wouldn’t give you such a problem cause then she couldn’t argue you with you about what you’re doing.”

Alexandra Bork

I’m not as open about being non-binary as a lot of other singers are because I’m in one of those weird positions in that I don’t like walking into an audition and having people think a million and one things about me before I’ve sung.  

So in my case like people always ask ‘why do you use female pronouns in your bios? Why do you present as cis female in auditions?’ and it’s cause 1 -there’s only so many hours in a day 2-It gets me hired. 3- I can’t change anything about the damn world unless I’m actively a part of it so I don’t buy the argument that I can simply stand by and criticize my industry without being a part of it because nothing's gonna change that by just criticizing it.

If you don’t fit what they physically feel about you which is probably a super dysphoric thing-which is why if your queer in any way if you’ve anything queer about your gender-not necessarily speaking sexuality but just your gender-then opera is probably the industry that is going to be a very very rocky path. And I mean that’s cause it’s naturally going to bring up everything dysphoric about you. Because it addresses things that people constantly say about your voice, about your body. And things that don’t necessarily fall into other workplace things.

L: Where do these problems max out?

A: Oh it’s the biggest problem in the biggest theatres. The ones that have AGMA, the ones that have any sort of money because they’re most concerned about tickets sales. Whereas the small theatres or regional companies, yeah they’re more worried about foreclosure and stuff but at the same time it’s easier for them to take a risk because they’re probably not raking that much in in the first place. And the probably have a smaller board of trustees to get through when it comes to anything diverse.

L: So what do you want people to take away from I’m Not A Bit Like A Clown?

A: Feast your eyes upon the freedom of a child before you put all this gender shit on them and watch how you parent your kids-AKA stop gendering them so much. The way we took the piece was more about a literal child’s lack of baggage with that (gender politics) than trying to fight with it. That an audience member rather than just thinking ‘Oh that’s a cute way of thinking of a child,’ or ‘Oh, I recognize that in my child,’ is to realize that, you know, stop placing children in boxes. Yeah, that’s what I would say-Stop placing your children in boxes. Let them be kids and also these things aren’t just for kids. Like, gender may be an adult construct but that doesn’t mean adults have to push it on children and themselves.   

I'm Not A Bit Like A Clown plays as part of the Tete a Tete Opera Festival at 9.15pm on Thursday August 16th 2018. BOOK TICKETS HERE

An Interview With Poppy

On the 6th of July, Liana Runcie had the opportunity to ask Poppy some questions about Metta's Little Mermaid. We share those here.

Liana: So the first question I had when I was thinking about the Little Mermaid was, specifically the Sea Witch character, and the choice to cast the Witch figure with someone who is male presenting. I’m wondering how you navigated that.

Poppy: There’s a really rich tradition and history in the UK of pantomime and dame where men play female characters where they don’t quite deny their masculine traits. So we had an interesting opportunity to play with that.

L: In relation to that, there is constant gender fluidity throughout the show be it the sea witch or the mermaids…

P: So that’s a bigger thing for the Mermaid sisters, when we began developing the show a lot of what we do is reimagine and re-appropriate stories to either re-gender the protagonist so they become what would traditionally be considered female presenting  or if they’re already female presenting protagonist to give them better agency. So when we started we were interested in exploring the binary-the world beneath the sea being a feminine world and the world on land being a masculine land. As the process went on that felt increasingly unhelpful but also outdated to be re-enforcing a gender binary so the new reality became the world of sea was a fluid world so the idea of being mer- is a bit like being non-binary or gender nonconforming. And the world on land was an incredibly binary world which is why it kind of has a 1950s aesthetic so the women are incredibly feminine and the men are incredibly masculine and all of the values that go around with that and even the body shapes. So that was the two universes we were interested in exploring. So then the mermaid sisters/the mer people present in a variety of ways and sorta the idea of being mer- is you can be anything. It’s a self identifying reality.

L: So the actual plot of the Little Mermaid, or at least the one most people are familiar with-

P: Yeah, Disney.

L:  Disney’s yes-is one in which a woman very literally gives up her voice to be with a man. So I’m wondering what it was like to work through that process with that plot.

P: Yeah, that’s a common feature of stories. Woman is required to make sacrifice to be with man. She makes sacrifice. She is with man-sorta happy ever after. Some aspects of the plot you can’t have the story without them. So we did honour that. And the way we navigated our way through that was to re-address the balance so that he also has to make a physical sacrifice. So we it was equal. Which made it feel more mutual.

L: I’m interested in the part of Little Mermaid in the context of modern day feminine that addresses hyper-masculinity.

P: It’s interesting and a little bit sad that on tour a lot of people came and afterwards said, “I wish I brought my boys to this as well.” But I think a lot of people think the Little Mermaid as a story for girls. Part of the again countering the historically problematic narrative of girls are like this and behave like this, and boys are like this and behave like this, we wanted to create the prince as someone that was in some ways kind of feminine and unconfident about certain things and his father as a sort of traditional idea of hyper-masculinity who he (the prince) is rubbing up against and unable to navigate through.  The narrative that you can be a boy and a man in different ways and it doesn’t have to be a toxic masculinity macho thing is as important as showing girls can be independent and have agency. So there was sort of a jewel reimagining of both stories to achieve that.

L: As someone who makes theatre that includes children, I’m wondering what you want parents to take away from this show.

P: A lot f the work that we do is family appropriate. Of course these are stories children know and love so of course a lot of the audience is going to be families but equally the circus is virtuosic and fantastic and the music is deeply emotional and our take on the stories are really political so there’s always more adult or sophisticated layers and complexity to the work- and hopefully-I mean the way we try to make it is so that you could come as a three year old and you’d get a visually stunning sensory experience. You could come as an eight year old and see yourself reflected in a way that feels very empowering even if you’re not really able to articulate what that means as an eight year old. You could come as a fifteen year old and see a process of discovering your identity and how that’s navigated. Or you could come as a thirty year old out for an amazing night of circus or interested in the politics and gender. You could come as an eighty five year old for the music or for the politics. So there are layers and layers and layers and if any of those layers don’t resonate with you it’ll will wash over you. That’s those truths, those questions, those provocations, are there if your prepared to read between the lines and fill in the gaps with the symbolism and the metaphors and the politics.

L: So obviously, Metta Theatre chose to put on the Little Mermaid. So I’m wondering what about this story intrigues you. Why this plot?

P: Classic, big, well loved stories have a broader reach and actually as political theatre creators we don’t want to be preaching to the converted. So actually taking those massively recognisable tales and recreating, reimaging, reframing them means we can reach a much larger audience which means we can affect and change a much larger audience. And that feels exciting. But also for mermaid specifically. I mean, I’m a romantic at heart and if you really strip back the problematic misogyny and all that, there is a really beautiful story about the power of love and we take it further. And it’s not just about romantic love, it’s about sisterly love, and maternal love and it feels really important to me to tell those stories right now when there's not a lot of love in the world.

L: Do you think the Little Mermaid is a feminist?

P: Interesting. In our version-definitely. But I mean not necessarily consciously. Particularly because we made this choice that the world under the sea is a very fluid and progressive and accepting place-but I think if you took our Little Mermaid and plonked her down in the city today then in terms of her beliefs and her values and her willingness to speak her mind and make some changes or go out and know what she wants and go and get it then yeah 100%.

From the mouths of babes

I began writing these operas four years ago. I say writing but to be accurate I should say 'curating', because the text of both operas is entirely verbatim. I have two small children, who since learning to speak, astound me on a daily basis with their stream of consciousness nonsense one minute and startling profundities the next. The poetry of the mundane is a thread running through all my operatic libretti, so I determined to capture these innocent phrases from one child (aged two and a half, at which stage they're verbal but still learning syntax so their sentence constructions are particularly interesting). I wanted to see whether these words could be woven into a coherent whole that gave at least some narrative satisfaction to an audience, so I grouped phrases into movements following the arc of a single day. The process and end result was fascinating, so I began that process again last year with a different child. Both children have markedly different personalities, so it felt right to commission two different composers to set the texts. What's interesting - although perhaps subconsciously my knowledge of their work conditioned these choices - is how well Oliver Brignall's intense and poignant setting echoes the serious and sensitive young child whose voice he's captured. Meanwhile Laura Bowler's freewheeling joyous riot of a score is uncannily reflective of the highly energetic and bonkers child whose words she has set. Perhaps the truth is that two such talented composers would always have responded sensitively to the original source material - and the words paint such clear pictures of these two idiosyncratic individuals. 

As a society we don't always listen to our children. Yes, we've moved beyond the concept of children being 'seen and not heard', but I'm sure I'm not the only parent guilty of zoning out during a long explanation or cheekily checking my phone whilst they are trying to get my attention. This project was in part an attempt to redress this - to honour their words and their experiences, and to validate their 'big emotions' rather than trying to drown them out with cartoons or chocolate. Along with the poetry of the mundane, my other main preoccupation as an opera librettist is to illuminate the inner worlds of ordinary people. The operatic form so wonderfully elevates its subject matter both because the act requires such technical and physical virtuosity and because music is such a successful vehicle for the expression of human emotion. I hope we have succeeded in elevating the experience of these two small yet richly complex lives and opened a small window into the world of a toddler. As an audience member described the premiere of I'm not a bit like a clown in June 'it's a joyous trip down two year old lane.'

Poppy Burton-Morgan