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ToolsAlexander, Catherine (2020) I'll Take You to Mrs Cole (REF 2021 Practice Research Submission). The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. ISBN 978-1-8383967-1-8
Abstract
I’ll Take You to Mrs Cole is a multi-component practice research output including the creation and performances of children’s theatre show I’ll Take You to Mrs Cole, commissioned by Complicité and co-produced by Polka Theatre.
The research intervenes in making and research practices in children’s theatre and articulates a new methodology and dramaturgy informed by Two Tone music (established in the 1970s and 1980s in Coventry). The Two Tone dramaturgy developed in the practice influences not only the aesthetic and sonic elements of the work, but also the wider dramaturgical and creative process, and it underscores the importance of inclusive and non-hierarchical devising processes. Dealing with narratives of race, class and community, I’ll Take You to Mrs Cole aims to stimulate inter-generational conversations amongst audiences around these issues.
The Two Tone dramaturgy enables the practice to foreground the relevance of the socio-economic and political context of Two Tone music under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the late 1970s and 1980s to contemporary culture under a Conservative government in the late 2010s. And, in a context where children’s theatre is often under-valued within the wider theatre ecology, contemporary dramaturgical practices of children’s theatre are extended to present an innovative and challenging children’s theatre production.
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