Below are more links to other projects that may be of interest to performance practitioners working with people on Place. To access subsequent or previous pages, please click on the numbered links at the bottom of each page.
OTHER PLACES
Living in Boscombe
Vita Nova ( www.vitanova.co.uk) has a long history of creating theatre with people in recovery from addiction.
Gemma Alldred, Artistic Co-ordinator writes, ‘We discussed possible themes for a show as we recognised both the need to find a theme we had in common and also one which was broad enough for all the participants to engage with, I suggested we look at the idea of 'Living in Boscombe'. All but one of the performers had moved to Boscombe to attend treatment programmes and then chose to stay on living in the town. This in itself causes political problems locally, and often the phenomena of addicts moving to this small seaside town for treatment and staying here, is the subject of bad press and bad feeling amongst other sections of the community. It was felt then that this piece would be our chance to express how we felt about living in Boscombe and also to show that recovering addicts can contribute positively and creatively within our community.'
‘The group was set tasks to go out over the week and make observations which they could bring back to the
studio to work on. In this sense we also had lots of discussion about our findings including thinking together
about some of the 'othered' communities who also live here. As part of the process we drew maps of the area and
places we went to, we talked about what happens in certain parts of the town at different times of day or night.
This started to reveal interesting conversations about the way each individual lived in and engaged in the town.
This became an interesting bonding moment for the group, as the personalities and backgrounds are quite varied;
this sense of place seemed to unite us.'
‘For nearly all the participants, Boscombe is not their home town, so uniting our sense of self and sense of a collective self around place was very helpful as it gave us space to reflect on our past lives in different places, whilst being able to relate to each other as being a part of our local community supporting our developing group identity, and moreover a group identity which isn't wholly focused on being a recovering addict.’
The work was performed at a Scratch Night: see clip