Interviews with Practitioners

As part of our research over the past week, we have been interviewing theatre in education companies and practitioners to gain a better knowledge of what methods / techniques are currently employed and what forms of performance are the current trend.

Our first interview with "Big Wheel Theatre Company" was conducted over the phone, as they are based in London. We were able to get permission to record the interview and have made notes from what was said. We gained a lot of very useful information from this, such as ideas on how to devise performances, methods of collecting feedback and so on.

We also arranged to interview "Quantum Theatre" and "Chain Reaction Theatre" but on the occasions that we phoned, they were unavailable due to unexpected circumstances. We have arranged therefore to interview them again in the near future.

Our former theatre lecturer, Annabel Chalk is a theatre in education practitioner and we organised an interview recently to discuss her perspective on T.I.E. It was an interesting re-exploration of work from previous years and we were offered an extra insight into the work that Annabel has done and still does in the field. Annabel is a very spiritual person who adopts aspects and symbols from various religious doctrines such as the Mandala from Tibetan Buddhism and incorporates them into her workshops.

On the evening of Tuesday the 16th of November, as our group was working on the project proposal in the foyer of JP Hall, by a complete coincidence, a theatre in education company "Cwmni'r Fran Wen" (based in Menai Bridge) was setting up next door for a one-off public performance of their agit-prop(esque) performance "Right". Unfortunately, the performance was a Welsh language version, the English language version tour having just ended! The majority of our group are non-Welsh speakers and I was the only one that would have understood the dialogue. Also, we were very much engrossed in our work and felt we needed to press on. Fortunately, a DVD of the English version exists and we will be contacting them in the near future to get an interview. 

More on the progress of our Proposal soon!