I listen to Sally Wainwright’s Desert Island discs from 2016. I’m driving on the A27. It’s cloudy. A meblahblaaablaaa kind of Sunday. Sally is one of our guests at the Conference. I’m excited to meet her. And hear what she has to say. She will be in conversation with Dr. Judith Johnson. She is a writer and a director and a producer. She embodies the three strands of our SAILMAKERS project. She’s a total legend. She talks about Victoria Wood being an inspiration. Me too. Desert Island DJ Kirsty – for it was Kirsty spinning the discs/guests then – plays ‘I want to be 14 again’
I want to be fourteen again When sex was just called number ten And I was up to seven and a half Boys were for love, girls were for fun You burst out laughing if you saw a nun Sophistication was a sports car and a chiffon scarf I want to be fourteen again Tattoo myself with a fountain pen
Being 14 again from time to time is good. Seeing your own toes in the sandy beach. Not being burdened by the horizon.
I get out of the car. I do washing. Loads. It’s been a long week. My blacks are covered in the rehearsal room floor and my whites have gone grey in solidarity. I eat a cheese and mustard pitta bread. Toasted and left to go cold. An Iceland gelato wafer thing. I have a cup of tea. The milk’s still good. It’s been a week. Don’t question it. I look at the Ox Eye daisies through the window. Bent out of shape by the rain. Battered. Add gardening to the list. Maybe.
I think about the covers for our SAILMAKERS coffee table photo book. I see water. The beach. A young woman with a yacht or a message in a bottle. Dropping pebbles from the pier. I book Jacqui the photographer and Lily our Advisory Board member and make plans for a dawn shoot in late August. Sea and air and rain and light have been creatively central to all three of the SAILMAKERS projects. Writing, Directing and Producing theatre. Our writers have shaped turbulent worlds past and present. Storms and floods. Beaches and pebbles. Drowning too. Loads of drowning. Directors have shaped human stories transient as the breeze. Producers have grappled with audiences’ connection to the waves of interest. Waves that we know come and go.
It’s Saturday. A baby seagull is on the lawn outside. She’s been there for a day now. Not flying. Not eating. Walking about. Snoozing. Live-dying and die-living, a slow-moving dapple feathered target for foxes. Inside the flat there’s conflict. Feed the bird and create dependency. Or starve it and murder through negligence. I asked Angie if we should bring her up and put her on the table on the balcony. For safety. Until she flies off. Emboldened by my care and kindness. No said Angie. She’ll jump off the table onto the floor and then be more acutely imprisoned. Within the balcony walls. Suffocated by mint and watering cans. It’s decided. We will offer it food. Angie goes out of the front door with raw fish in a yoghurt pot. She’s back. She didn’t make it down to the bird. She found a half dead bee on the stairs. She gives it sugar water and a resuss area. Now she’s out again to save the seagull. And the dog has a limp. It’s sunny and clammy and existential today. Breathe.
It’s last Tuesday. Our creative team Kate, Helen, Anna, Loz, Angela, Judith and Margaret sit around a green table in the rehearsal room at Salisbury Playhouse. I stand in front of them, slide showing a power point presentation like a seasoned power point presenter. All space bar nudges and 180-degree pivots, anxious joking and fighting the somnabulatory quality of my own voice. We don’t do talking at Separate Doors. Silence is our USP. But we need to plan 2 days of creative activity. And we do. Everyone is incredibly smart. And articulate. Ready to take the Silent Approach into new places in new ways in masterclasses at the Conference. Exciting.
It’s last Wednesday. In the rehearsal room at Salisbury Playhouse again. Lily Swift, Advisory Board member, Blue Apple actors and participants are engaging with our team and actors in a dynamic Silent Approach masterclass. Someone cries (in a good way) and Loz takes us through a development of the song. I direct Yana and Joe in a scene from HOPE VALLEY HOTEL (& Spa) and Angela leads everyone in a tea dance. Anna directs another scene. We come together. We connect and breathe. It works.
It’s yesterday. I buy hotel rooms and send emails. I check people’s availability. I look at spreadsheets. I plan a photoshoot. I budget for a couple more actors on the 22nd September. I shop for branded tote bags. I consider the philosophical and political position of integrated theatre within the sector. I eat ice cream.
It’s today again. The bee has recovered. It’s flown off.
If I was Lucy Kirkwood or James Graham or any kind of half decent scribbler with twenty minutes to spare I’d craft something witty and cogent about the nature of life and death by building a bridge from the stranded seagull and the limping dog and the emancipated bee into the precariousness of integrated theatre, the hierarchy of speech, shifting cultural mores, vocational acting as a craft, learning disabled and neurodivergent talent as a specific demographic, financial/funding constraints, censorship, criticism, AI and the vital place of theatre that is made for – and with – everyone but there’s plenty of time and space for that…62 days in fact.
At Separate Doors our mission is to increase the representation of people with learning disabilities in theatre, film and TV. At the centre of everything we do is our methodology, the Silent Approach– a way of working without too many words which brings equality for those of us who struggle with reading and with speech. We work across the UK and we make theatre, we run workshops, we consult for others, and we produce pamphlets and reports. And last week we had a residency at the Level Centre, in Rowsley, Derbyshire.
The Level Centre is an Arts Council National Portfolio organisation and a base and platform for artistic work which challenges traditional ideas of culture. The Level Centre has a particular objective to create opportunities for people with learning disabilities. We were absolutely delighted to be invited to be resident artists – it felt like a perfect marriage for us.
I travelled to the Peak District in the middle of Storm Franklin and spent the first day of the residency unable to reach the Centre due to the floods!
However, being away from base and having time and space to think meant I was able to create our stimulus film for the week – and a shape for the beginnings of our next performance project, HOTEL.
I pulled down video files and created a soundtrack and edited together the four minute film. At Separate Doors we make a lot of these short films.
The films serve as communicators of concept to actors who can’t or don’t like to read scripts of briefs and are a visual and visceral starting point, its a way into the theatre-making process for those of us who like to explore with our eyes and ears.
This is the film I put together on day one – in my windy cottage in Winster:
Thankfully on day two the weather lifted. This allowed me to drive again and I was amazed to see (now the wind and haze had gone) the beautiful town of Matlock in the deep cleft of a rugged gorge – the river raging on the left of me. Then an extraordinary journey down Via Gellia road, the river to my left and huge dancing trees on either side of the Valley. The work we’re developing is all about escape and finding a safe haven from an unwelcoming world so this introduction to the landscape felt perfect. Opening out into the wide river delta leading up into Rowsley I felt a real sense of finding space to ‘be’ – at the Level Centre, our home for the week.
I met Emma and Kyla – who made me very welcome – and saw me into the most fantastic space – for us as a theatre company, the perfect rehearsal space. The Level Centre is spare and minimalist and calm – and very accessible.
Next door to us in another space we experienced a wonderful installation IN THE MIX by Darius Powell and on the walls in the hallway powerful photographs SICK-GAZE, by Bella Millroy.
Both Laura and Kyla heard many delighted sounds from us during the work. Its so rare to find an uncluttered and well-equipped rehearsal space and we settled into our work very quickly.
I had a Zoom meeting with our Director of Sound Loz Kaye (Manchester to Matlock was too much of a challenge to travel to in the storm) and we explored the soundscape and influences for the score for HOTEL. At Separate Doors we always start with structure and sound and music and we discussed ideas around hotel lounge music, percussion and plans for the shape of the piece.
I laid out our props across the floor and in the afternoon actor – and advisory board member – Joe Sproulle came in to work on some movement ideas. Joe and I have an established working relationship, we brain-stormed some thoughts on the perfect hotel and then he worked with some props.
The Silent Approach is based on Stanislavskian method and endowing objects is a central part of our work.
In our next stage of development for HOTEL we plan to work with some key props and this was a start to that journey.
On day three I had a day on my own in the space to achieve two objectives, firstly to develop a story structure for the piece and secondly (with executive and producers hats on) to frame budget and schedule for the project HOTEL will sit within – Directing Tomorrow’s Theatre. Having achieved both of these things I set off to the station to pick up Faye Billing, our Director of Creative Learning.
Our advisory board guide all of our work and on day four we held a zoom meeting with them, presenting our work and asking for ideas around our concept.
Nicky Priest, Rebekah Hill and Sam Barnard gave great feedback and we will incorporate their ideas into the work moving forwards.
Our Advisory Board, left to right and clockwise: Sam Barnard, Rebekah Hill, Nicky Priest, Gareth John, Izzy Noake, Joe Sproulle and Charlene Salter.
We left the Level Centre so grateful and happy for the opportunity to have dedicated research and development time in such a wonderful space. The team, led by Executive Director Kerry Andrews couldn’t have been more supportive or keyed into our work and what we want to achieve with, and for, people with learning disabilities and neurodivergencies.
We look forward to returning to the Level Centre with our (cross UK) national ensemble of actors with and without learning disabilities and to building our next major project in the heart of the Peak District.
A few early feedback quotes from the Separate Doors 3 forum at RADA
Imogen Roberts, Nathan Bessell, Rebekah Hill and me
It was such a fantastic event. I learnt a huge amount and it made me go away and think about my own practise in great detail.
I feel like the best way in for future progress is to do with writing – new work is always financially risky for theatres, but new work written with this in mind is going to offer the best opportunities for incorporating actors with learning disabilities in “mainstream” work.
As a practitioner I feel that it would be wonderful to have the opportunity to do a practitioner workshop on the Silent Approach with you.
Separate Doors Apprentice Director Bethlehem Wolday-Myers
I reflected that stories shared generation to generation, culture to culture, person to person, have the power to challenge our prejudices – the heroes of those stories challenging our understanding of the individuals telling them.
The platform for integrated theatre needs to find its own voice to connect with the wider public by finding the right projects in which to champion its importance.
RADA forum
I feel as though the industry is in danger of hamstringing risk and imagination by creating a climate of fear around misappropriation, so to hear the playwrights speak so candidly about it was refreshing and required.
What is the necessary action that follows these conversations? What changes have to be put in place for a genuine shift in our understanding of how true inclusivity can be achieved more broadly?
70 people from UK theatre will come together to explore integrated theatre, discussing the will and the way, and most importantly the how of making general audience theatre that includes actors with learning disabilities.
We have Artistic and Associate Directors, established playwrights, theatre makers, actors, movement directors, an agent, a designer, two academics and a film director.
Geoff Bullen, Emeritus Director of Acting at RADA will welcome us all and reflect on the Separate Doors 2 project on which we collaborated.
I’ll talk to the room about my thoughts on identity, writing, integrated theatre and the silent approach and then…
Nathan Bessell, Rebekah Hill, Nicky Priest and Imogen Roberts
A panel of leading actors with learning disabilities will discuss ambition, training and the kind of theatre they want to be part of.
A panel of writers will discuss writing for and with actors with learning disabilities and a panel of Artistic and Executive Directors will discuss including exceptional talent with learning disabilities in general audience work.
We then go into dynamic forum.
Provocations, in between the chatter, will come from three theatre makers who attended Separate Doors 3 silent approach master classes.
Provocateurs Abigail Clay, Alan Mandel and Heather Dutton
We’ll all reflect.
And then everyone in the space will have 60 seconds to feedback.
And if something doesn’t shift as a consequence of that…I’ll eat my hat!
Theatre venues in the UK have made progress in widening the representation of diverse people on stages, in high quality work with impact which plays out to general audiences.
Black, gay, transgender, deaf and disabled and mental health focused work has been commissioned and supported by venues and by Arts Council England initiatives.
Intersectionality informs a thirst to break traditional silos and open doors to dramatic experiences of all of the human condition.
New stories, new voices and new experiences are being heard on main stages but one group continues to be unseen and unheard…
Separate Doors 1 and 2 highlighted the experiences of leading actors with learning disabilities, the integrated companies they train with, casting, representation and the wider landscape.
Separate Doors 3 will explore the work itself.
How do you approach writing drama featuring learning disabled characters? How do you effectively direct actors with moderate learning disabilities? How do you manage an integrated rehearsal room? Is devising or writing best or a mixture of both forms? What are the creative pitfalls and bonuses? How can vocational actors with learning disabilities be included in standard programmes and processes?
I’ll be looking at my own and others’ artistic processes, directorial choices, rehearsal room practice and playwriting craft in the development of new high quality integrated work featuring actors with moderate learning disabilities.
Key participants will be leading actors with learning disabilities, established playwrights, Artistic and Associate Directors of producing venues, theatre makers and practitioners, devising companies and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Master classes in my Silent Approach, rehearsal room analysis, interviews with leading creatives and the outcome of a forum event in London in Summer 2019 will form the backbone of the third Separate Doors report.
There’ll be regular updates here and you can follow the progress of the project- and read reports 1 and 2- by clicking this link to the Separate Doors website.
There’s never been a greater will to include exceptional actors with learning disabilities in general audience facing work.
Separate Doors 3 will go beyond the will, and find the creative way….
A casting director called me this morning looking for an actor with Downs Syndrome to take part in a TV pilot workshop.
Happily, I could point her in a positive direction.
More and more writers and producers are choosing to create characters with moderate learning disabilities, indicating real progress in terms of representation.
The tips below may be helpful for the casters and directors making this new explosion of artistic diversity happen…
Time scales
If you plan to engage an actor with moderate learning disabilities you will need to book them further ahead than is usual.
Experienced and trained actors with moderate learning disabilities like Downs Syndrome need extra time to learn lines and understand your plans for your audition/workshop/rehearsal because they have difficulties with reading (many of these actors don’t read and learn dialogue in different ways).
A call on Wednesday for a spot on Saturday isn’t enough time.
At least two weeks is reasonable.
Support needs and costs
Actors with moderate learning disabilities will need a creative enabler, or supporter.
When budgeting, aside from paying your actor, you will also need to find appropriate fees to cover an enabler and then to negotiate the role you want that person to have in your process/rehearsal room.
All disability is different
Actors who are deaf/physically disabled often have the same cognitive abilities and linguistic skills as non disabled actors.
Actors with learning disabilities usually work and communicate in different ways from non disabled actors.
Working with deaf/physically disabled actors is not the same as working with actors with learning disabilities, who usually need very specific routes into access (communication style and pace, assistance with line learning and understanding story, character and scene, navigating the rehearsal/studio space and relationships with team and crew).
Not all learning-disabled actors are in London.
Sometimes you will find the talent you’re looking for in the provinces.
This will cost you more but offer you more choice.
Involve the inspiration from the get-go.
You’re doing a great thing by casting a learning disabled actor.
Being a pioneer isn’t easy, why not gain knowledge at the start of the journey?
There are very few actors with moderate learning disabilities in the UK working professionally and most of those that do are supported by specialist companies.
Separate Doors allies Access All Areas, Dark Horse, Hijinx and Hubbub all train and develop the skills of vocational learning disabled actors and have a wealth of experience.
Collaborating at the story development and production planning points can pay dividends.
Many of us want your work to be the best it can be, let us help you….
