Discovering Applied Theatre

It’s 2015 and I’m Standing in the commercial kitchen of an historic hall we hired to produce the inaugural production of our newly formed community theatre company. I was feeling the usual mix of pressure from the mammoth task at hand, excitement for the creative process and gratitude for the support team I was working with, in particular, one incredible new friend and colleague …

Our relationship was then new, having only met Jo at the start up phase of our company - this phenomenal human volunteered her time and expertise to help us get it, and the two shows that followed, up off the ground… literally!

It was during this conversation that I first really paid attention to the words Applied Theatre.

I had heard them thrown around in various settings before but never really looked into what they meant.  There was something about the way Jo’s eyes lit up when she dropped the phrase that stopped me in my flurry to confess that I didn’t actually know what that term meant … 

Explaining that it gets used widely for a multitude of modalities, Jo went on to describe an example scenario which had impacted her greatly during her studies in the field:

An echoing courtyard between a multi-story housing estate, coupled with the gossiping nature of the women in a low socio-economic town in South America formed the perfect stage for a couple of professional social arts actors to go ‘undercover’ in hopes of passively facilitating positive change. 

Knowing how reliably gossip travels among the housewives, the ‘scenes’ the young couple played out over the coming months served to offer education to onlookers craving the knowledge of another way of co-existing in an otherwise suppressive environment. This ‘education’ was offered by way of the partially scripted scenes playing out, where the once submissive female actor empowered herself over time with self-education, gradually freeing herself of the oppression and co-dependency in her relationship she so fearfully clung to when they began the process. Information, in the form of stories, which doubtless got told and re-told to an infinite number of friends, colleagues, family and so on of the ‘audience’.

I don’t know how well I’m retelling this story, nor how your eyes are faring throughout the tale, but I needed no onions to moisten mine in the kitchen that day.

It made me re-evaluate everything.  EVERYTHING that I had done up until that point and my place in the arts.

Sinking back into the flow of that which I knew so well, that inaugural show, and the two that followed, were more successful that we could have hoped for.

Jo and I, along with the rest of the team watched in delighted awe (it never ceases to amaze and uplift me) as cast and crew families formed and audiences united in the social wonderment and joy that happens in live theatre.

It will always have a place in my heart.

Not long after this, Jo founded a Social Arts theatre company: Public Act Theatre, taking a very willing me along for the ride and opening my eyes up to the seemingly limitless potential of communities banding together in the name of social arts.

Never short for ideas around creative outlets for BOTH applied and commercial theatre, launching this new company has created the space, the platform and the means to allow the myriad of mediums I adore. Nothing is more exciting to me!

Five years on, Jo and I continue to work together, facilitating the means and opportunities for performers and community members alike to express, connect, share stories and make art.

I thought I knew what it meant to be busy in 2015, but oh how naïve I was!  In the words of my dear friend and colleague Jo Franklin: “I have work to do.  I will always have work to do.”

- Adrienne Megan Lester