Community Plays
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| Fire Ariel, Torbay Tempest, U.K., 1995 |
Designed by Ruth Howard
The Spirit of Shivaree (Rockwood, Ontario)
Pa’Ko’Pi’Ci’Wak/The Gathering (Fort Quappelle, Sask.)
Many Hands (Blyth, Ontario)
Pilgrim in Time (St. James’ Cathedral, Toronto)
All Over the Map (Guelph/Eramosa Township, Ontario)
Not the Way I Heard It (Enderby, B.C.)
The Torbay Tempest (Toquay, England)
E-Time (Manchester, England)
A Brief History of the Community Play
In Britain
Anne Jellicoe is a British playwright, already well known in the fifties and sixties as the writer of such plays as The Knack and The Sport of My Mad Mother. In the 1970’s she moved from London to the small town of Lyme Regis, Dorset, to raise a family. In 1978 Ann was asked to write a play for her children's school. It evolved into something quite different from the usual school play: it was large scale, included people from all sections of the town, was based upon historical research of the area by local people, and was animated by a team of theatre professionals - friends and colleagues she brought in from London. She had happened upon a unique formula - for what has since become known as The Community Play. The following year she formed the Colway Theatre Trust as a vehicle for exploring and developing this innovative style of theatre. Anne Jellicoe also wrote a book, Community Plays, How to Put Them On, a practical manual, which was itself influential in spreading the idea through the U.K. and in Canada.
Anne Jellicoe was succeeded in 1985 as Artistic Director of the Colway Theatre Trust by Jon Oram, a trained and internationally known mime, teacher, writer, performer and director. The company (whose name has now changed to Claque Theatre) attracted the best of British writers including David Edgar, Arnold Wesker, Fay Weldon, Peter Terson, Howard Barker, David Cregan, John Godber and Nick Darke, and two of its productions transferred to the National Theatre in 1985. The company's work has bee performed and also inspired the work of other artists and companies the length and breath of Britain, in Europe, the United States and Canada.
In Canada
In the 1990’s Canadian writer, Dale Hamilton, moved back to her home town of Rockwood Ontario, just over an hour’s drive from Toronto, to discover her family farm-land sold off to land developers and the whole rural community about to be superseded by commuter suburbs. While seeking a way to respond to this through her art and activism, she happened upon the British Community Play movement, as developed by Ann Jellicoe. With the help of a Canada Council study grant, she spent some time in the U.K. with the company that Anne Jellicoe founded, The Colway Theatre Trust, by then under the artistic direction of Jon Oram. Greatly inspired by what she discovered, Dale wrote and produced the first Canadian Colway-style Collaborative Community Play, The Spirit of Shivaree, performed in the ruins of the old Rockwood Mill in 1990.
This production, with it’s astonishing aesthetic and social outcomes (prompting, for example, several company members, to run for Municipal Council and help to develop a new town plan, and sparking community arts activities that continue to this day), launched a Canadian movement and inspired, through a chain reaction, the subsequent careers of theatre creator-producers across the country: including Rachael Van Fossen (founder of Common Weal in Saskatchewan), Ruth Howard (founder of Jumblies Theatre), Cathy Stubington (founder or Runaway Moon Theatre in Enderby B.C.), Savannah Walling & Terry Hunter (of Vancouver Moving Thaetre), and Dale Hamilton herself (creator of many other community-engaged productions under the name of Everybody’s Theatre Company). The Canadian Community Play movement has also been chronicled by and promoted by the scholarly writings of Edward Little (now Professor at Concordia University’s Theatre and Development Program).
Other Canadian companies and traditions, for example the St. Norbert’s Art Centre in Winnipeg and Toronto’s Mixed Company, were inspired by this movement to create their own productions that drew on the principles and practices of this Community Play form. At the same time, other Canadian companies were producing large-scale community-based participatory plays, inspired by parallel theatre traditions: for example Vancouver’s Public Dreams Society, and Toronto’s Shadowland Theatre (both inspired by Welfare State International) and the Roots and Wings project on Bear Island, Northern Ontario.
Before long, the imported British Community Play form, began to mutate to suit its new Canadian soil. The key producers and their communities began to experiment with new approaches that increasingly played with and altered the Community Play form while retaining its compelling guiding principles.
And this brings us back to the present, and to a story that is unfolding too fast and diversely to keep up with on this web-site. For more up-to-date news on the Community Play legacy, the reader is invited to send a message to us at Jumblies, and also to explore the following links:
Vancouver Moving Theatre - http://vancouvermovingtheatre.com
Common Weal Community Arts - www.commonweal-arts.com
Runaway Moon Productions - www.runawaymoon.org
Claque Theatre - www.claquetheatre.com
Dramatic Action - www.communityengagedtheatre.ca/articles.html
Off the Radar Essay: Easy To Say -www.canadacouncil.ca/interarts/ym127519225806062500.htm
contact: 416-203-8428 info@jumbliestheatre.org Donate now