Do It Yourself: Making Political Theatre by Common/Wealth
Foreword by Michael Sheen
I write this as the steelworks in my hometown of Port Talbot is going through cataclysmic change. Steelmaking, as we have known it here, has finally come to an end. The iconic blast furnaces have shut down. The last ship has sailed. As a community, we have long feared that this day might come, but the reality of it is still very difficult to process.
A number of times I have found myself thinking back to September of 2017 when I listened to the voices of steelworkers and their families speaking of their fear and anger about the possibility of this very outcome. It was an incredibly powerful experience. Not just because of the power of what they were saying but also because of the context in which they were saying it. This wasn't an edited news report cut down into soundbites, or an amplified speech through a megaphone in the rough chaos of a demonstration.
This was a piece of theatre.
Told in an old, decaying tin works and spoken by the voices of those living through it.
Direct and urgent and unfiltered.
We're Still Here was my first experience of the work of Common/Wealth. Commissioned by National Theatre Wales and written by Rachel Trezise in collaboration with the people of Port Talbot, it was inspired by and featured the people behind the 'Save Our Steel' campaign.
Standing among the rest of the audience, some of whom I knew and recognised as fellow members of the local community, some clearly out-of-towners unsure if they had accidentally wandered into some abandoned part of the works by mistake, I had a truly visceral experience. I was moved to tears; I was jolted into anger; I was confronted with a reality that was too easily and too often overlooked or ignored. Too often filtered through the voice of officialdom. Not here - this was from the source, from the heart, from the gut.
It was galvanising.
It demanded a response. People around me made it clear when they agreed or disagreed, added their own takes on what the performers were debating, vocalised their frustrations and their anger. It felt so alive and vital.
It felt like proper theatre.
When you work outside of traditional theatre spaces, a new world of possibilities opens up.
I always remember the words of the great Bill Mitchell, creator of the Cornish site-specific company Wildworks, as we explored potential locations around Port Talbot for our production of The Passion. He would make me look around whichever site we were at and say, ‘Right! What do we get for free?’ He’d make me think about what was already telling a story in that particular environment and how we could use that for our work. How we could work in rhythm with what was around us and release the story already being told.
Everything and everyone is already telling a story.
Only we can speak for us.
The Russian film director Elem Klimov said that you must look for what most needs to be said - which by definition is that which is not being said - and then find a way to say it. This is political theatre stripped to its very core. Its essence.
Part of the power of live performance is that it is a shared experience. A community coming together to share their common values, remember what is of most importance to them, process what is happening to them, where they have come from and explore the possibilities of how to move forward together. And by engaging in that experience, something greater and ultimately mysterious is made possible.
Out of community can come communion.
This does not require anything but the will to make it happen, the audacity to imagine it into being and the courage to see it through.
The book that you hold in your hands is a toolkit.
Find what needs to be said
Demand a response.
Go to the source.
Move forward together.
Look at what you get for free.
Pick up your tools.
Get to work.
Source
