Swags & Tails, The Space Between Us and Jumping Puddles
I’m writing blogs to celebrate Open Clasp and 25yrs, with this blog I will focus on Swags & Tails (2011-2012), Space Between Us (2012-2013) and Jumping Puddles (2013 to 2015).
Swags & Tails – Swags & Tails is set on the day Margaret Thatcher dies (before she actually died in 2013), against a backdrop of austerity and cuts.
The copy – Meet Gloria, a lesbian with her past eroded during years living in dementia units, Mary, the care-worker getting it from all angles and housebound Lillian, locked in her own spare room with only 8 bottles of Sloe Gin for company. Faced with the closure of their day centre will Ellen and Marlene unite and make a last stand?
I loved Swags & Tails, meeting women playing poker in a Day Centre (one was under threat of closure and did in fact close as we opened the tour). The Home Delivery Services of Newcastle City Libraries connected us with those living alone and lonely. At the time the Home Delivery Services were undergoing change and those delivering the books could no longer stop and chat, this person could also change, so relationships made were interrupted – the service streamlined and cost cutting, the person feeling more alone. I felt honoured to spend time with these women and shared a joint love of Strictly Come Dancing.
In the care homes we worked with women downstairs and up, the upper level was the dementia units. The Methodology – When planning the workshops our first attempt was to introduce a new way of working as the majority of women sat in those circles wouldn’t remember what we did in the previous session (the methodology involves reflection and the group directing what we look at next session). But it didn’t feel right, so we went back to what we do well, the women pulling on their lived experiences to create a collective character that hold all their experiences. We would then write up what they had achieve and present back like a book, the characters backstory written and captured in photographs, highlighting the significant turning points they had agreed on. The next week they would read the books and those with dementia would say ‘I had a dog named Patch! It was their story and when read back they could see themselves, just like any other group we worked with. I loved discovering that the methodology worked, and they had ownership, I/we just had to adapt the way in.
I thought about all the women when I went home. It was such a unique project – to step into dementia units, see prams and distress, then others with laughter and song. The day centres, poker games, those with books and stories to tell. I learnt that 70 is young, that you’ll forget the menopause (I was just approaching the ‘change of life myself’) that 80 to 90 is when your body ages and you are older.
The production – Enter the next new director with Open Clasp – Charlotte Bennett
Erica Whyman was our critical friend (then Artistic Director at Northern Stage and now one of our Patrons). I would meet up with her and ask her thoughts, this time I was asking which is the next best director for the company to work with. Ericia recommended Charlotte Bennett (then at Forward Theatre Company, Soho Theatre, now joint Artistic Director with Paines Plough and a member of our Board of Trustees). Charlotte brought Rash Dash (award winner arts/movement company) onto the creative team. The legends that are Helen Russell and Barbara Heslop, where the stars of the show, along with Zoe Lambert, Rachel Teate and this was the last show that I acted in.
It was set on the day Margaret Thatcher died and the city erupts, forgotten memories of the milk snatcher and the realisation of policies that championed privatisation of social change and strived for a society with its focus on the individual and not the common good.
I Care & Sharon Bailey
As I write this blog, I’m working with Sharon Bailey on her I Care project, a sequel to Home Alone (I wrote Round Rooms from Sharon’s diaries in 2019). This time the focus is on the paid and unpaid caregiver. It makes me reflect/remember my/our time with Swags & Tails, it’s been 12yrs and here we are again, the same stories but its got worse, much worse.
With these blogs I keep meeting myself coming backwards. But I have also got to witness the power of people when we gather in rooms, especially through the arts, the power and strength of communities who continue to fight for change.
The Legacy and the start of Open Clasp’s training packages
LGBT & Swags & Tails had a phase three which saw the company facilitating a National Conference in 2014 that look at the issues faced by Older Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and/Trans people (OLGBT) as they entered the care system. Speakers from Age UK, Stonewall Housing and Opening Doors London.
We created our first training DVD, using the production and training pack – we were also commissioned by the North East Dementia Alliance to work with the Bangladeshi and Traveller Communities, adding to the existing training pack, and this saw the company working with the Traveller community for the first time but not the last (see below and The Space Between Us).
The Space Between Us (2012 – 2013)
When I think back to these years we had made space for lesbians to talk with Twist of Lemon, Older Women (and Older LGB and/or Trans People) with Swags & Tails and now with The Space Between Us it was time for just women who are minoritized. I remember an organisation asking where the stories about us are, and though our workshops were inclusive our theatre aim had been to tackle racism e.g. with Stand n Tan, a white family/characters had been the majority on stage. It was time to make space for minoritized women.
The Groups – 116 women directly informed the play including Arabic women, Czech/Roma women and Czech/Roma and Slovak/Roma young women, British Travellers both living on sites and in houses and women who have been refused asylum and are now destitute and in fear of deportation, mainly from countries within Africa.
The Blurb – The Space Between Us Invites Audiences Into A World That Is Full Of Conflict, Love And Hope.
The North East of England is in the grip of a storm on a biblical scale. Three months of rain fall in one day, roads are closed, rivers are bursting their banks and the region is submerged under water. Blown from four corners of the earth, four women seek sanctuary, security and refuge. However, all is not as it should be and the women find themselves in a battle not only with the rising tide and with each other, but with humanity itself.
During the workshops in 2012 the rain had been falling and Carlisle had flooded. When working on the script I thought it was a good idea to set a two act play in a church during the floods, the women taking refuge.
Charlotte Bennett joined us again to direct the production but unlike Swags & Tails where she had picked up the first draft and loved it, with this script I was lost. I couldn’t find the story and felt the pressure. In those days we took a year to create shows and our tours often sold before the ink was dry. Our production values were growing and we had a huge team gather for the research & development time in the Autumn. I remember I couldn’t get the script right and the tour was coming round the corner. Luckily it landed but the lessons learnt was ‘we need more time’ to create, if something isn’t working, you need time to get it wrong and then get it right again. From here on in we gave ourselves two years to make a production, workshops to writing and touring.
The World At The Time – it was the time of the Arab Spring uprising and we were working with women from Syria – and as the war erupted the women in Newcastle where now cut off from their families – for those seeking asylum, unlike the time of Stand n Tan the tide had turned, and people with failed claims were now destitute and without hope.
We worked with Travellers on sites, their homes under motorways and Czech Roma women living in the North East – discrimination, racism and the right to roam being eroded. Ran workshops Arabic women from Libya and Kuwait. I learnt, researched, and learnt as much as I could.
The characters reflected the women we worked with, a young Roma woman from the Czech Republic, another from Syria, a Traveller woman and a young Nigerian lesbian seeking asylum, failed, destitute and on the run. They all took refuge but one, threatened with deportation was on the run. The storyline involved a ‘coming out’ to the disgust and distain of the only other Muslim woman in the church. This didn’t go down well with one of the women’s groups. They didn’t like the storyline, and wanted it rewrote, even though I had presented the storyboard and gained their endorsement with all the groups and/or individuals involved, the mirror held up and that of racism within minoritized communities was a real challenge. This led to a husband of one of the women ringing and asking for the tour to be cancelled.
Groups and workers gathered, and it was agreed that the tour was to go ahead – it was the first time this had happened, and it was clear things had been lost in translation. We ran workshops after shows and the issue of homophobia and racism within minoritized communities was welcome, space was created for discussion and debate, bridges and power built. The storyline was about what divides us, what is in that space – it was celebrating the strength of minoritized women, of coming together in solidarity, finding commonalities and Smashing the Patriarchy.
NB As I write this blog the ‘Safety of Rwanda Bill’ completed its passage through Parliament overnight, Monday 22 April and in the early hours of the next day a seven-year-old girl, a woman and three men died while trying to get from France to the UK in a small boat.
With Stand n Tan they tried to deter by blocking the tunnel, with The Space Between Us they stopped the benefits and made people destitute and now we have the Rwanda Bill to ‘Stop the Boats’ and people (including children), desperate for life drown in the sea.
Jumping Puddles – in Collaboration with Frantic Assembly (2013 to 2015)
This project jumps over Key Change (2014 prison tour, 2015 Edinburgh). Jumping Puddles gave space for just young women to talk, share and participate in workshops for action/change. We had at the time been talking about having a national profile (to open more doors, to be seen and heard). But we didn’t want to parachute into communities, so we came up with the plan to work with youth and communities workers in Liverpool – My home town is Liverpool, though I left a long time ago it felt right and exciting to go back with Open Clasp, to stay up North.
Frantic Assembly – I remember thinking this play needs feel innovative and exciting, maybe with movement. I loved Frantic Assembly, first with the work with Blackwatch and the National Theatre of Scotland and then with Beautiful Burnout. I emailed asking if they would like to work with us and they said yes (still have all the emails).
Workshops – We thought differently about these workshops. We had been awarded an Esmee Fairburn Grant and had seven young women working alongside us; Assistant to the Facilitator, Writer, Director, Movement Director, Set/Sound and Lighting Designer. We ran talking sessions/consultations to hear what young women were saying – they shared that they felt invisible when grief hit their families and/or them. We talked about sexuality and gender, being misgendered and toilets in schools. We heard about the threat of sexual assault in night clubs and walking home.
The next stage was bringing Frantic Assembly to the groups – We were clear that we wanted our groups to understand the style of theatre we could create when in collaboration with Frantic – our workshops were not drama led but movement, both in the North East and in Liverpool. The groups threw each other in the air, lifted and jumped – when the groups saw Jumping Puddles they recognised and owned their theatre and the stories told.
The Residential – during the workshops we did a sleepover in Newcastle, the groups travelled over and all the young women slept in the big hall at the centre and us the workers (youth workers) and Open Clasp slept in the rooms at the other side of the building – in the morning we had breakfast in the Blue Hall (Ruth Charlton Hall).
Rosie Kellagher was the director with Jumping Puddles, and it successfully toured in the North East and North West in earlier 2015 – it was also the last time (sort of) actors were asked to help lift sets and set up and clear down the stages. At the time I was still lifting stages, but no longer acting in the shows.
“Reading Catrina’s reflections in this blog has chimed with me as I sit in our office in West End Women and Girls Centre in April 2024; a time when Margaret Thatcher’s legacy is being celebrated, the great shame of flights to Rwanda getting the ‘green light’ and Andrew Tate’s misogyny and deep hatred of women trends on TikTok even though he himself is banned. I’m thinking of the young women who informed Jumping Puddles with their fear of walking home at night, domestic abuse and sexual assault in nightclubs and I feel infuriated that young women are still experiencing this. Teachers have been raising alarm bells for years on the impact Tate is having on young boys, thus, young women and girls. We must keep our finger on the pulse as a feminist theatre company, as a community and as women. We must continue to create, debate and advocate using theatre as a vehicle for change. No woman or girl should live in fear.” Carly McConnell, Senior Creative Producer
When I think about it now, the energy of the whole project, the work we did in the process to produce the show, it was a huge project, and sitting quietly behind this project was Key Change, little did we know that this would overtake that in terms of national then international profile.
When writing these blogs I am itching to name all those involved in making the productions, from the facilitators, actors, assistant directors, designers, composers, movement directors, filmmakers and photographers – our partners, researchers, allies and of course the women who sit as the beating heart of every production made. I want to thank each and every one of our many creative teams that worked to ensure we made the best theatre we can to achieve our aim of Changing the World One Play at a Time – you will appear, but later in this series of blogs to celebrate a quarter of a century of activism through drama and theatre.
Catrina
Open Clasp's Blog 