Category: creative projects

Synchronicity at the V & A

We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events.

On our last day in London, we decide that what we want more than anything is a dose of city life. We realize with a shock that we haven’t been to the Victoria & Albert Museum since our first trip to London in 1976. We’ve changed a lot since then, and so has the V & A.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (photo from website)

The V & A is a learning museum, originally dedicated to improving British industry by educating designers, manufacturers and consumers in art and science. That’s an ethos that still runs through the museum’s collection of over 2 million artifacts. One of the 10 largest museums in the world, the V & A is a constant source of inspiration. It’s a museum that you can spend a lifetime revisiting. This is the first of what I hope will be many revisits.

We don’t have a lot of time, so we decide not to plan. We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events. (I’ve just looked up the word synchronous and found that one of its meanings has to do with Astronomy: “making or denoting an orbit around the earth or another celestial body in which one revolution is completed in the period taken for the body to rotate about its axis.” This is a perfect metaphor. It takes time for an experience to turn and manifest itself within my thoughts. In the orbit, I can see the experience from all sides. But I digress…)

In the vast and somewhat overwhelming V & A, it seemed that with each corner I turned, with each new room I entered, I saw an object or a piece of art that felt like it was put there just for me. Something that reminded me of what I care about, about what matters to me. Something that showed me facets of myself and helped me remember and recognize the “person I take myself to be.”

Original Music and the Mirror score

We started our V & A ramble at the show “Re:Imagining Musicals.” Among the trove of records, playbills, sets, costumes, and curios, I saw an original handwritten score for “The Music and the Mirror,” from A Chorus Line, a musical that I saw in its first Broadway production. As with all aspiring actors, that song, in particular, was the anthem I sang as I headed off to theatre school. The manuscript was complete with changes made by both the composer and lyricist (Yes, the changed line “Let me wake up…” is better than “Let me awake…”) I was off on my journey.

Musicals segued into the museum’s theatre and performance collection. Sir Laurence Olivier’s iconic costume for Henry V is here, beside Vivien Leigh’s Cleopatra. Fred Astaire’s tails for Top Hat keep company with Charlie Chaplin’s tramp hat and cane.

Costumes worn by Sir Laurence Olivier in Henry V and Vivien Leigh in Cleopatra
Costume worn by Fred Astaire in Top Hat

Full of emotion, with songs in my heart, I do a soft shoe out of the exhibit into the next room ––a collection of paintings donated by Constantine Alexander Ionides –– and come face to face with “The Day Dream,” a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When I was in my twenties, I went through a huge Pre-Raphaelite phase, and this was a favourite.

The Day Dream, by Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, at the V & A

Rossetti was also a poet and often calligraphed a verse on the frame of his paintings. The poem on The Day Dream ends with:

She dreams; till now on her forgotten book

Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.

Dante Gabrielle Rossetti

A young woman is quietly sketching the painting. My heart aches with love for her youth, and for her devotion to art. I am that dreamer again.

I meander. There is so much to see but I don’t want to choose. On this, our last day in London, I want to be surprised. And so I am. When I stumble upon the Cast Court, I almost collapse. There is a full-size plaster cast of the Trajan column, commissioned by Napoleon. I’m knocked sideways by memory.

Cast reproduction of the Trajan Column (in two parts)

In 1990, I travelled to Rome to study Roman lettering. The lettering on the Trajan column is the pinnacle for anyone’s study of the form. Completed in 114 CE, these letters are considered the perfection of letter design and creation. When I was in Rome, we climbed scaffolding to get up close. The column was being restored, and we washed the inscription lovingly before making rubbings to take home. It was an act of devotion.

Lettering on the Trajan Column, originally carved 114 CE (reproduction)

Seeing it again brought back all of the passion I felt at the time. It was as though the person who I used to be walked into the room to hold me, remind me. My heart aches with love for that young woman, and her devotion to art, too.

And so somehow, the afternoon at the V & A has become a metaphor for everything I had hoped the trip would be. It’s been a time to be with friends and family, and a time to discover new places. But importantly, it’s been a time to reflect on where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going. It’s been a liminal space, a transitional moment, where I have been turning in my own revolution, while revolving around the themes in my life.

I don’t know what is coming next. But I am ready to find out.

We say goodbye to the city, head back to the Southbank and home.

Truth and Serendipity

“History is most often written from a distance, and rarely from the viewpoint of those who endured it.” Chris Killi

The National Portrait Gallery is one of my favourite places to visit in London. It is a gallery of humanity, of how we see ourselves and understand each other. If you have never been to the Portrait Gallery, you may think of it as a stuffy place that shows paintings commissioned by stuffy people to show off their status. I know I did. But The Portrait Gallery is filled with images of people from all walks of life. When done well, these portraits reveal inner lives, truths, and sensibilities.  Whenever I come to London, it is top on my list of places to go.

So I was broken-hearted to learn that it is closed for renovation until June 2023. However, I resolved that this was a good excuse to discover something new.

The Photographer’s Gallery is not far from The Portrait Gallery. I’m passionate about photography, especially black and white. My father was a photographer in the 1950s and I have spent much of the last two years pouring over his portraits of people and places in New York. The protagonist in my next book, Focus. Click. Wind, is an aspiring photographer. Yet I have never gone to The Photographer’s Gallery in London.

When I turned down Ramillies street, I was greeted by the sight of thousands of people, queuing. Were there really that many people lined up to go to photography exhibits? I cursed myself for not buying a ticket online and began to turn away. But I found it hard to believe that so many people had come out to see “Chris Killip: A Retrospective.” So I ventured on a bit further and saw the sign for the gallery with no line up out front.

a small fraction of the people queuing outside the Photographer’s Gallery

Inside, it was calm. People were enjoying Sunday morning coffee and cakes. “What’s going on out there?” I asked as I bought my ticket. “Auditions,” a young man smiled. I thought briefly about how years ago I would have eagerly joined that line up. And I thought about how much happier I was to be doing what I was doing.

I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of the Manx photographer Chris Killip (1946 – 2020.) He is known as the chronicler of the “English De-industrial Revolution,” and his photographs that show the stories of those who, in his words, had history “done to them” –– the men, women and children who lived in North Yorkshire, Northumbria, Tyneside and other harsh rural landscapes in the 1970s and 80s.

“History is most often written from a distance, and rarely from the viewpoint of those who endured it.”

Chris Killip

Killip spent years with people he photographed, and their trust in him is evidenced by the honesty of these pictures. They allowed him to access inner truths. These are profoundly moving portraits of isolated communities devastated by change.

I came away from the exhibit changed and deeply grateful for the ease and good fortune of my life. And for the serendipity that led me to discover a new Portrait Gallery.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/oct/04/this-was-england-chris-killips-pioneering-photography-in-pictures

Throwing ourselves to the fates

We did a lot of soul searching before deciding to go on an overseas trip.

Tim and I did a lot of soul searching before deciding to go on an overseas trip. We know that Covid still haunts us and are taking precautions. But the hardest decision about travel has to do with environmental concerns. It feels irresponsible to take to the skies these days.

We weighed our social responsibility against our need to reconnect with family in England. It’s been over three long years. Children have grown, elders have become elder. The joy of being hugged by friends and family is a powerful magnet.

As I write, we are sitting in the airport lounge. We have balanced some of our guilt by giving a donation to the Guatemala Stove Project, which reduces carbon by building efficient, non-toxic stoves for rural populations in Guatemala –– thus improving the lives of the people who cook over these stoves and reducing carbon in the atmosphere one stove at a time. It isn’t much, but it’s what we can do.

We also decided to spend a lot of time in the UK –– five and a half weeks –– to maximize our visit and reduce our guilt.  If the last three years has taught us anything, it is that we can’t predict what is around the corner. Who knows when we will next have a chance to make a trip like this.

Eleven years ago, we went for a year-long excursion. I was fleeing job burn out, Tim was pining with a deep nostalgia for England, and we both wanted to dig our hearts into European culture. It was a trip that changed us both profoundly as humans and artists. While this journey is much shorter it feels as monumental. Fighting the inertia of the last years has been hard. We’ve sheltered in place and been safe. But now we are stepping out into the wide world again, opening ourselves to the fates. It is exciting, thrilling, and somewhat terrifying.

I look forward to sharing the road with you. And I look forward to the changes in store.

Writing: These Are Not the Words

My new novel These Are Not the Words was officially released in North America on April 5, 2022.

Me with Scatty in our apartment in Stuyvesant Town, circa 1960. Self portrait taken with a timer.

These Are Not the Words is a semi-autobiographical novel.That means there are real people in it who do imaginary things, and imaginary people who do real things. I am not Miranda Billie Taylor, but we share a lot of history.

I started writing the story from a memory. I was taking the Picture Book Intensive at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Writing for Children and Young Adults program, and we had been given the prompt to write from an early childhood memory.

What came out was a memory of walking through the living room late at night to get a glass of water. The dark stillness, the flicker of the TV light, the sound of the record, the smell of cigarettes and marijuana are vivid. I was probably about four years old.

Nothing “happens” in that memory, but the assignment was to turn it into a picture book.

Because it was a picture book, the language was spare, evocative, and poetic. It didn’t work as a picture book, but it inspired me to begin writing vignettes, initially as prose poems and then as verse. As I began to drill down, more memories began to bubble up. I found myself writing a novel in verse.

Although I was writing from personal memories, I wrote in third person. I made the character older, and distanced her from me so I could tell, I thought, a larger, more interesting story.

It took a couple of years and many re-writes, but finally I started sending the book out on submission. The reactions were positive –– editors and agents told me that they thought it was beautifully written. (“Heartbreaking and lovely.”) But it wasn’t for their list, it was historical fiction and hard to sell, the character seemed too sophisticated. But one response really stuck out. An editor I respect they said that it felt as though the story was told from the perspective of an adult, not the child. It was verging on nostalgic. Clearly, I wasn’t “in” the story.

Out of frustration, I decided to try to write one chapter in first person. I’m not a big fan of first person and feel it is easily overused. But I chose the first chapter, the one that had started the process, just as a writing exercise. I was totally unconvinced that it would be possible. “I hate writing in first person,” I said to myself.

I remember starting to shake as I re-wrote that first chapter. Suddenly it was real, vibrant and alive. And suddenly it was a bit close for comfort.

I’ll confess to a lot of tears in the months that followed. But being a writer is not about being comfortable.

I created a book trailer for These Are Not the Words. I used some photos that my father took and a recording of Billie Holiday singing Tell Me More, recording it from a vinyl LP that belonged to my parents. I recorded myself reading a chapter of the book and then worked with a technician friend, AL Connors, to bring it all together.

Putting the trailer together was hard. The photos pull me back to those years. The living room is the one where that first memory came from, where I hear Billie, always. It’s the image and the sound that started me writing the book.

I am not Miranda Billie Taylor. But we share a lot of history.

Challenging Choices

A new family walks into my yard

In March, I marked a year of online programs at The Ottawa Children’s Theatre. I had to try to figure out what to plan for this summer. Last summer was the first summer OCT had done summer camps. We launched into running 17 online camps that were wildly creative and hugely fun. Everyone was thrilled to leap into online programming and our campers had a fabulous time.

A year later, we are all weary of our isolation and our online lives. But I had to think carefully about whether OCT was ready to make the transition back to in-person programming this summer. I had to try not to be impatient. Not my long suit.

I thought long and hard about whether to take a risk and pivot to in-person programming. I desperately want to be with students and instructors again! But in the end, there were too many uncertainties. I decided to keep the business online and stay committed to the virtual world for, hopefully, one last semester.

And yet my non-virtual life is thriving.

My writing life has taken off. I have a novel and a picture book in final edits. (I can’t wait to tell you more about them soon!) I’m working on new manuscripts, and a lecture for Canscaip for the fall. I have a wonderful and busy family who I want to spend more time with. My garden calls daily.

It’s a bit of a schizophrenic existence. I’m not entirely sure where I am at my most “real.”

I find myself wondering if this summer’s virtual camps will be the last gasps of my pandemic adventure? Or will life retain some of the positive elements that have come from my virtual life? Or, God forbid, will the variants take off and force us to endure another pandemic year?

The future is opaque. But whatever happens, I don’t want to pretend these past 16 months didn’t happen. They have deepened my relationships and priorities and made life richer in so many ways. They have helped to open new paths. Not always places I wanted to go, but places I returned from wiser.

Being Thankful

Classes started up again at The Ottawa Children’s Theatre last weekend. Teaching drama virtually is, for me, a constant challenge, both technologically and conceptually. I definitely miss our beautiful studios at Carleton Dominion Chalmers (check the profile of me and OCT at CDCC) But it is wonderful to have the opportunity to meet vibrant and thoughtful adolescents, and to get a glimpse into what the world looks like from their perspective. And the only way I can do that right now is through Zoom boxes.
 
My online drama classes have different rules from online schooling. I keep reminding students to keep their microphones ON, instead of muted. I WANT to hear their voices and make some noise! I WANT their unique contributions. I WANT them up on their feet, bursting with energy.
 
I’ve been searching out new materials that will work well in this format: group poems, where everyone can take a line and pauses don’t destroy the flow; neutral paired scenes, where students can work in Breakout Rooms to create characters and scenarios; treating each box like its own stage, with proscenium edges for entrances and exits. I’m also discovering ways of teaching drama skills that I wouldn’t do in a studio. Small movements become magnified on camera and they create moments of truth and honesty that do my heart good.

 Someone said to me recently that the most important thing about the pandemic is what you can learn about yourself. That’s certainly my case. It’s a rich time. Working with my wonderful drama students helps me to reflect and articulate what I am discovering about myself. I hope the classes do that for my students as well. As I look forward to a Thanksgiving like no other, I am grateful to be in such a caring and supportive community.

In My Zoom Studio

Dramatically Different

…the really exciting and unexpected benefit is that not only can our students come from all over the world –– we have students from Europe and across North America –– but our instructors aren’t tied to a location…

Recently, I was asked to do an interview with theHumm. theHumm is a great journal, both in print and online, that is dedicated to the arts in the Ottawa Valley. The questions that they asked gave me a chance to think about the process that we’ve gone through at OCT to make our conversion to online programming. Below is a transcript of the interview, but you can also read it online at: https://mailchi.mp/thehumm/h9si4v29uh-2052385?e=fb3712bb99

Dramatically Different: an interview with Amanda West Lewis

theHumm is reaching out to members of our Ottawa Valley community to ask how they are finding ways to use their gifts and skills in these challenging times. Today’s subject is Amanda West Lewis — actor, author, and founder of The Ottawa Children’s Theatre (OCT). We contacted her to find out how the OCT is rising to the challenge of providing creative instruction to kids during this time of social distancing.

theHumm: You live in Brooke Valley but have been active in the Ottawa youth theatre scene for many years now. Are you finally getting to work from home? If so, what have you enjoyed about it, and what are you missing?

I’ve been lucky to have Brooke Valley as my base for the last 30 years. But I’ve also lived in Ottawa off and on, which has allowed me to be part of the vibrant arts community in that city. For the past six years running The Ottawa Children’s Theatre, I’ve worked from home during the week then gone to Ottawa to work in the studios with the kids on the weekends. It’s really been the best of all possible worlds.

Now, with isolation, my schedule is basically the same, except that everything happens from my Brooke studio. I’m not travelling anywhere. I love that I’ve lowered my environmental footprint and that I have a bit more time to get into my garden.

But I do miss being in the same physical space with people – I miss the spontaneity and energy that is generated by the live space. Before Covid, we had twenty-seven classes happening every weekend. The studios buzzed with energy! I loved seeing what all of the different groups were doing. There is nothing more inspiring than watching kids create and share their stories! But now that the courses are taking place on virtually platforms, I don’t get a chance to pop in and watch what others are doing. I’m excited by the classes I am teaching, but there is that sad moment when I hit “end meeting for all” button, and everyone disappears.

I also miss talking to parents. We were very much an extended family, all dedicated to giving the children and youth the best experience we could. I miss those personal interactions.

You and your team of instructors have been busy pivoting from live classes to “LIVE Online” classes. What can people expect from this new format?

I’m working with the same core team of dedicated instructors that I’ve worked with for many years. We’ve developed a really strong curriculum that is both fun and teaches specific skills. None of that has changed. Converting to online has meant we’ve made the class sizes smaller so that we can focus on each child as an individual. We’re making sure to take time to listen to each child’s needs.

We’re running Musical Theatre, Drama, Acting, Improvisation and Writing camps this summer. We’ve designed the camps to be really interactive. There is a lot of physical and vocal activity. There is a lot of ensemble and shared work. Even the breaks keep kids occupied ––we’ve designed off-screen breaks where campers do theatre crafts. No one is just sitting and watching.

How has the technology been treating you? Have there been unexpected benefits, or major challenges you and your team have had to overcome?

The great advantage of teaching drama from home has been how personal it is. I have weekly Zoom meetings with my instructors, and it’s made us really close. We are sharing all of the joys and frustrations of our lives in isolation, as well as brainstorming how to teach drama online. It’s pushed us to be really creative problem-solvers. Also, the virtual medium is more intimate –– we’re talking to each other from our homes, with our art on the walls, our books on our bookshelves, and our pets, children, and partners in the background.

Some of this immediacy carries over to our relationships with students. You need to be attentive at all times when you are teaching online. There isn’t a moment of downtime. So the classes take on a different kind of bonding.

But the really exciting and unexpected benefit is that not only can our students come from all over the world –– we have students from Europe and across North America –– but our instructors aren’t tied to a location. I have some fabulous actors, writers and composers from New York City teaching for us this summer! They are inspiring all of us with their talent, passion and commitment.

The technological challenge in Lanark County, however, is bandwidth. I get my internet via a satellite and as those of us who live in the country know, it isn’t exactly a consistent signal. I cross my fingers every day that there won’t be a storm while I’m teaching. I’ve also had to make a decision to buy a new computer. I’ve been working on a 10-year old laptop which was fine for admin but not the best for online teaching!

Why is it important to try and keep young people engaged in artistic activities and pursuits even when we can’t physically get together?

Oh, my goodness, where do I start? Drama is all about communication. We work with language and gesture. We work with our voices, bodies and our minds to tell our stories. Is there anything more important for young people than the ability to communicate their ideas, fears, hopes and dreams? Especially now, when their voices are diminished because of isolation, young people need the opportunity to be seen by someone who isn’t a parent or teacher. Someone who can hear them and give them tools to express themselves. Someone who can help them to keep their heart and mind open.

Do you think that both children and adults will continue to perform (and watch others perform) while we are not allowed to gather in person?

I think that stories are more important than ever. I think we will always need to watch and listen to other people’s stories. Through story, we come to understand who we are. Story gives us a way to put the puzzle pieces of life into some kind of coherent whole. And I think that people will always need to share their stories, as they have done since the beginning of human times. We became a story telling species the moment we created language, the moment that we understood the concept of time, of birth and of death. I don’t think that isolation will stop that. In fact, I think the need has been exponentially increased.

What are you personally most concerned about at this time?

I’m concerned about the children who have fallen through the cracks. There are countless children who have no access to computers, let alone the kinds of opportunities I am talking about. When we were on site, I was able to give scholarships and bursaries to kids of need. But now? Who is looking after those children? Who is enriching their lives? There are so many children whose isolation is a nightmare. They are falling behind socially and academically. It is taking a terrible toll on their formative years.

There is a huge disparity between people in terms of how they are able to navigate the pandemic. This inequality in society will, I think, become even more apparent as we transition to the next phase, whatever that phase is.

What are you optimistic about in terms of what happens to the arts during and after the pandemic?

As I’ve said, I think the arts are necessary to give people the skills to understand and appreciate the world around them. I’m incredibly moved by what artists are doing online right now – the kinds of things that are being shared are powerful testaments to the resilience and empathy of human beings.

We are going to have huge challenges coming out of the pandemic. We won’t be going back to the way things used to be. Covid and the deep inequalities of our society require us to make major changes. Re-imagining our lives is not going to be easy. But I think that the arts will give us a voice to build that new world.

Teaching Drama Online

Learning together and staying connected

We’ve just finished our first week of Online Spring Semester classes at The Ottawa Children’s Theatre. What a whirlwind! In the past 3 weeks we’ve designed new programming, got it up online, offered it and filled it! There are 183 creative and energized children aged 3 – 18 taking drama classes, acting classes, musical theatre, writing for theatre, theatre criticism and more.

I’m learning so much! It’s been really exciting to see which of our drama exercises translate onto the Zoom medium. The artist/instructors are doing warmups: breathing, articulation and resonance. We’re playing “Pass the Face,” “What am I Doing?”and the “Tableau Game.” We’re teaching dance moves, character development, scene studies and vocal techniques. We’re re-imagining our spaces and creating individual set designs. Most importantly we’re laughing, and we’re moved to tears by the power of theatre.

It isn’t all working perfectly. Sometimes the internet goes down. Sometimes someone gets accidentally shut out in the waiting room. Devices behave differently and sometimes in mysterious ways. The time delay makes teaching singing really challenging! We miss being together and miss the way that we were able to create stories with our bodies and voices in the same space.

But we’re doing this together – artist/instructors and students – helping each other. Our students have great ideas. They are getting to know each other and to trust this new way of working. We are all learning and playing, experimenting and discovering.

We’re staying connected. One Zoom box at a time.

pass the face Emily's Acting up

 

Creative Adaptations

“Theatre people are trained to be flexible, resourceful and resilient. We know how to improvise when our scene partner forgets her lines, know how to step in when the leading man breaks his leg … The show, indeed, must go on …”

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog. My life fluctuates between my role as the Artistic Director of The Ottawa Children’s Theatre, and my life as a working writer. I get confused sometimes on how much I should, or shouldn’t, mix my worlds. But right now, in the midst of self-isolation, I am trying to work on wearing multiple hats at the same time. So with that understanding, I am going to publish my Ottawa Children’t Theatre blogs here, on my Stepping off the Treadmill site. Granted, OCT can be a bit of a treadmill for me, but it’s my treadmill and it is decorated just how I would want a treadmill to look.

For those of you who don’t know that part of my world, here’s a taste of the transitions that have encouraged me to dig deep and find a new approach to my creativity.

On March 16, when I realized that we had to postpone, or perhaps cancel, our studio classes, I wanted to curl into a ball and stick my fingers in my ears. We’d just finished fabulous open house presentations and were looking forward to a spring with the highest enrolment ever. My immediate response to the Covid crisis was that I wanted to give up.
 
“Well, you could do that mom,” said my eldest son, “OR you could get together with your instructors and see if they have any ideas.”
 
And thus, our first Zoom instructor meeting took place and OCT Online was born.
OCT zoom photo 1
 
Theatre people are trained to be flexible, resourceful and resilient. We know how to improvise when our scene partner forgets her lines, know how to step in when the leading man breaks his leg, know how to give our best performances in the middle of a snowstorm with only two people in the audience. The show, indeed, must go on, and we spend our lives training for these moments. So, it should have come as no surprise to me that our instructors were ready to leap in with new ideas and new approaches.
 
None of us had ever taught online before, but within a week, we had 11 trial classes up and running. The stipulation was that they had to be interactive. I thought that it was important that kids stuck at home in isolation see familiar faces, sing familiar songs and do familiar drama games. We basically approached our Zoom studios as we do our on-site studios. We soon discovered that we could “Pass the Face” from Zoom window to Zoom window; we could throw and catch imaginary balls; we could meet everyone’s pets and stuffties and act out animal scenes; we could write and perform monologues; we could teach choreography, songs, scene study and improvisation. In short, we could run our regular drama classes, albeit with new ways of working.
 
This week, we’ve launched 30 online courses filled with dramatic fun. We’ve adapted existing courses and created entirely new ones. In the space of 3 weeks, we’ve reinvented our business. And best yet, we’re still able to continue to work with our students!
 
Our online classes will have the same qualities that you’ve come to expect from Ottawa Children’s Theatre –– professionalism, empathy and creativity. But we’ll have something else, too: a renewed excitement about the value of drama skills to teach adaptability. We and our students are the proof.
Musical theatre1

Dream: The Joy of Creating with Oily Cart. Part Three: The Bounce

Oily Cart’s new show is The Bounce, a show that was developed with the trampoline company Ockham’s Razor. I went to see it at Arts Depot in north London several days after the course in Ashford (Dream: The Joy of Creating, Part Two). The Bounce is performed for children with special needs on large round trampolines.

When I got to the studio, I immediately saw that a colourful space had been screened off from the rest of the building. When Oily Cart moves into a theatre, they create a space outside of the studio, an “airlock”, where children wait before going in to see the show. “Theatre begins when they get off the bus,” says Tim Webb. While waiting in the airlock, the children can listen to music, play with balls, and manipulate design programs on electronic tablets. Slinkys and various “fidgets” (toys that feel good to play with — often squishy or soft plastic plastic) were hanging on strings from the ceiling. Actors in bright orange, white and black costumes were gently interacting with the children.

There are two versions of The Bounce – one for children with PMLD and one for children with ASD, and the actors make adjustments as necessary. The day that I went, The Bounce was being performed for children with PMLD and there were six children in wheelchairs waiting in the airlock area. They were brought into the studio two at a time. The actors, who had been told the children’s names and diagnostic needs in the moments before, spoke and then sang to them, focusing all of their attention on them, addressing them personally and individually.

Each child was lifted (usually with a hydraulic sling) from his/her wheelchair and placed on a trampoline. Those who could walk were helped up a soft ramp and rolled onto the surface. Caregivers tentatively sat in the middle of the trampoline, braced by a bean bag chair. Then two actors joined them on each trampoline and they began to bounce, carefully monitoring the child’s reaction. As they bounced they sang wonderful music inspired by traditional Syrian tunes, accompanied by a musician playing a Kanun (like a zither), a drum and a gong. Different colours and sizes of balls were bounced or rolled for the children. Large round screens became surfaces that balls were rolled on. The child’s face was video projected on the screens in real time. The children smiled, crowed, made all variety of sounds, pushed on the trampolines, rolled and expressed themselves in hundreds of different ways. The caregivers giggled and relaxed, eventually letting themselves enjoy the fun.

Each performance lasted between 15 – 20 minutes and in that time each child was the complete focus of the actors and musicians. Even the stage manager was part of the team. The goodbye songs featured each child’s name, as they were gently placed back into their wheelchairs.

Watching The Bounce gave me a chance to see some of the things we had done in the workshop put into practice (see Dream: The Joy of Creating, part two). A bell was used to create moments of silence and stillness. Design elements were simple – large stripes, balls, circles – and the lighting transitions helped to guide the mood changes. Simple repetition encouraged the kids to understand what was happening and to feel confident. The actors graduated from spoken word to singing to spoken word, helping the children to make the transition in and out of the performance.

Each performer responded to the particular needs of the child, singing or speaking their name, holding them, really seeing them for who they are. The children were not generic. They were individuals, treated with respect and affection. Mark (The Voice) was one of the actors. He held the children’s hands and feet gently on his resonant chest, making everyone laugh.

With thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, Professional Development Grant for making it possible for me to be a part of the dream.

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