The perspective of transformation

Commonly, there appear to be two dominant perspectives that interact with the purposes of transformation: the top-down and the bottom-up approach. Osnes (2013, p.40) offers the definition that:

‘A top-down perspective assumes that a funding organisation, NGO, or government defines the objectives and subject matter for an applied theatre project and then works for or with a community to achieve their desired change. A bottom-up perspective assumes the subject group defines and acts on its member’s self identified needs and aspirations throughout the entire applied theatre process’.

The bottom-up approach tends to represent the favoured approach for applied theatre practice (Baxter & Low, 2017: Barnes, 2014: Jackson & Vine, 2013) and Jackson and Vine (2013, p.56) describe it as being:

‘built upon grass-roots, sustainable partnerships and relationships wherein both parties can engage in pedagogical and artistic discussions, learning from each other and developing innovative, co- intentional practices, frequently addressing the same challenges, using different but complimentary methods’.

In applied theatre, the bottom-up approach is captured when partners have specialist knowledge of a group/community long before they actually work on the dramatic material, and there are many examples of applied practice where the bottom-up

68 approach is used (e.g. Living Earth Nigeria Foundation's Community Theatre Initiative in Cross River State, NIE4 Asia, The Laedza Batanani Project).

The top-down approach runs counter to the bottom-up approach which can be ‘curriculum-centred, outcome-driven and funder-controlled’ (Jackson & Vine, 2013, p.58) and can cause challenges to the intentions of achieving transformation. Although the aim of applied work may be to ‘progress’ or ‘transform’ the participant, there is a simultaneous risk that under a top-down approach applied theatre’s transformation is on rather than for the participants and can instead prove ‘bad, dangerous, damaging, oppressive, poison, disappointing, and propaganda’ (Gallagher, 2010: Saebo, 2009: Jackson, 2007: Neelands, 2007: Thompson, 2006: Nicholson, 2005: Ackroyd, 2001). The top-down perspective suggests that ‘applied theatre, in some cases, actually exacerbates existing problems by inadvertently supporting institutions in power’ (Thompson, 2009, p.118). Often practitioners ‘believe their efforts can help make a change in the world, despite knowing how much distance they have from the problems in which they want to intervene. They want to make a change to a world created out of their heads’ (Wickstrom in Snynder-Young, 2013, p.34). Ultimately top-down messages are at risk of promoting results that participants find difficult to relate to themselves, ‘in this top-down manner the theatre becomes didactic, where messages are put across to audiences, often by practitioners who are not from the community, with no discussion, debate or community participation’ (White, 2013, p.302).

There are two parts to the challenges of a top-down approach. Firstly the top-down perspective is to ‘over-serve the most advantaged people in this country, becoming irrelevant to the many, in favour of the few’ (Jubb in Gardner, 2016). Secondly we impose values that are not always shared or beneficial to a particular community. This

69 raises bigger questions about the politics of applied theatre, questioning:

‘If applied theatre is socially transformative, is it explicit what kind of society is envisioned? If the motive is individual or personal transformation, is it something which is done to the participants, with them or by them? Whose values and interests does the transformation serve?’ (Nicholson, 2015, p.18)

If the perspective of transformation is served by the ‘outsider’ of the community from a top-down perspective, without directly involving the community on the decisions being made for their benefit, a participant may not want to be involved in a project that deems to know them better than they know themselves (Thompson, 2003). There is a further risk that ‘when thinking through the values of applied theatre, it may be well intentioned and generously given, but it may also be an expression of hierarchy, an imposition of values that are not always shared’ (Nicholson, 2005, p.5. See chapter 1.2).

Anne Davis’s 2009 company, Time Slip, provides an example of the limitations aggravated by the ‘outsider’. The project used Homer’s Odyssey as a prompt and infused improvisation into a care system-which became known as Shipwrecked (later the Penelope Project). The company stated that ‘it was clear from early meetings that the title had too many negative connotations for elders, they did not want to engage with a project that negatively captured their situation’ (in Basting, 2009, pp.168-170). In cases such as this, if the practitioner ‘cannot speak for or speak from these fields of reflection and are only ever visitors within the disciplines into which we apply our theatre’ (Thompson, 2003, p.20), the practitioner will hold a limited knowledge of the needs of the community they are working with. The work can therefore be seen as ‘self-serving and imposing, destructive and complicit with agendas that could potentially cause considerable harm to the recipients of the research’ (O’Connor et al,

70 2009, p.5).

The view of transformation and its realisation amongst communities needs to be carefully considered, as many people have multiple affiliations, needs and values; and one method or model applied by the practitioner may not engage all participants at all times or may not be transformative to all participants involved in the project (Nicholson, 2005). It will be important to remember that depending on the perspective of transformation, it can bring with it a range of fraught complications that make the intentions of applied work vulnerable. The findings here highlight the need for a deeper consideration of how applied projects are promoting transformation as the work may be limited because of the perspective of transformation, especially if it has not been developed in concert with the perspective of the communities for whom the work is aimed. Conditions need to be right, the individual also needs to play a role in the transformation and discussions between the practitioner and participant also need to be collaborative (Thornton, 2012a).