Applied Theatre Centre?

Had a meeting with Trevor to try and consolidate some of our work and also begin to work towards a strategy. It feels wonderful to work here at present, but there are so many projects, initiatives and partnerships that we risk missing the tricks if we don't begin to lay out our objectives and possibilities.

Tfac is obviously a major focus and I'm keen to push on with shaping the way St Mary's students can have a positive impact on the development of the Community Theatre Centre in Lilongwe. We're also looking at delivering other key component parts of the course with outside agencies. I hope The Comedy School will deliver the Prison Drama module for us next year at Level 3 and that the National Trust will develop a module in Drama and Heritage with us during the spring and I'd love to keep the relationship with the Creative Learning department at Richmond Theatre going through the Schools Based Project.

We also want to keep the ever wonderful Spiral close to us and I'm going to take ten or so students out in December to do a short week's work in Cantabria on arguments surrounding the new legislation allowing for the exhumation of the old civil war graves, with Carol and Chris, perhaps as a taster for bigger things in the future. Meanwhile Matt's work on the Robben Island project and Trevor's Cancer Tales continue to develop.

There are local projects too, both Richmond Council and the Kingston International Youth Arts Festival have approached us in recent weeks asking if we'd be interested in developing work for them.

Trevor thinks we need to become an Applied Theatre centre. A place both for consultancy and research. Once all the various strands of our work are tied together we make quite an impressive bundle. Can we turn this into something sustainable, a place where we explore community cohesion through theatre making and perhaps begin to embed the notion of storytelling into local cultural practice?

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