The PaperBoats is about theatre-making and partnerships - local, national and international. We're not a theatre company - we're a platform for performance generation and connection. We're in the process trialing our ideas so that we can share, in practical terms, how things might work. Our objective? Lovingly hand-crafted and beautiful performances for children. Our vessel? The PaperBoats - venturing to unseen places.
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July sees The PaperBoats beginning an 8-week devising process with acting, design and technical students from the Adelaide College of the Arts. I can't wait!
The students will co-create a new work (a Tu2tu show) alongside material being generated by other ensembles in Adelaide, South Australia and in Austin, Texas.
Theatre-maker, Roz Hervey joins us as an associate director and designer/theatre-maker, Geoff Cobham, joins us as a provocateur.
photo of Roz Hervey by Sam Oster www.slivertrace.com
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a tu2tu party
It is wonderful to welcome the fresh ideas of Roz Hervey and Geoff Cobham for the next phase of the Adelaide development. I love the friction and spark created by rubbing up against the experiences and passions of other artists.
Across our first two meetings together, we found our passions united around the idea of exploring two-ness through the notion of “a party” and the associations it gives rise to - celebration, initiation, ritual, giving, receiving, sharing, change, expectation, acceptance and belonging.
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The Cobham-Hervey’s have an almost legendary reputation for knowing how to celebrate important occasions.
The most recent was Roz's 50th Birthday - a vibrant and surprising immersion, jam-packed with festivities, performances, feasting, games, ceremonies, re-enactments, music, dance, ritual and spectacle - all linked to Roz, her life and her loves
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venturing to unseen places
The Tu2tu performance-making process is unlike anything I've done before.
In Adelaide, for example, there are three versions of the project evolving independently:
- The K+S Tu2tu Show (with Katrina Lazaroff & Stephen Noonan)
- The Aldinga Tu2tu Show (with community artists, Juliette & Scott Griffin)
- The AC Arts Tu2tu Show (with student actors, designers and technicians)
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Ideas and content are being shared across the different iterations of the project.
I’m fascinated to see how these three threads of activity might feed each other and what new possibilities and partnerships may result.
We float the boats and hope to be challenged and surprised.
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so why 3-8 year olds?
For the last 15 years, I’ve been making theatre for early childhood audiences. I’m pleased to say, “I’ve found my place!”
“Why?” you say. “Surely having under eights as your theatre audience limits the possibilities for you as an artist?”
Absolutely not! It’s a realm of artistic endeavour, which is infinitely challenging, profoundly important and richly rewarding.
Never in our lives are humans more developmentally open to arts-experience?
NEVER!
It’s a unique, short-lived window of opportunity.
photo by Sam Oster www.slivertrace.com
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the window
Young children see the world through fresh eyes. They are largely unfettered by experience. They think radically because they know “no better.” They reside freely in their imagination. They are open to "the new" because everything is new for them. They play and explore and learn naturally and joyfully. Learning has yet to become a task!
Children respond to theatre experiences with such immediacy, joy and exuberance, you cannot doubt its power and influence.
It is a unique window of opportunity that is never repeated because around the age of 8, children’s connections with the inner-world of imaginative play shifts to an engagement with the challenges of the external world and that special window of opportunity has passed.
If ever anyone questions me on the future of theatre, I invite them to sit in an audience of children and be amazed!
The next best thing is to watch Patch Theatre's beautiful short film and hear Artistic Director, Naomi Edwards talk about the special connection between live theatre and children.
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click on the image to view
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the artist in the child and the child in the artist
There’s a wonderful synergy between the world of artists and the world of children. As artists we want to be able to see and feel and play and explore like a child and then apply to our discoveries, the experience and analytical capacities we’ve developed as adults.
Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. Norman Podhoretz
image by Sam Oster www.slivertrace.com
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whimsy + logic = creativity
I think creativity is one of those notions we love to claim without really understanding its nature.
Whimsy is dream and flights of the imagination. It is conjured by impulsive, fanciful, out of control thinking. Its opposite, logic is controlled reason, marked by rigor, judgement and common sense.
When making a new work, the creative process is initially all about whimsy. We tinker, explore and invent through play and happy accident. We let go of our need to be in control. There are no wrong or right outcomes. Just play and the accumulation of material.
alan fletcher - the art of looking sideways
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The content, generated by whimsy, is then organised by logic and shaped into a meaningful outcome.
Whimsy is the generator. Logic is the organiser. Creative processes require whimsy and logic in equal measure.
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creativity struck dumb!
Fritjov Kafka suggests that contemporary culture has consistently favoured:
logic over intuition,
facts over fantasy,
knowledge over imagination,
competition over co-operation,
expansion over conservation,
the scientific over the spiritual …
Logic dominates!
Why? Because logic is much easier to deal with. It’s solid and reliable and you know what you’re getting. You can measure it and grade it, so it works very well for educational institutions, businesses and policy makers. People feel in-control with logic. It feels safe. It is safe!
The travesty is that without whimsy, creativity is struck dumb!
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Sue Woolfe wrote a great little book on creativity called The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady.
Again and again I discovered that I couldn't create fiction when I was in conscious control of it. The work seemed stifled and artificial and the writing bored me. I found that I had to put all ideas of control out of my mind in order to write. The writing became a process of chaos and uncertainty, full of accidents and jubilant leaps of the imagination. But the outcome seemed orderly and right.
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Dr Nancy Andreasan is a world leader in research on creativity.
She describes the association cortices in our brains as little hubs that do the hunting and gathering of ideas, experiences, information, feelings. They help us "join the dots."
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Nancy identified that these hunter/gathering hubs in the brain are highly developed in creative people.
She also found that the association cortices were all fired up when unconscious thinking was occurring.
The science supports what most artists will tell you - unconscious, uncontrolled thinking is connected to creativity in a BIG way.
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turning fear on its ear!
When fear of failure kicks in, we tend to take control, which means creativity is stifled as we settle for things we already know.
To keep creativity alive in our processes, we need to turn our paradigm of fear on its ear, especially early on in the process.
When fear kicks in too early, my mantra is “Dave - let go of your need to be in control!”
I’m confident in the knowledge that creative ideas reside in the dot-connecting, happy accident realms of the unconscious mind.
image: Dave Gadsden
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flip-flopping between whimsy and logic
I know that while I’m flip-flopping between whimsy and logic on a daily basis, the creativity challenge is to keep open and alive to the amazing capacity of whimsy to open us to invention and possibility in a logic-dominated world.
Robert Le Page is one of my favourite theatre directors …
I believe that the only real invention comes out of chaos - so it's better not to know where you’re going when you start off if you want to accomplish something good.
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If you wish to respond, comment on, query, discuss or contribute to any of these ideas, please email me: dave@thepaperboats.com
To find out more about The PaperBoats please check out provocations 1 to 6 and view the website - http://www.thepaperboats.com
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This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory group.
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