Polarbear – creator of “Mouth Open Story Jump Out” at Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Sat 22 & Sun 23 Mar – 11.30am & 2.30pm Mon 24 Mar – 1.20pm & 4pm. Suitable for ages 8 – 12
Q. Can you tell us a little about your history and how you came to be doing what you’re doing?
I’m a writer from Birmingham. I come from a back ground of rhyming and hip-hop, and had been doing that for a while, I’ve always been writing stories. I went off to Glastonbury (to perform) and someone there putting was together a tour, choosing an artist to represent different regions of the country and they were commissioning them to write a story and I was chosen to represent the West Midlands and that was my first commission.
The piece and ended up doing quite well and I was then asked what I wanted to do and I said I had an idea for a story that was an hour long, and they agreed it. So working with the Arts Council and a representative from the theatre in Birmingham, that was the first theatrical thing that I developed with a director and there was a live artist doing stuff and so I was introduced to theatre that way.
Since then I have done lots of stuff, a couple more adult monologues, three in total, worked a lot with other theatre artists, and along side that with doing spoken words bits and writing for other people and working on various theatre things. It all started in about 2005, so its been since then until now.
Q. So its been quite a natural process for you, something that has developed quite freely?
Yes, exactly. It wasn’t a plan, I literally fell into this. I fell into the form of what spoken word was and got excited about what that could be. But it was always like a short 5 or 10 minute thing so it felt like it was a tool sharpening thing, it always felt like it was working towards writing longer stories.
The ultimate goal in the back of my mind always was to do writing, and performing only as and when the piece felt like it, I don’t dream of being on stage. It’s the immediacy of being onstage that’s fun and was always exciting, that I could write something the night before and get up and do it, and people kept asking me to do stuff and so I carried on.
But the real thing for me was the actual making of work, so as soon as I started collaborating with musicians and directors and designers and writing people, then it became that much more exciting. So in terms of straight spoken word stuff I don’t do that much and I haven’t for the last year or two. Partly because I’ve been so busy with longer stories and writing for other forms and but partly because, it feels like a way of testing ideas and the way certain things feel to say and what I can do with my voice and personality.
So in terms of where this Mouth Open Story Jump Out idea came from, I felt like I was good at what I was doing, I was enjoying creating worlds but the most fun I was having was when I was working with other people to generate stories and ideas, particularly young people. I was doing a lot of school stuff and teaching a course at the Round-House by this point and I’d been collaborating with lots of other artists from people like Akram Khan who’s a contemporary dancer who called on me to work on words, I’d worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company to work on writing for performance.
So this piece was born out of the idea that I just liked the idea of starting people’s stories, particularly young peoples stories. Its aimed at 9 and 10 year olds. I remember that it was an age when I was writing lots of stories. I was writing loads and loads at the end of junior school and then I went to secondary school and it kind of stopped. Its a real transitional period, there much chance to write.
Q. Do you think that age group, year 9, 10, 11 year olds is a particularly poignant time in children’s lives in terms of their imagination developing and their own stories?
I think it’s the pinnacle. And I think it’s the pinnacle in terms of the marriage of them having loads of ideas and not undermining them immediately yourself based on what you think other people are going to think. So the idea of the piece was to stimulate anybody who was even thinking about stories, if you even just like stories you can just come in and enjoy the thing for a story, or if your are inclined to thinking about generating your own stories or having ideas then you leave hopefully infused with these ideas or the need or the inspiration to do your own. That’s at the heart of it, that you leave with the start of the story. To the point where I’ve developed it now so that you leave with this little booklet of exercises and games to play to start stories. I’m convinced that the pressure of the start is what holds a lot of people back and not playing.
Q. So instead of enjoying the process and finding what emerges, the pressure to produce ‘something’ is what is inhibiting?
People look at blank paper and people are afraid of marking it, paper becomes precious but paper is made to be played with. We put all this pressure on it and I’m not saying its not hard work, I’m saying that I make a mess and play at the beginning and then find the bit that I think has something in it. Then the hard work and the crafting starts but I think that if you are over thinking at the beginning then you squash an idea which is often the sentiment or the heart of the piece.
Q. So it’s about presenting the idea of story writing and formulating ideas as something accessible and as something which should be fun and about play?
It’s the dialogue, it’s about that dialogue. In my own little way this piece is about the idea that what I do for a living didn’t even exist when I was a kid. I had no possible idea that this could even be a possible idea, let alone something that I could do. I’m not famous but I work in the arts, I’m getting to do what I want for a living. And there is this idea about what you can and can’t do and what should be done. So make something, even if you don’t want to do it for a living, it’s the satisfaction of making anything. And a story, what could be more immediate than running with an idea to some sort of satisfaction.
*(And the story evolves around me filling a gap that was left by an absent parent and then kind of losing control of what I used to fill that gap with making up stuff and then trying to learn whether I’m a good story-teller or just a liar. Hopefully it’s the former. At an age where it doesn’t make sense, the character in the story I play learns through error and getting caught up in the process.)
Q. How would you describe Mouth Open Story Jump Out? What are people coming to see?
It’s me telling the story of a 10 year old boy whose dad disappears and he ends up making up a story about what he thinks happened and then feels the effect of what that story does and gets carried away with what that feeling is and ends up getting into a complete and utter mess and the lesson that he’s learnt through that. But the experience of coming is hopefully that you gain a sense of someone who is just massively passionate about stories, getting you to give ideas and trying to pass on that enthusiasm. And through playing with the stories, because we all play together, I need the audience to play when they come for ideas to come and so your involved in that way and we are all telling the story together, in the sense that everyone’s part of it.
Q. So it’s a personal piece for you? How do you feel that that actually affects the way that the audience responds to you and to the piece and the interaction that happens?
I think it’s like anything else, it’s quite simple and quite straight-forward and I think it’s essential to it. Depending on who you are there are levels or layers to it that mean something or don’t mean something to you. And you might just come and enjoy the fun of someone frenetically telling a story and ask your help and for some details along the way. Or you might just be looking at or get a sense of the sentiment that I’m trying to put across, or it might be a mix of those two. The story might end up being about loss, it might be quite a sad story that hopefully has a hopeful ending but like anything else that’s any good, there are layers to it.
Q. So your motivation in producing the show, in terms of what you want children and the audience to take away from it – can you tell me a little about those ideas?
It’s the notion that you cant do it – ‘I cant do that, I cant make up stories’ Anyone can do. Anyone can have a go. To do it well requires a level of skill and dedication and hard work but at the beginning you do not have to be setting out to write the Odessey to enjoy making up a story and the collaboration of creating a story. The most fun I have is when you have parents and children there because you know then that a dialogue is going to be started and existing on the way home or over dinner. I want people talking about ideas for stories, realising that’s its fun, that you can access things you are thinking about through a story, you can deal with issues through a story, you can just mess around and pass time through a story. And in the moment when you are talking to someone generating an idea, part of its coming out of me and part of its coming out of you and it lands on the table there are moments within that that I think are musical, they are absolutely perfect because there is nothing in between, just the idea itself, so that you don’t have to feel anything other than ‘I did that’ and its so immediate. It’s magic.
Q. So it obviously a hugely pleasurable thing for you?
It changes. The story doesn’t stay the same. The adult monologues are a different experience they are scripted, there is live musical accompaniment and there are hopefully nuances in the way they work together and so it kind of changes, but in essence it is the same thing. Which is great but once you’ve performed it and it’s exactly as I wanted it to be, once that has happened something in it is sort of dead because you have done it and that satisfaction does come back from doing it to a group of people who haven’t seen it before, but to me that’s not so satisfying. This (Mouth Open Story Jump Out) is more like a conversation to me, it changes. The meat of the story stays the same, but the emphasis and where things go off on tangents and the bits that get used and the feel of it, feels as if it is different every time and that makes it alive and that’s why its fun to do.
Q. I noticed on your website that you encourage people to send you the story that they have continued.
I get sent stuff all the time and it’s lovely. I had an email from a mother telling me that her and her son were still trying to work out what a lie actually is, and that over dinner they had conceived of a whole story together. And that’s amazing. I find that very exciting.
Q. Do you think there is enough theatre that gets children thinking creatively and positively?
I felt like there was something needed. I was thinking about myself at 10 and the things that I’ve seen for young people weren’t what would have properly captured me, so I tried to make something that would have properly got me at 10. And I think this is and does. In terms of whether there is enough, I don’t know, I think if something is exciting and well made then it’s going to make you start thinking about stuff.
Q. You obviously been in your home town of Birmingham and been in London with Battersea Arts Centre and at the Southbank. How much do the audiences change?
We’ve been all over we went to Dublin and everywhere, we did the Royal Tour.
In terms of the way things change. Yes, very much so. I’ve been to small places that get nothing, schools in particular (as part of the Royal Tour) and they don’t even know what to call it and that’s great because it adds to the magic and the mystery of it I guess but it can also end up leaving you feeling like you don’t want to just do the piece and then just leave. Which is why it became so important to develop this pack and hopefully have this longer reaching legacy and for it to be the start of things. Some places are louder and some places are more reserved, I guess that’s the only real difference. It depends on the school not necessarily the geography.
Q. How do you feel generally that children are catered for by the arts?
I think that it’s a tricky thing. I think like anything else, I think some of the brackets are very broad. If I was 12 and my 8 year old little sister was coming to see it with me, immediately I don’t like it as much because that thing of ownership and that thing of inspiration comes from feeling like you’ve found something that is just for me. And then you get a bit older and people assume that once you get to 13 or 14 you just want adult stuff, which may be true to a large extent but there is something about something that is specifically for this age. I think that when you condense things it enhances the experience for that kind of age which is exactly what I wanted to do. And I think there is a lot of stuff that is so concerned with hitting a wider bracket of ages that you end up kind of doing neither nor, where its entertaining but that it doesn’t have any punch in the same way.
Q. So things can tend to be too ambiguous?
I’ve seen some amazing installation stuff, the room full of sand at the Tate, and these amazing experiences are in the moment, and then you leave and maybe think about and talk about them, or you’ve got for example the things that you’re being told in a story which feels great in the moment as well, and make you think afterwards but you weren’t involved.
But hopefully this (Mouth Open Story Jump Out) feels like a conversation, it feels like somebody has come round and said I need you to be here for this to work. I did one the other day at Battersea Arts Centre with 4 kids, a boy who was 10 and his younger sister who was 9 and his other younger sister who was 8 and then the middle sisters best friend, they were right at the front, it was just me and these four and it was the best one I’ve ever done. Within 5 minutes they are saying stuff to me and it is clear that it is theirs. What better compliment than somebody owning a character that you have just introduced to them. So if you do want to you can participate. That’s what mattered to me when I was 10, I didn’t want to be told – I wanted to choose. If I don’t want to I don’t have to but if I do want to I can and we have created these ideas and I can leave them there if I want to or I can carry them on.
Q. So the motivation is about the experience, of the building and about creating the thing?
Yes. So it’s exciting because you want more and I am the happiest with this more than anything else I have done. And you want to sing and dance about it and let people know what it is but it kind of just speaks for itself, its clear what it is very quickly, within the first 5 minutes. Either you go with it or you don’t go but either way it’s enjoyable and if you do go with it then it is the start of something.
Q. Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about that we haven’t talked about.
A lot of people ask after the show about whether I’ve written other stuff and if there is stuff that they can have. My fist novel came out at the end of January, its for a slightly older people, so there are a lot of people who have read the book that are coming to see it now. So it makes me laugh that teenagers having read the book are coming, and grown ups even, and I’m all for that as long as people commit to joining in and when they do it has an impact.
Tape by Steven Camden is published by Harper Collins and available in all good bookshops.
Polarbear’s Mouth Open Story Jump Out is at Brighton Dome on Sat 22 & Sun 23 Mar – 11.30am & 2.30pm Mon 24 Mar – 1.20pm & 4pm
Studio Theatre, suitable for ages 8 – 12
To book tickets please visit the Brighton Dome website.
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