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In this conversation Naomi talks to Theatre Director Tanushka Marah about how she ensures people have a positive experience.
Tanushka talks about how you are not just making a show, you are also building a community and creating a culture. She talks about how there is a positive experience that comes from the striving and the struggle for the collective discovery of reaching for the impossible.
She talks about the conventions that she has in place during sessions, such as a check in, technique work, ensemble working before starting to rehearse. She reflects on being able to observe the relationships between people in the room and seeing that these are positive and reciprocal for people.
No matter how big the cast is she tries to check in with everyone individually. She places great importance on the space and time before rehearsals or in the breaks, noticing the people who are on their own looking awkward and checking in with them.
She talks about the challenges when there is so much diversity in the room. There needs to be continual care and support to keep people engaged. She talks about the importance of getting people to work together independently so that they create their own relationships with each other. When friendships start to form the social glue also keeps people happy and engaged with the process.
Tanushka talks about the importance of making people feel like there are no stupid ideas. It can also be as simple as ensuring that people are fed and watered. There needs to be camaraderie and playfulness in the room. It is a real duty to generate a positive atmosphere. People love the joy of co-creating and working together, without observation, spreading out across the whole building. Even the ideas that don’t get used help you see where you are not going and are invaluable.
Creators and Guests
What is Let's Create: Do We Know How To??
A deep dive into the qualities, skills and responsibilities that artists, as leaders of co-created art, embody and practice in their work.
Theatre Critic Lyn Gardner 'wholeheartedly recommends' this podcast :)
Episode 1: Open and Humble Ned Glasier from Company Three
Episode 2: Grounded and Energetic Sita Thomas from Fio
Episode 3: Empathy and Care for Others Tashi Gore from Glass Performance
Episode 4: Adaptable and Flexible Kelly Green
Episode 5: True to Yourself Conrad Murray from Battersea Arts Centre’s Beatbox Academy
Episode 6: Patient Kane Husbands from The Pappy Show
Episode 7: Holding Space Tanushka Marah from ThirdSpace Theatre
Episode 8: Managing Energy Levels Jack Parris from Brighton People’s Theatre
Episode 9: Listening and Communicating Dan Thompson Freelance Artist
Episode 10: Inclusive Language Kane Husbands from The Pappy Show
Episode 11: Art Form Skills Conrad Murray from Battersea Arts Centre’s Beatbox Academy
Episode 12: Facilitation Skills Sarah Blowers from Strike a Light
Episode 13: Safety Kelly Green Freelance Artist Released
Episode 14: Safeguarding Jason Camilleri from Wales Millenium Centre
Episode 15: Being Accountable Sarah Blowers from Strike a Light Released
Episode 16: Rights and Ethics Ned Glasier from Company Three Released
Episode 17: Know your limits and involve other people Jess Thorpe from Glass Performance * Coming soon
Episode 18: To create a structure/purpose Jack Parris from Brighton People’s Theatre * Coming soon
Episode 19: To know an appropriate amount about who you are working with Dan Thompson Freelance Artist * Coming soon
Episode 20: To ensure people have a positive experience Tanushka Marah from ThirdSpace Theatre * Coming soon
Naomi: Welcome to Let's Create: Do We Know How To? My name is Naomi Alexander, I'm the CEO and Artistic Director of Brighton People's Theatre. Last year I got some funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of my CLAW fellowship to do some research into the qualities, skills and responsibilities that artists as leaders hold in making co-creative work. This podcast series explores each of the findings in a little bit more depth with a different artist. Welcome to this episode of Let's Create: Do We Know How To? I'm joined today by my guest, Tanushka Murrah.
Tanushka is the Artistic Director of the award-winning Third Space Theatre Company. Welcome, Tanushka. It's lovely to have you with me today on this episode, which is all about the final responsibility that the research findings came up with, which was to ensure that people have a positive experience. So I'm wondering if you can reflect on this responsibility and can you tell me why you think this is important for artists leading co-creative practice?
Tanushka: I guess you're not just making a show, you're building a community and creating a culture and what is the point in that if people aren't happy? There's different forms of happiness, of course, and there's comfort and there's jolliness, but there's also the happiness of striving together for something and working hard and excelling or failing together. Whatever it is you're doing, it's a very active form of positivity.
Naomi: Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting that you talk about the happiness or the positive experience that comes from that striving and the challenge and the sense of difficulty that a lot of co-creative practice involves. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Tanushka: I feel like the striving and the struggle is the joy and the show is the by-product. It's that collective dream and ambition, that collective reach for the impossible, the collective discovery of when you find out where you're going, or the collective disappointment or the comedy of all the mistakes along the way. It's just such a wonderful thing to not be alone in the world, to find a place where we're united as a team and I think so much of people's lives are striving in isolation. So there's a real joy in making up a situation basically where you work really hard for something that's completely make-believe. It's kind of bonkers.
Naomi: Bonkers, but beautiful. Yeah, and really beautifully put. Can you just talk about what you do or what Third Space does to hold that responsibility?
Tanushka: I guess there's structures to every session, like a check-in is really important, part of every session. With a very, very big company, that check-in might have to just be a sound and a movement. And there are things to hold the space like technical, learning about technique, a very strong sense of play. I really believe in the importance of a check-in a game, technique, some ensemble practice and then you start rehearsing. It's never just walk in and start. All of these things pave the way to a positive experience, that's not just about this one show getting done. It's giving people technique and tools, but it's also giving people something joyful and something to change, to shift their mind from where they've come from to what we're doing, to making a space between the outside world and the world we're creating together.
Naomi: Yeah, absolutely. And what happens to the company when you feel like this responsibility of ensuring everyone has a positive experience? What happens to them when that responsibility is held effectively by yourself or by Third Space?
Tanushka: It becomes a very positive place that you can see people becoming more and more at ease in entering, in feeling they're part of, in watching new friendships emerge, in people making their own. When you look around in the break and you see a 19-year-old and a 13-year-old with a guitar making a song together and someone who's just finished university sitting with someone who hasn't even started their GCSEs, that's just a good affirmation the positive structures and the games and the playfulness is working.
Naomi: Yeah, and that those connections between people of different ages are meaningful and there's reciprocity going on in the room.
Tanushka: Yes.
Naomi: What are the challenges then with holding this responsibility when you're leading a co-creative process of trying to ensure that people have a positive experience, what challenges have you come across?
Tanushka: You have people coming from very, very different backgrounds and life experiences and you want to create a level playing field and you can pick up on when people are feeling insecure or that they don't belong. So that's a challenge to find ways where different people can take leadership and excel and start to level out the playing field. As I said, in our last show, we had someone who just graduated from Oxford with a first in Classics and we had kids of 13 in our free school meals in quite a rough part of Brighton whose parents couldn't make it to see the show. So what you're trying to do is make sure that those othering factors in society can be as much as possible erased in the place that you are creating where values are different. The value of us all as human beings is not based on those things, and that can be challenging to try and make sure that that happens, that people are happy and it can be a lot of work as well.
I think I have a little rule of thumb no matter how big the cast is, is to try and properly say hello and make eye contact with every single person at some point in that rehearsal and to actually have a mini conversation with someone different. I think it's that period before the rehearsal starts that's really, really important and the breaks. So it's those moments outside of the actual bulk of working that you can actually start to check in and build relationships with people. And it's often there's someone who's sitting by themselves looking a bit awkward that is the person we need to be making an effort with unless they clearly want to be left alone.
Naomi: Yeah, absolutely. Like you say, the spaces around the work, the before, the break time, the after that are really important to building those relationships. And I guess checking in with people as well.
Tanushka: Continuously, continuously. Checking in, chatting, having a giggle, it's all those things that are really, really important; and then of course with young people sometimes it's with their parents or carers sometimes and schools. We took a lot of support from schools who could support young people in their process with us actually more than necessarily their parents could.
Naomi: Can you say a bit more about that?
Tanushka: We found that one of the most direct ways of working in terms of referrals with young people was through schools and lunchtime workshops. And in order to reach young people who didn't often have that easier form of access to the arts, the support actually came from the school in terms of getting information to them, getting them to rehearsals, encouraging them to continue. Because obviously with young people, you can't be phoning a 13-year-old for safeguarding reasons, so actually building partnerships with the institutions that have referred them to you is really important.
Naomi: And maintaining those relationships so that, yeah, the young people have the opportunity to fully engage with this positive experience, this positive journey that you're taking them on.
Tanushka: Yes. And there are hurdles and there are hurdles when you have a mixture of advantage and disadvantage in the room of ages, of different stages in life, it can be a lot to juggle that to make sure that everyone has a positive experience and it takes time. And it can sometimes feel that without continuous care and nurture, there was one point I suddenly had this fear that I was going to lose all the people in one fell swoop that we had through outreach. It needs continual nurturing. Without continual care and nurturing and dialogue, the people that you have worked hardest to involve can be the first people you could lose on a process and a journey.
Naomi: Can you talk a little bit more about what you do in order to keep those people engaged to ensure they're having this positive experience?
Tanushka: Everything from, as I said, chatting, checking in, if possible, making relationships with a parent or carer or school. But when it really, really starts to work is when they bond with people their own age. So as soon as you can get groups of people working independently, that can be a really good point when they make their own new friendships. That can be a place where they're supported by their peers. But that can only really happen once the space you're working in has created its own culture and has done something to level the playing field and people feel safe. So it's a case of when you let go. But I often found it's when people went off in groups to work by themselves that the friendship started to form and then they felt more secure and safer.
Naomi: Yes, absolutely. And then that social glue is another thing that's hopefully keeping them engaged and keeping them happy throughout the process because they're gaining other things that might be unanticipated, like new friends, as part of the process.
Tanushka: Exactly, exactly. Yes.
Naomi: And what do you think are the risks if you don't hold this responsibility of ensuring people have a positive experience effectively? What risks are there to the co-creative process?
Tanushka: Well, it won't be that co-creative for a start because people will clam up. People won't want to offer their ideas. They might feel, you know, you've got to be in a place where people feel there are no stupid ideas, that every idea has got some potential or is at least a stepping stone. You want a place where people feel able to offer with their bodies, with their minds, with their words. And if people are not in a positive space, they won't do that. So you won't be co-creating. And then it's a much harder job, even in the most professional professional rooms, I think if you are not co-creating, it's a really hard slog to make a good show. Really hard. And I've seen it and it's laborious and usually the workers too.
So there's so many different ways to create a positive experience. Some people do it through making sure people are fed and watered. It's like that depends on budget, obviously. But with us, it's just the playfulness and the kindness and the camaraderie in the room. But without that, you can also tip into, I've been in very, very damaging rehearsal rooms in my life. I know what they look like. And I know how strangely easy they are to manifest. So it's a real duty to make sure there is positivity and people feel happy and people feel welcome and people enjoy working hard together.
Naomi: Yes. And I think you're absolutely right to say, yeah, there are things you can do, like feed everyone, but it costs money, but actually playfulness, kindness and camaraderie, these things are free and can be generated for free in a room. It just depends on the leadership of the artist who's in that room and the culture, as you say, and what's co-created by the people in that room.
Tanushka: So with working with larger groups of people, the more ideas that are generated at once, the better. And the young people have reported back to me that they enjoy the creation through chaos and that when loads of ideas are being generated at once, people tend to spread all over the building and there's a real joy in walking around; and in every nook and cranny, there are new ideas being formed under the stairs, in the kitchen, outside the building. There's just this explosion of ideas and we're waiting to see which one we'll catch. But that does bring around a lot of joy, it's bonding for people to go off and work without observation sometimes, but also when those ideas come together. And that is the skill of crediting how those ideas have formed the whole, even if you don't directly use them, that can bring about a lot of positivity.
Even the ideas that you're not going to use, they're really important because they have helped you see where you're not going. When you are foraging in the dark for thoughts and ideas, every single proposal is invaluable and people feeling that their proposals are invaluable, it brings positivity and self-worth.
Naomi: Absolutely. We're coming to the end of this episode. Is there anything else you would like to say about this responsibility of ensuring that people have a positive experience, either through your own experience or what you've observed other artists doing?
Tanushka: Yes. Sadly I have observed and been experienced, if experienced, very bad and cruel practice actually in the name of great art. I don't think it's ever worth it. I think the world would be a better place without those pieces of great art if they were made through hurting people or this very old-fashioned idea that through suffering great art is made. I think through struggle great arts can be made and through struggle can be an amazing collective and joyful experience. Like running a race together, it can be done and I feel that to not do that is lazy. It's a lazy old-fashioned idea of what art is. It actually takes a lot of extra work to create ambitious work which has edge and power and is created in a room where people feel joyful and positive. You just have to put in the extra work and it's our duty if we're bringing people together to do that. Why would we want to make people miserable?
Naomi: Absolutely, yeah, I agree.
Tanushka: We might want to make our audiences cry, that's different, but there's no point in being miserable about it on the way.
Naomi: No, that's right, and also so much more is discovered through an energetically playful, joyful space. There's so much more freedom in that. If you think about what happens in your body, what happens energetically in a room when there's play, where there's joy, then where there's constriction and angst and yeah, all of that stuff that can really get in the way of people creating and co-creating effectively.
Tanushka: Of course.
Naomi: Great, so just one final question, Tanushka, reflecting on all of the responsibilities that were identified through the initial research that I did, there's eight of them in total, do you think there's anything missing?
Tanushka: I think inspiration is really important, that we are inspired and we work through our inspiration, that we inspire the people we're working with and that our work inspires our audience and that we're just passing a seed from person to person and that's pollinating more and more and more good energy into the world. And I sometimes felt that when I had my touring company, we were performing a great big show to like four people in the audience and you just think, well, you're just sending that energy out into the world and if one of the people in your audience take that away and it can change something, then in that way we're creating sort of multiple universes every time we make some new work, and inspiration has always been a very important word for me.
Naomi: Beautiful, that is wonderful. We'll leave it there with our inspiring thought to finish with of everyone pollinating the world with inspiration. Tanushka Marah, thank you so much for your time today. If anyone listening is interested in learning more about Tanushka's work with Third Space, you can follow the link just below the podcast on my website. Thank you, Tanushka.