Red Thread Stories Blog

Playback Theatre in Sri Lanka.

Fri, 11 May 2012 02:00:00 GMT

Earlier this year I was privileged to be a part of the 'Theatre of Friendship Project' in Sri Lanka. The playback theatre project is the continuation of a project that began post Tsunami in 2006. The project continued and expanded in 2007. In 2007 Playback Theatre was taught and shared with the original group in Unawatuna and a new group in the Hill country. It was hoped that their training in this form of Theatre would continue but in 2008 it was deemed too unsafe for people to travel to Sri Lanka due to the civil war. The project was put on hold.

Amongst a lot of beeping horns, crazy traffic and humidy I met with nine other Playback Theatre practitioners from Australia, Germany, India and the UK. The project was co-ordinated by the very talented Cymbeline Buhler who was the original Playback practitioner in 2006. The project was alive again - this time bigger.

As a team we spent three days nutting out the project and what we needed to do and what we needed to know. What we set out to do was teach the form Playback Theatre form to four theatre troupes from four diverse locations in Sri Lanka. One north in Jaffna, one in the capital Colombo, one south in Unawatuna (the original site) and one in the hill country/ central Sri Lanka in Kandy. After each group had spent time with their trainers and working with the form, each group was to travel by mini van, car, bus and train to Kandy in the centre of the island to come together for the first Playback Theatre Gathering in Sri Lanka. This is what we knew we were setting out to do. However we found along the way that there were other things we were to find out and other things we needed to do.

The social and political climate in Sri Lanka over the past 5 or more years has been different for each of the four groups and certainly from anything I have known in Australia. I worked in two of the four locations - Unawatuna in the south and Colombo the capital. In the south the re-building after the tsunami continues and the graves on the beach road remind you that much life and way of life was lost and has not been recovered. In the capital they are rebuilding post civil war. There are still memories of bombings and there are still people missing. No-one is searching for them. In the hill country around Kandy and north in Jaffna there are different stories being told.

Playback Theatre is at the heart of our work with Red Thread Stories. It is where we all began together and it is still an integral part of our work and our vision. Through Playback a space is created for the sharing and enactment of stories. The form itself provides a language that can be easily shared. This common language allows groups, communities, individuals and those heard and unheard in our communities to sit together. Through the form and the rituals set within the theatre those gathered can begin to identify the stories to be told.

In Sri Lanka there are many stories that have not yet been shared amongst the diverse communities. The adversities and limitations on their connections over time have allowed for no shared space. The Theatre of Friendship project began to create that space.

At the gathering in Kandy the four groups each performed. The stories they re-enacted were from communities in Sri Lanka that are not their own. They heard stories that were unknown to them. They heard stories that were known to them. At the gathering there was an enormous amount of generosity. The care and kindness given to each story by the performing groups was a mirror image to the care and kindness they showed each other. They were happy to share time, relieved to meet each other and shared the universal feelings of a country in recovery.

We as the Playback practitioners knew that we were there to teach them Playback Theatre. We knew that each group was excited to have us come to teach them. We knew that our teaching would assist the artistic and creative development of the groups.

What I was delighted to find was generosity, gratitude, an amazing amount of resilience and very little if any resistance to sharing. The strength of the human spirit was alive and kicking. After hearing some of the stories I heard I imagined if that were me that I would want to lay down and sleep for a very long time and maybe not get back up. But what I saw were people who were getting back up, who were re-building, caring for each other, embracing the sadness and past hurts and being grateful for what they had. I also saw that they were wanting their stories to be told, and to be listened to.

The power of shared stories in communities was affirmed for me in Sri Lanka. In our work with Red Thread Stories this is one of our core beliefs - stories need to be alive in communities to assist the communities to be rich, vibrant and healthy. It was seeing it in such strong colours and langauage that affirmed for me that our work has much value to share with Australia.

I plan to return to Sri Lanka in 2013. Other practitioners have also committed to returning. The project gained some strong supporters and raised some important questions about how the project may develop and how can we assure that the people of Sri Lanka are cared for while they share and enact each others stories. The project is likely to expand to include one or more psychologists and an independant researcher.

It is hoped that the project will continue for another 5 years so those engaged are able to access training in the form and Sri Lanka can cement its involvement in the international Playback Theatre community.

It is one of my hopes that I can assist over the coming years in the sharing and celebration of stories of resilience and recovery - here and in Sri Lanka.

Cheers, Deb D

Resilience, Research and Red Threads

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:44:00 GMT

Resilience. This word is popping up everywhere. Last year our workshop “Stories of Resilience: Strength through Story” with a group of local women from Gympie was a very deep, enriching experience for us and for the women involved. One woman referred to it as “life changing”. A couple of months later most of the women gathered to discuss next steps. They even used some of our story processes learnt in the workshop “There once was…” “Headlines…”

The group wants Red Thread Stories back so they can become “change agents in their community” and to “build a community that listens” A powerful vision. So I am returning in late February to assist people to apply strategies they found purposeful in the initial workshop and to explore how they can work to reach their vision. The power of this work is that it came from the women.

Red Thread Stories are also beginning another project "Our Rocklea" Connecting with the Heart through story and creativity. We are being contracted by ARCSI Inc community centre who have been funded by Brisbane City Council. They do wonderful community work in Acacia Ridge and surrounding suburbs. Ky Curran has also been contracted to assist the creation of a commemorative art mural. We will be holding some workshops and also assisting people to record and document their stories and oral histories. The heart of this work is acknowledging, supporting and celebrating the communities’ capacity and resilience.

There’s that resilience word again so I thought I would do some resilience research. Community resilience is the "sustained ability of a community to withstand and recover from adversity".(Research Highlights, Rand 2011) How does Red Thread Stories work contribute to building resilient communities? What makes a community resilient? Admiral Thad Allen (see www.rand.org) believes resilience is strengthened by relationships, partnerships and networks of trust and co-operation - the building blocks of a civil society. A psychologist Kelly (2011) identified a resilient community as having

Access to support services
Community networking
Attachment to community
Participation in community groups
Community/cultural norms against violence
Strong cultural identity/ethnic pride

One article I found interesting related to rural communities in Europe. Schouten et al (2011) evaluated the role of community resilience in development programs. They suggested that a community's capacity to adapt is central to its resilience. This adaptive capacity is a function of the community's ability to 1) store and remember experiences what they called INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY 2) to use memory and experience to learn, innovate and reorganise resources in order to adapt to a changing environmental demands or INNOVATIVE LEARNING 3) connect with others inside and outside the community or CONNECTEDNESS.

This research reinforces the value of what Red Thread Stories does. Stories and oral traditions pass down local knowledge, provide advice, assist with connectedness and belonging. Red Thread Stories also places focus on processes that heighten self-awareness and increase our capacity to learn and connect as we listen deeply to each others experiences and stories. This contributes to a community who wants to consciously focus on building resilience. From self reflection comes learning, from listening deeply comes connection and the building of trusting networks.

However we only play a small role. A catalyst. Community resilience is built over time. People come forward. Leaders emerge from within the community. Relationships are nurtured. This happened with the women we met from Gympie.

What Red Thread has yet to explore is building resilience where their is existing conflict or resistance to change within a community. Deb has recently returned from a trip to Sri Lanka where she was part of a team that worked using Playback theatre (the basis for many of Red Thread stories processes) with communities who have been at war with each other. Hopefully she will share some of her experiences in our next blog ... Jen from Red Thread Stories

Gympie Community Engagement Workshop

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:50:00 GMT

Stories are critical for engaging community. Recently Department of Communities invited us to facilitate a day with a diverse group of women from local communities surrounding Gympie. Beryl, one woman who shared her story, wrote to us the next day and her words demonstrate something of the essence of the day and the power stories can have in building community and connection. She writes

"I felt that each story was a thread of a beautiful fabric that is weaving our community into more connectedness. It will make a difference in our community and each woman is both a thread of the fabric and an essence of the perfume of our community. "

Now we are considering how this work can be further deepened and applied in Gympie and other community contexts.

Facilitating Stories in Groups - Upcoming Workshop 19 August

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:42:00 GMT

We are looking forward to next Friday's workshop - 'Facilitating Stories in Groups'.

Preparing for this workshop has been exciting and stimulating. We (the facilitators) have been exploring the possible steps in a process where, we in conjunction with the participants, evolve an environment in which a range of people feel safe enough to share their stories. Every time we run workshops and share our practice with other practioners we gain greater insights and experience from one another. Its the challenge of developing processes, which allow for the formation, of a community of people, whose needs and desires for that moment are experienced as overlapping and through a sharing of stories people recognise that they have had similar experiences and challenges.

Another delight for us in in Red Thread Stories is that we share our love of stories with each and everyone else who come

There is place for one more, if you are interested in joining us you need to contact us by Wednesday 17 August.

Introducing Red Thread Stories

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 07:56:00 GMT

Let me introduce you to Red Thread Stories. We are a consultancy which uses collaborative learning, drawing on the experiences of the participants as they share their stories. We humans have always told stories to explain our selves to ourselves We put great store on the power of personal stories. They usually have archetypal elements; and we, the listeners see in the other’s story, something pertinent to ourselves and an elaboration of the greater cultural and political world in which we live. The teller is heard and usually learns something more about themselves, others and their cultural milieu. To achieve this we use a process which draws from a number of sources, including physical theatre, improvisation, Playback theatre and psychodrama where the emphasis is on promoting the physical, emotional and conscious engagement of each participant.

Studies have shown the effectiveness of cooperative learning. Groups of people where differences in opinions are shared and discussed can work together to reach agreed decisions which embrace aspects of each other’s views. There are some psychologists who argue that early in our human evolution we learnt to debate or discuss issues with each other and together we reach better decisions than we do on our own. Alone we rarely confront our most deeply held biases and end up with a polarised perspective, which “even enable us to violate our own moral intuitions” (1) .In a group we have to explain ourselves more carefully and take into account the opinions of others. A similar process can be seen where individuals of like biases group together and maintain strongly polarised positions. Similarly we argue, when we gather in a group and hear stories of people we have not meet before and whose lives may be very different from ours, we are presented with an opportunity to see similarities and differences between ourselves and the tellers and to begin an exploration, a new dialogue with our self, with another person and another way of being in the world.

(1) Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.)

Acting Up - Acting Out

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 02:21:00 GMT

Acting Up - Acting Out workshop, Playback Theatre workshop series held in Brisbane in 2010. For information about this and future workshops please contact us.

Celebrating Stories Conference

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:44:00 GMT

In 2010 Red Thread Stories ran a workshop at the Celebrating Stories Conference in Melbourne. Have a look at the video and think about going along to the next conference in 2011 "Creative Consulting: Widening the World of Work".

Red Thread Stories Workshops 2011

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Red Thread Stories has launched its Workshops program for 2011. Learn by doing, reflecting, discovering and applying knowledge and skills to work situations.

For Trainers, facilitators, community and youth workers, service providers, H.R practitioners, counselors, creative performers. Workshops and programs are fully tailored to your particular needs and objectives, so talk to us about how our “talk, listen, learn‟ workshop methodology can help you, your organisation or your clients. For details please click here.