Practitioner focus: Boundless Theatre

The company makes work that the Guardian newspaper describes as ‘fizzing with youth’ across the UK and internationally. Boundless develops future artists and produces live shows, digital performances, and podcasts. The company is mission-driven and pioneers new forms and ways to connect to youth culture globally.

Influences and methodology

At the heart of the company is an advisory group, which spans across artistic and strategic decision-making. Co-creation is a key methodology for Boundless, with all commissions and artistic development engaging and involving young people. With youth culture a strong influence, a lot of Boundless’ work is aesthetically rich, involves music, and represents a diverse generation and intersectional perspectives. Activism increasingly sits at the front of the work with the climate crisis and youth mental health being explored in productions.

Key features of Boundless performances

• Co-creation used to deeply engage young adult audiences
• Authentic intersectional representation of 15-25 year olds
• Music and song in diverse forms
• Innovative formats including digital and interactive work
• Sustainable production methods.

Themes

Recurring themes in Boundless shows have been the climate crisis, mental health and emotional wellbeing, gender, sexuality, and fluid identity and living in a hyper-connected, digital but isolating world. Shows such as Natives (2017) which the Metro described as the ‘best play I've seen this year to articulate an urgent contemporary moment’, and How To Save The Planet When You're A Young Carer & Broke (2021) chart a 5-year exploration of high priority conversations young adults want to start with their peers and the adults in their lives.

Exercise 1

This exercise introduces students to co-creation as a key artistic process in Boundless shows, notably in productions Drip (2018), Parakeet (2019) and Radio Elusia (2020).

Part one:

• Give each student a piece of paper divided in to 8 squares, and a pen
• Set a theme, (some examples from Boundless shows: power, protest, utopia, gender, sexuality, social media)
• Each student draws a different idea responding to the theme, 8 different ideas, 8 different stories, 8 different responses in 8 minutes
• Set the timer for 8 minutes and go
• Once the 8 minutes are up, everyone stops and puts their drawings on the wall
• Discuss what you see, are there similarities, differences? What do all these responses to the same theme look like? What stories could the students imagine telling?

Part two:

• Students now work in pairs or groups to create their own performance responses to the drawings and the discussion. They can be inspired by anything on the wall
• In a short space of time the whole group have co-created from a set of drawings, responding to the same theme, and have created unique collaborative pieces of theatre.

Exercise 2

Our show October2020 was entirely performed by the audience. This exercise introduces this unique style of theatre. Students work in pairs, and each perform each other's writing, following the rules in the box below.

• Everything written (and only what is written) must be read by the performer
• The writer should tell a real story from their life
• Everything must be written in the first person
• You must ask how the performer is feeling at some point when you write
• Ask the performer to get an object from the audience to help you tell your story
• Create any new rules you want
• Every writer starts with: Hello, it's me [name of writer]. I'm writing from the past, which is your present. I'm [age] years old, my pronouns are [pronouns] and I [describe how you look]. My favourite memory is [memory]. This is [name of performer] and they're going to read everything I've written to you, they're going to tell you the story of my life….

Exercise 3

Increasingly a lot of the work that Boundless makes puts the global climate crisis at the centre of decision making. In How To Save The Planet When You're A Young Carer And Broke a design manifesto was created to ensure the production could tour sustainably. This next exercise introduces this concept.

• Working with a set text of your choice (or any scene from any play that requires props or items that characters interact with) ask the students to create a design checklist of every object needed to accurately (naturalistically) represent the scene
• Now ask the students to design the scene using only what is available in the room right now, a cup may be represented by a water bottle, a tray by a book, a book by a phone, a phone by a hat, and so on. The idea is to not worry about what the object is but for the designer to ensure every prop is available
• Play the scene with the assembled props
• Discussion: what does using the wrong object do to the scene? How might this be a more sustainable approach to design? Is this a more creative approach to performance? What might the audience think?

http://www.boundlesstheatre.org.uk