Last year, Big Brum celebrated its 35th birthday. A remarkable milestone for any organisation, not least one that markets itself as a Theatrein-Education (TIE) company – a genre that is often derided for a perceived heavy-handed approach to issues like drugs or bullying. I ask the company's artistic director, Richard Holmes, about the ideology that informs Big Brum's practice.
‘At Big Brum, we believe in trusting the child,’ he says. ‘As drama practitioners and educators we proceed from the premise that children are not undeveloped adults but human beings in their own right, with specific experiences that go to the heart of being human. The work starts with two premises: that the world is knowable, and that art is social imagination. Art is a mode of knowing the world in which we live and Big Brum uses theatre and drama to work alongside young people to make meaning of their lives and the world around them, to educate their own minds not in what to think but how to think.’
I'm curious as to how this philosophical underpinning has contributed to the company's longevity. ‘The TIE at Big Brum isn't message-based but rather it explores, with young people, what it means to be human in the world today,’ says Holmes. ‘We don't set out to find wrong or right answers, we create a space to make meaning.’
Making it happen
The theory sounds solid, but what does this look like in reality? The current touring production is titled Worlds Apart Together and forms the fifth and final part of Big Brum's cycle of World War One productions, The End of Reason, which began in 2014 to commemorate the war's centenary years. The play can be performed by itself to groups of any size but is also available as a package that comes with participatory workshops for groups of up to 30 participants. Holmes gives me an outline of what an audience can expect from the play.
Art is a mode of knowing the world in which we live
‘The story takes us back to a post-Armistice Britain which is blighted by joblessness, poverty, disease and deep social division between classes, races and genders. It is not so much an ending as a foreshadowing of the horrors that lay in store for the next generation. At the centre of the story is Jack, a 13-year-old boy. Society has robbed Jack of more than a father. It has stolen his childhood and threatens his future. This makes the world a confusing place to live in. While struggling over what is the right or wrong thing to do, Jack's willingness to take responsibility for his situation is his way of taking responsibility for what it is to be human in an inhuman world.
‘The ghosts of the dead are everywhere: in tortured sleep and the desperation of being awake, in the newspapers, in a child's play, in the broken body of Joe injured by an explosion at a munitions factory, in the arguments between the neighbours, and the absence of young white men. The other stories emerging concern the most disenfranchised. Soldiers like Harold who were invited to leave Jamaica to fight in France, women and mothers like Dora, and children like Jack. They too are worlds apart, but conjoined by their situation.’
The inclusion of Harold, who is taken in as a lodger by Jack's mum to help make ends meet, sticks out quite prominently. The role that non-white soldiers played in shaping the First World War is too often left out of the stories that are told, despite their sacrifice. The Indian army made up around a third of the British Empire's army, and many black soldiers from Caribbean colonies froze while en route to Europe – those who survived the journey were forbidden from carrying guns until the later years of the conflict. As such, it's great that the production will introduce students to a more accurate portrayal of what both the conflict and post-war Britain looked like.
The whole endeavour promises to be substantial and challenging, but ultimately rewarding to an audience. Big Brum trusts that its audience has the ability to grapple with the complex questions that are asked by the drama and 35 years of productions suggests that the trust is well-placed. What is it about what Big Brum offers that has kept the audiences coming back year after year?
‘We all need story, it is as if it is in our DNA and, combined together, our stories make our culture,’ says Holmes. ‘Worlds Apart Together is a story for today, about living today. It is our story and, more importantly, it is the young people's story.’