Pleasant Land

By Sarah Brigham

Pleasant Land was a performance created by Derby Theatre for young people aged 12-15.  From the start of the project our ambition was for the production to be led by the young people’s ideas.  Usually when we commission a writer the ideas which inform the work are often drawn from their knowledge of young people but in this production a specific group of young people were at the centre of the creation process.

We began by starting a drama group at a local school which was aimed at young Roma people.  A Roma musician and a drama worker worked with the group to explore what kind of theatre they wanted to see on stage.  Workshops explored themes brought up by the young people and was led by their interests.  The writer and director visited the group and listened into some of the conversations which developed.

It became very clear early on that this group of young Roma people had many shared experiences they wanted to talk about.  Key themes which arose included:

• The shared experience of having to get a British passport.
• The difference between culture and expectations at home vs at school.
• The love of music.
• The feeling of needing to compete.

The group also wrote a song with the musician which spoke of their journey to understand their own individual identities. All of these conversations, ideas, words, music and song was then taken into a rehearsal room.  The challenge for the creative team was then how to turn this into an artistic offering which could tour to schools and young people.  We began by recruiting the artistic team.

The writer, Nathan Powell and director Sarah Brigham began by bringing together a culturally diverse group of actors who reflected the community of both the school the young people attend and the community of the city.  One actor identifies as Black British, one as Vietnamese, one as White Working Class and the musician who worked with the young people who is Roma.  To this we also added an actor- musician who could help us realise the young people’s songs.  This felt important as so much of the conversation had been around identity in relation to ethnicity and class.

We then embarked on a four week process of shaping the young people’s ideas into a production.  Throughout the process 2 of the young people came into rehearsal to comment and give ideas.

For example one of the exercises we asked the young people to do was to draw an outline of a person.  On the inside of the drawing the young people wrote the feelings, ideas, issues they don’t share with the world.  On the outside they wrote about the relationships they have, the societal pressures they face etc.  We used these drawings to develop our 5 characters.

We also ran an exercise which began with 1 question to which participants then asked 3 questions, from that you had to ask three questions about each answer and on and on until we had hundreds of questions and these questions formed the basis of our themes and content.

One BIG QUESTION

Is Money important ?

3 questions in answer to above

1. Does money give you everything you want ?
2. Can money buy love ?
3. Does money give you more time ?

3 questions about the questions!

1. Does money give you everything you want ?
2. Does having everything really mean happiness ?
3. If you had everything you want what would you do all day?
4. What do I want?

2. Can money buy love ?
3. Is love of a mother more important than love of a husband?
4. Have you ever been in love ?
5. What if I am never loved?

3. Does money give you more time ?
4. How much time do I have?
5. Does god approve of money?
6. If I had one day left what would I do?

And repeat!

The writer most definitely shaped and developed the piece and the director developed the tone and focus but everything in the show was drawn from those workshops with the young people including a finale which was based around the song they wrote