We recently completed another round of applications and the process has made us think about how all our collective experiences and educations work together. How to collaborate and make theatre is probably a central concern to all theatre companies and it’s a process that is continuous and ongoing. It’s not something that we’ve dwelled on at length, but is always flagged up whenever we start a project together and is reassessed at significant points of the development period. It’s a balance of how to use our time and resources efficiently so that we can make the best work we can. We all have a vested interest in arts and culture, but through collaboration, conversations and presenting work to audiences our different skills and experience emerge and influence how we engage with each other and the work that we are making.
For a recent application, we wrote about our different key interests and we thought it might be worthwhile to share it for the world to see. This is what we wrote:
Makeshift Broadcast is inspired by all things sustainability. We use our passions and frustrations of the present to consider the future through theatre and performance, imagining new ways of living our lives in uncertain times. We use our collective educations and experiences to attempt to find common languages that will be accessible to different audiences. We endeavour to create unique, entertaining theatre which enters into a dialogue with our audience that does not stop when the performance ends. We are inspired by how much individuals benefit from sustainability and how it impacts in our health, our communities, our culture and in nature. We believe that arts and culture can immeasurably add depth to people’s lives and allow them to express something inherently human and we believe in the importance of sustaining the theatre for this very aim.
It’s a bit wordy and you really need to read between the lines to see what we actually mean. It’s our ambitions and provocations for the theatre we want to make. We might not always succeed but if we can get close to this and feel like we’ve used our strengths
to the best of our ability, surely we’ll express something of interest to our audiences.
We have struggles within our creative partnership especially because now we are based in different cities. Luckily, it doesn’t take long before one of us will call a meeting so that we can check in with what everyone’s doing. We meet frequently and facilitate conversations and sharings via Skype, FaceTime, Facebook and other e-conferencing platforms. It focuses our time and attention on what needs to be done and we keep the channels of communication flowing so that we don’t drop the ball on our work.
How we work together is important, but it’s something that will evolve and constantly adapt dependent on the requirements of the project or the work. To be honest, we bend ourselves around our ideas to make them work so that they can be enjoyed by audiences and the people who engage with us as a company. It’s always the work that comes first. We always endeavour to keep our egos to one side and always be serving our audiences and theatre itself.
We’re planning a project in Glasgow’s park spaces towards the end of 2016 called Bright Sky Park and we are also working towards presenting Andrew Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling in February 2015.
Makeshift Broadcast 