User:Skeowsha/Meeting Ground Theatre Company

Meeting Ground Theatre Company is an experimental theatre company, based in Nottingham. The company has a strong local identity, originating much of its work in Nottingham and touring many of its plays in the East Midlands, but it has also engaged in a number of international collaborations, and played a notable role in women's theatre, with a number of productions appearing at the Magdalena International Womens Theatre Festival. The company was founded in 1985 by playwright Stephen Lowe, Tanya Myers, Bush Hartshorn, Jo Buffery and Stephen Mapp, when Lowe and Myers moved back to Nottingham from London. The company's current artistic directors are Stephen Lowe, Tanya Myers and Tom Wright.

The company's artistic policy is to explore through theatre "the politics of the imagination": the issues and questions that control the people's imagination and shape their lives. The company's work is based on "the belief that, by taking artistic work across barriers and frontiers, whether they be national, psychological, intellectual, cultural, spiritual or disciplinary, new sources of energy and creativity can be engendered."

International collaboration has been a significant part of the company's work. For example, in the 1990s two productions were directed by Polish director Zofia Kalinska, one of which - Plaisirs d'Amour - she directed in parallel with a Polish-language production of the same piece for Akne Theatre. In 2002 the company ran a workshop in Romania, bringing together theatre artists from Algeria, Palestine, Romania and Serbia.

Their productions have ranged across performance styles and forms, from puppetry to video, from playwright-led play to street theatre and performance art; and ranged in subject and theme from the First World War to gender roles and female sexuality, from people smuggling to the Luddites.

They have worked with actors such as George Costigan, Neil Dudgeon, Tamzin Griffin, and Maurice Roeves (UK); Zbigniew Yann Rola (Poland), Ulrike Johannson and Astrid Kuhl(Germany).

The company has co-produced, or worked in association with the Liverpool Playhouse, Akne Theatre, Central Television, Nottingham Playhouse, AZ Theatre and the Young Vic. They have received funding from the Arts Council, East Midlands Arts, Nottingham City Council, Central Television, North West Arts, The Gulbenkian Foundation, the British Council, LOT Airlines, the Institute of Mental Health Nottingham, the National Institute for Health Research SDO and CLAHRC-NDL.

Some Productions
Demon Lovers explored the poisoned fascistic imagination that can result in a society which devalues creativity. It also drew upon ideas about multiple personality from Robert Ornstein's book Multimind. A secretary and her new boss start an affair, which turns into a destructive folie à deux and ends with the murder of a child. Film and video were an integral part of the production, showing the characters' multiple personalities as well as the coded "home movie" made by the murderers.

The Sale of the Demonic Women was directed by Zophia Kalinska. Kalinska - previously a colleague of Grotowski and an actor with Tadeusz Kantor - first met Tanya Myers at a Magdalena Festival. Kalinska's production - based on writings by Witkiewiez - explored archetypes and stereotypes of strong women using parody, gothic design - by Polish designer Zofia de Ines - ecstatic trance states and simple direct speech. As reviewer Betty Caplan said, the actors played "with their characters, stepping in and out of role, rather than simply reinforcing stereotypes." The production brought together actors from England, Germany and Poland, and toured in the UK, Germany, Poland and Italy.

The War Stories project began with an invitation via the internet to international companies to work with Meeting Ground, especially companies which seemed unlikely partners, for historical or political reasons. Organised in 2002 by director Jonathan Chadwick - at the time an Artistic Director of Meeting Ground - and Iraqi documentary film director Maysoon Patachi, the first workshop took place in Sibiu, Romania, with theatre artists from England, Serbia, Algeria and Gaza. Among the pieces inspired by this project are Life on the Borderline by Hoshiar, presented by AZ Theatre in 2007; and Stephen Lowe's play Smile, produced at Lakeside Theatre in 2008. Jonathan Chadwick's company AZ Theatre continues this project.

In Small Waves, written by Tanya Myers and directed by Tom Wright, three strangers meet in an isolated house in winter: a woman, an 11-year old girl and an old lady. Myers and her daughter Martha Lowe-Myers played the woman and the girl, and animated a puppet representing the old lady. Jeremy Lewis said the play "suggests faith, hope and courage offer an escape from the torments of modern life".

In 2012, Meeting Ground's current project is Inside Out of Mind, by Tanya Myers. This piece brings together ethnographic researchers with theatre practitioners to examine the care of people with dementia. Writer Myers, director Stephen Lowe and ethnographers Simon Bailey and Kezia Scales worked together on a workshop presentation of the play in July 2011. Meeting Ground are now working towards a full scale production and tour of the play, in partnership with a Managed Innovation Network of the Institute of Mental Health, Nottingham.

Production list

 * Strive, written and directed by Stephen Lowe; UK tour (1985)
 * Desire, written and directed by Stephen Lowe; UK tour (1986)
 * Pushing On, large scale street choreography devised by Tanya Myers and Tamzin Griffin; Nottingham (1986)
 * Fat Cats and Hot Dogs, community promenade play, produced by Bush Hartshorn and Jo Buffery; Newark (1986?)
 * Demon Lovers, written and directed by Stephen Lowe; UK tour (1987)
 * City of Women TV documentary; Central Television (1987)
 * Dance for the Girls, devised and performed by Tanya Myers and Tamzin Griffin; Magdalena Festival, and regional tour (1988/9)
 * Paradise, by Stephen Lowe, directed by Pip Broughton; co-production with Nottingham Playhouse (1990)
 * Sale of the Demonic Women, adapted and directed by Zofia Kalinska, from writings by Stanislaw Witkiewicz; Nottingham and London (1990), Berlin and Krakow (1991)
 * Plaisirs d'Amour, adapted and directed by Zofia Kalinska, from a play by Ronald Duncan; co-production with Polish company Akne Theatre (1992)
 * Florence, by Tanya Myers; Magdalena Festival(1993)
 * Falling Angels, by Tanya Myers (1994)
 * Transplant, by Jeremy Seabrook and Michael O'Neill; co-production with AZ Theatre, directed by Jonathan Chadwick; London (2001)
 * Shoes, directed by Tom Wright; Nottingham (2003)
 * Small Waves, by Tanya Myers, directed by Tom Wright; Nottingham and Vancouver (2006)
 * The Container, by Clare Bayley, directed by Tom Wright; in association with Young Vic, London (2009)
 * Inside Out of Mind by Tanya Myers, workshop presentation; Nottingham Playhouse (2011)

Projects

 * The Luddite Project, workshops and various performances, Nottingham (1987-90)
 * War Stories, workshops in London (Tricycle and Royal Court), Sibiu, Romania (1999-2002); project ongoing, now led by AZ Theatre.
 * Inside Out of Mind by Tanya Myers, in partnership with the Institute of Mental Health, Nottingham (2010-12)