Nishna digs into the history of the International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network and the significance of this year’s conference in conversation with Manon. They also dive deep into the aspect of language and access in research while also mulling over practice as research, turning closed questions into open-ended questions and critical thinking.
Photos by Keiu Virro and Francaois Fogel.
Manon van de Water (MW): When we had the conference and when the keynote came on, I was sitting, of course, right in the front. And I, I was listening to English translation, but it was very much the English translation, it was very, it was good but it was very monotonous English translation one here. And then because it was so close I could hear the Spanish very well in the other ear. And because I’d been doing Spanish, it was very hard to concentrate on one or the other. But I couldn’t understand the Spanish. But the keynote speaker, Esther had just sent me, the night before her speech for translation. So, I pulled it up on my phone. And I read along, and I realised that the reason why I couldn’t understand the Spanish is that there’s such a strong Cuban accent, that, of course, I don’t know. And so even as I was reading along, I said, is that what she says? It’s not even, you know, I would never pronounce it like that. So. So that’s why it’s hard to if you are here in Cuba, to use the Spanish that you learned, however you learned it, if it’s not Cuban Spanish. If I digress or whatever, just feel free to stop me.
Nishna Mehta (NM): Sure. So, let’s start with just the basics of what was ITYARN doing at this conference? And what is ITYARN looking for in the Congress this year?
MW: So, since ITYARN was formed in 2006, 2006 indeed, we were, the whole mission of the network was to bring scholars, in particular academics and scholars in Theatre for Young Audiences together to talk about, to exchange ideas, and research in Theatre for Young Audiences. And the reason for that was that there was not a whole lot of research in Theatre for Young Audiences, globally, but certainly not in one country. It wasn’t concentrated in one country. So, there were seven countries coming together or seven scholar-practitioners coming together from one country. And if you have well, in our country, it’s not that much. And so we felt the need to create a global network in order to disseminate and to gather more scholarship that would, that we wouldn’t ordinarily get at, because it’s difficult. Obviously, this was for before the widespread use of the internet. So that has something to do with that, too, maybe. And our first conference was in Adelaide, in 2008. And that was very much an experiment. It’s like, are people in ASSITEJ interested in this, would they come? Would they like to hear what we have to say? And, and, and people did come and they were interested in it, and there was a publication coming out of it. And we also realised that we were all, more or less by necessity, we were also all of us who were involved in ITYARN from the very beginning, we’re scholar-practitioners. Our field is so small that you cannot be just a scholar. Most of the time, people are also either directing or they are acting or they are playwriting, or they are teaching drama. Just because, and often they went to scholarship after that. So that was sort of like I think we have to embrace the scholarship and the practice. And we have to research and theorise perhaps, and write the historiography of the practice, because that was sorely missing. So that’s what we did. And since 2008, in terms of ASSITEJ, we had a conference at every World Congress and festival. Sometimes it was a day, most of the times I would say one day, sometimes it was the day before the opening. It has been somewhere in the middle in Warsaw for example, it has been over two days in South Africa, Cape Town in 2017. It has been I think this was the second day. So, this was here. It has been a variety of days and then later on, after we became the network of ASSITEJ and when ASSITEJ accepted networks as members in 2011, ITYARN was the first, was one of the first networks and that way then we also started to go to other ASSITEJ events, so like the Artistic Gatherings, for example. So, every year there was something. Sometimes smaller, sometimes bigger. I think the biggest thing that stands out, that’s an open call for all researchers, practitioners that wanted to take part in ITYARN every three years, went out every three years after 2008. And before that, of course, for 2008. So that was really what ITYARN was. The difference here was actually in the formal organisation, not that much, we sent out a call for papers and be we accepted papers, we always had the organisation was, except for South Africa, I should say, was always to have if it was one day to have a keynote speaker, that was usually and we very much encouraged that suggested by the host country. So, it was a local researcher, and then that will be followed by a plenary panel of three papers with 20 minutes that would come out of the proposals. And then in the afternoon, we would have working group sessions, those are mostly discussions. And in this case, also some presentations.
What was very different this time, which we never did, was that we wanted to, to not stay exclusively in English. So English was the main language that we always used. But we really want to make it more, more global. So, we had Spanish, English and Portuguese. And there were also three people organising it who were on the North and South America, because we were in the same time zones that made it little bit easier. And so, it was myself for North America, Paulo Merisio from Brazil, and Nora Lia Sormani, from Argentina. And so, she was the Spanish, Paulo was a Portuguese and Spanish, and I was English. Spanish and Portuguese, I wouldn’t be able to kind of like say that, because of my, my personal experience but according to Paulo and Nora Lia, people can understand and read each other’s papers, even if they don’t necessarily speak Portuguese or Spanish. So, we sort of already thought like, well, we can mix those groups together if we want to. It turned out that, that for the people that could come because there were a lot of, we had accepted, I think about 56 people, not everybody could come for one reason or another, some people didn’t get a visa, some people were not able to apply for visa, because of reasons that are too complicated to go in here. But political and other reasons, some people were, were just held up, and they never could make it here. So, we didn’t have everybody here that we wanted to be here. And of course, very early on, and we are very happy for that, we decided not to do anything online, because we already had that or not even try that. And that would indeed not be a good idea here particularly in Cuba, because we didn’t have WiFi in the venues that we were presenting in. So that was a good thing. So, we ended up with, it would be more than 40, I would say like 46 participants. And then we had people who just wanted to come and listen in. Now given that it was a little bit far away, the venue was changed, it’s very hot in Cuba, which I think a lot of us didn’t really count with, maybe with the heat but not necessarily the humidity. We were very happy with the amount of people that came for the morning session, when everything was presented to people, we certainly had a good turnout of over 60 people. And then for the afternoon session, sessions, where people had to choose to go between different groups, there were, let’s say like, you know, a handful of people with every single different group and we had five groups. So that was really nice. And we had all very good responses for that. What we also like to do, and we are very happy, that we really wanted to have an emphasis that we weren’t only working in English. And we actually had asked people from, native English-speaking people who we thought whose Spanish would be good enough, Portuguese we didn’t know, but who we knew were working In Spanish, you know, Spanish speaking, Theatre for Young Audiences in particular where the native Spanish was, if they were willing to accept, or to present their paper in Spanish. Two of them said yes, one of them couldn’t come. And one of them actually did it to say, Yeah, well, my English very bad, it’s much better and do it. And I was really happy with that. Because, as I explained it to the people that we asked, and again, not everybody accepted, but as explained to people that we ask, it’s like, everybody always who’s not, not everybody’s an English-speaking person, I am, myself, an English-speaking person by nature, but you know, my native language is and will always be Dutch. But I’m long enough there that I can sort of pretend that I am a native English speaker. But there are many people who don’t, of course, and never speak English, except for some sort of like, but most people have to go to a conference, if they are academics, and even if they are not academics, but if there are practitioners in our field Theatre for Young Audiences, and they have to present discuss, argue, you know, converse, not in the native language, English. And there’s a huge advantage in that respect for the English people. So, I really tried to make a pitch, and we actually, not only me, but also Paulo, and Nora Lia, of course, tried to make a pitch for those people, it’s like, you know, please do it, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but you know, you can, you get to interact with other people, and so on, and so forth. So that was that was really good.
We also for ITYARN and always had, always attempted to, and we actually in the end we always had, but sometimes, sometimes very soon afterwards. And sometimes it took a couple of years to get a publication out of it. And many people have asked where can we read the papers? Can you publish them online? From an academic standpoint, and from people who are really working at institutions, we, we’ve always felt we cannot do that we cannot just publish the papers, we can publish the abstracts, but not just the papers, without it having gone through peer review. And through kind of like an official publication, an official, with an official publisher, so and, you know, not just online. And we always mention that in the books that we published, because academics need that. We have so few avenues to kind of like make a pitch to our superiors, so to speak, and our institutions, how important Theatre for Young Audiences actually is. And this is one of them, and you get credit for it. And ultimately, you will really get a job or maintain your job because of that, if you don’t do it, so. So, there’s something important for it. And right now, we are looking into open access, meaning that everybody can access it. But it still has to go through academic review and being accredited. And not it cannot be any, because anybody can really publish on the web. You can edit that as you want, of course. But it’s a main reason because people keep asking it every single time. And it’s always like, Yeah, we really want to because everybody, we don’t earn anything with it. The authors don’t earn anything, the editor doesn’t earn anything with it. On the contrary, perhaps, but, and we want to be read by anyone, but we also have to maintain our jobs, because otherwise we cannot do our work. And so, we have to have some sort of an income. So, it’s very practical in that respect. But to go back to it what is different this time is that we are planning to have also a publication in Spanish, English and Portuguese. We plan not to translate it because yeah, we plan just not to try and maybe maybe the abstraction different. But we have also figured out over the years because ITYARN now exists 18 years that obviously in the last 10 years or so, translation apps have become so much better and particularly between sort of like Western languages which then I would also say is Spanish and Portuguese and English. So, you can kind of like you have a lot of different translation tools that can translate that and do it yourself. You can you can scan it you can do really do a lot a lot of things with that. And then also I think the only the most difficult languages are still the Asian languages I would say to kind of read Persian or Arabic. Even Russian is has become pretty good now in a translate app, I mean to say. So, that is what we are planning on doing to go forward and the probably no, we don’t, we will not publish all the papers, we will make a selection again. And we do that through an academic process that is that is academically accepted. But of course, everybody can kind of like, contact an individual author and say like, you know, would you mind sharing your paper with, of course, the understanding that that would never be used or, or distributed without permission of the author. And so that’s the simplest way of that.
The ITYARN conference went very well, mainly because we were also prepared to improvise. And we did, because there were some things, you know, we have different venues, sometimes there were air conditioning, one group was in non-air-conditioned rooms, like, okay, “This is big enough”, “we can go here”, “okay, that’s fine” – last-minute really, on the spot. Somebody will be stuck in traffic, somebody didn’t know how to find a venue. So, we just managed to do everything more or less in time. And so that, that all worked out. We would, because we made a lot of effort to make it accessible for Spanish people, there was translation in the morning. In the afternoon, there were like two simultaneous sessions of two and a half hours, which were in Spanish, so people could go there, we really would have liked to see more Cubans. And we didn’t, and there all kinds of reasons, I think. I think if anything, if we could maybe meet, we have to be more aware of it, if we go anywhere. Next time in three years, if we have that available, we have the translation, to really see if somehow we can encourage people, local people, academics, but also people, not academics, but also professional people and people in theatre to, to come and listen in.
And, and I say not only academics, because already in 2009, we had long talks, in particular, Tulin Saglam, Young Ai Choi and myself, we were in Linz in 2009 and we had a whole meeting with the Next Generation, then. And we said, “Come to this”, you know, “present here” and they said but we’re not researchers. And we said, but no, but as soon as you start thinking and writing about your practice, that’s research. And then, you know, you’re interested in, maybe you want to know something more. You find some books and articles. Right now, I would say you Google something and see if there’s some, you know, some other people who have the same ideas and what do they say? And then you put in like, “Well, I do agree with that”, or “don’t agree with that for this and this reasons”. And then you’re doing research. And it’s interesting for us, so it’s like, you know, practical research, research, practice, practice research, it’s all the same. And, and after that, we actually got people who, who have been coming from the Next Gen who are who thought of themselves as practitioners who have been coming to almost all the events. I mean, if I want one person who has been coming, I’m pretty sure to all of them is Aracelia Guerrero Rodriguez. And there were some other ones Finegan Kruckemeyer was also one of the first Next Gen and he have come to all of that he couldn’t come this year, but he has come to all of them. So, there are some people from all over the world who have been coming and have been presenting at ITYARN. So, you don’t have to have an academic education. It is more like, think deeply about your own practice. Ask questions, try to answer them and if you don’t have the answers, ask the questions. Yeah,
NM: Ask again. It’s it’s like the minute you ask a question you are starting, you know, research work. Right? The minute you have a question, that’s where the research begins. And then you find the answers and finding answers is what research is about. Right?
MW: You know, it’s so, it’s tricky because they always say don’t ask closed questions. So, like questions that you can say yes or no to, which is sometimes difficult, right? But even if you do ask that even by accident to yourself or other people, always you can say, always end with “why?” or, “and?”, [Nishna overlapping – EXACTLY!] “so what?” The why is for me very important, it’s like, “Okay, we have to do this and that” – but why? “We have to do so and so” – but why? you know. “Children always want to have like, primary colours” – it is very simple – primary. Well, why? You know? So, if children don’t like a performance, it’s not a good performance. But why? I mean, do adults all like the performances that they go see? And is that automatically a criterion to make it a bad performance or a good performance? It doesn’t. You know, I go to the theatre and I may come out, like, I really, really didn’t like it but I, I may not say that it’s a bad performance, it was very well done but I didn’t like it. I really don’t want to see it again. Or maybe I should see it again and see if I do like it. But something was disturbing and disturbing is also that it’s not liking. So disturbing is not liking but that can still be a very good experience. Don’t say we have to disturb children, of course. But [chuckles]
NM: But but it is still a response. Yeah, like a performance is meant to provoke a response, whether it is happiness, sadness, anger, you know, because a lot of performances make me angry, which does. And that does not mean that I don’t like the performance. It’s the subject of the performance and the way it is communicated in the performance that, you know, might make me angry that, “Yeah, I agree with you. But it is infuriating that something like this happens”, and it’s, it’s the basic human response that a performance brings out. Yeah,
MW: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. And those are all normal feelings. It’s the same with the, as I said, you know, everybody is an academic and a practitioner. So, I direct and I do drama, drama, creative drama, teaching and learning, however you want to call it but process oriented drama. And one of the first things that I’m saying to students just like, you know, if, yeah, they’re emotions, crying is also an emotion that doesn’t need to be bad, often, you will maybe start laughing and laughing is an expression of uneasiness with something because you don’t know what else to do. That doesn’t mean it’s, it’s good. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s happy, you know, so to make, to make, to make people think about these other things, I say kids do that, too. But if it gets started crying, that’s not necessarily bad in the sense of bad, it’s that they’re touched.
NM: It’s communication.
MW: It’s communication. Absolutely.
NM: Yeah, I, you know, what you said earlier about people thinking that they’re not researchers, and for a long time, I was properly intimidated by research. And about a year ago, I was considering applying for a PhD, I spoke with Tom. And we had a very honest conversation. And I said, at heart, I am still a practitioner, but I have a lot of questions. And, and I somehow just dropped the idea of applying for a PhD to get a formal, you know, go through formal academic training, but I still, I document everything I do, or I try to find answers in different ways. And, and yeah, it just feels, you know, reassuring, when you say that, because when I was doing my master’s, we had a module on practice research, and that is something that really, you know, something that I want to hold on to. Using Research and Production coming together. And since then, I’ve also been very interested in documentary theatre. And my style of writing, whether it’s an article or a play is very anecdotal and verbatim style. So, I have, you know, as a practitioner, I have found solace in using research as a way to create theatre, and this is all it’s also something that I use with my students. So, I work with the school for children with disabilities, and we are integrating the production process in the social sciences curriculum as well. And we take them on field trips, and, you know, bring in guest speakers. And that’s research, isn’t it?
MW: It really is. And that’s, that’s, you know, there are actually quite a few. Not all, but there’s, there’s in the research, but there’s some people who just are, for example, in the ITYARN on board, that people who did their PhD or people who did their MFA and worked at the university of work at university theory and practice, which I am doing too. But there have also been people and certainly people taking, taking part in ITYARN activities, and, and are published in ITYARN publications, who do not have a formal academic degree, higher academic degree, I think that most people have some sort of like, a higher degree that in that they have training in directing and acting. And, you know, we’re all kind of like self-thinking people as some people are more directed may or may be more, more practice oriented, or more theory oriented. And, you know, unlike some, many people are doubting it, I have to honestly tell you, but you know, and some people are sort of like, in the middle, and to go a little bit here, a little bit there. But not everybody has that degree. But I think the main thing is exactly what you say, the main thing is questioning, not saying, you know, it’s kind of like, it’s like your students do. It’s like not saying, “Oh, I did a great job.” It’s like, why did you do a great, great job, what was so great about your job, or “I did a really bad job”, it really wasn’t so bad. But I thought this and that was pretty good. What do you think? And why do you think that’s bad? And, you know, so just this, this whole idea of why and, and probing and going deeper about that, which can be with or without research, right? You can kind of look just using your own mind. And then you’re kind of like, be more philosophical, I guess, in a way and you’re tapping out of your own knowledge. And, or you can say, like, wait a minute, I don’t really know why. If you do something more practical, maybe but why was it that it was at that and that time, this and that and that and that? Oh, you know, they had the prohibition then and blah, blah, blah, you know, I’m just making that up, or that India was colonised and oh, that is why we have so many English plays, you know. So, the one thing leads to another.
NM: Yeah. So ultimately, research is all about inquiry and finding answers. And as we say, in Hindi, “baal ki khaal nikalna”. So “baal” is hair, and “khaal” is skin, so removing the skin from the hair, so which means to really dig deeper into something. So yeah
MW: Yeah and that is really what it is. Because and that is, you know, that’s really what critical thinking is too. And what is critical thinking? People are saying, oh, critical thinking is hard, right? But no, it’s not. It’s just, it’s just questioning things and it’s kind of like if somebody and it’s everywhere I have to tell you some things are just said there’s like this and that and that and that and I was like, really? Why? And, and that can be very simple. That can be very, very oh I cannot come up with an example but yeah, somebody told me that this and this is happening like a political thing or something like that, right? That all people from I don’t know, all people who live in the that particular region are really lazy. And then you go like, uh, you know what, yeah, but he’s he or she is or ze is from this particular reason. He’s really lazy person. Oh, really? Why? Well, somebody told me that all the people from that particular region are really, really lazy. Oh, really? How do you know? Well, because so and so and so and so told me that but I know somebody from that particular reason who is not lazy at all because I am working with this person a lot. And this is a really hardworking person. So, it’s but those are what is coming into the world. And that is why you have to say, why? How? Oh yeah? Are you sure about that?
I think the really the heart for me, the heart of research is, has always been questioning.
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Nishna Mehta is an MA in Theatre for Young Audiences. She has been working with and for children and young people from various backgrounds and abilities in India, Singapore, England, Ireland and Germany since 2012.
Currently, she is the Lead Researcher for ASSITEJ International’s Global Advocacy Focused Research Project with a focus on Diversity in Leadership in Theatre for Young Audiences, the Chairperson of the International Inclusive Arts Network and acting Secretary of ASSITEJ India.
She wishes to share the magic and joy of theatre with young people across age groups and backgrounds throughout the world and aims to bring her local and international experiences together in order to find a ‘glocal’ identity.
