Hasta luego, Mexico…
22 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, Casa Alianza, community theatre, iEmpathize, Mexico, play, puppet, Quinceañera parties, street children
You can find out more about why I’m writing this blog by navigating to the ‘About’ section or clicking here.
My time in Mexico City has been full of surprises and the last two days, which have also been my last days working with Casa Alianza, have not disappointed on this front.
I’d agreed with Monica, who couldn’t be with me at the house this week, that on Monday we would put the finishing touches to the puppets we’d made last week, ready for a sharing the next day. I came in to find the girls preparing for a 15th birthday party. Going with the flow (the party looked like fun) I helped them to put on their Disney-like dresses, ready for the celebration.
‘Quinceañera’ parties are a major milestone celebration in Latin America, marking the transition from childhood to womanhood and often featuring solemn religious ceremonies. Our fiesta consisted more of dancing to salsa and reggaeton, eating cake and other delicious food and posing for lots of photos.
Feeling underdressed (although please note, I am wearing a tiara)
We also had some unexpected visitors: a group of volunteers from the American NGO iEmpathize, who had come to spend between one and three weeks with Casa Alianza and two other organisations that work with street children in the city. Hence followed one of the girls running back and forth between me and the group, asking me “how do you say [insert phrase] in English?”, repeating the phrase, then waiting for me to translate the answer into Spanish. It was interesting to see the girls’ reaction to the arrival of new people in the house; some were (literally) all over them, others hid away and one girl spent the whole morning apparently superglued to my arm.
The girls get to know the iEmpathize volunteers over lunch
Today, having considered what we could realistically achieve in a few hours, I went in with no plan whatsoever (not even one I had written and then thrown away). On arrival, I was asked to stay outside the front gate for a few minutes. I peeked through and saw some kind of activity taking place involving a very big piece of paper. Hmm.
When I was finally allowed in, the morning meeting was taking place as usual. In the last week or so, I haven’t participated, as I’ve been helping Monica with other work. Today, however, the leader in charge, Rocio, urged me to join in for the end of the meeting. I said good morning to the girls and received a deafening response. Looking around the table, I saw bright, excited eyes; something was clearly up.
At the end of the meeting, the girls are invited to acknowledge another member of their community, which can include staff. Things got quite emotional; Rocio was close to tears after I’d acnowledged her support and friendship and I was touched by the heartfelt words that several of the girls had for me, particularly those who hadn’t engaged as much as others in the workshops.
This atmosphere that the CAM staff have created in the house, where the girls are free to express their emotions with no stigma attached, really impresses me. It has been hard at times being in such an emotionally charged environment, but I can see how this freedom is important and helpful for the girls.
After the meeting, the girls ran over to the other side of the room and brought out the piece of paper I’d seen earlier (which is so big I actually have no idea how I’m going to get it home). On it was written, “Natasha, we love you!”, with messages from each of the girls. They’d also made me a (delicious) cake out of Oreo biscuits, which we ate together, followed by some dancing, where I exhibited my lack of salsa dancing prowess and taught one of the girls how to dance The Robot – surely a worthwhile contribution to Mexican contemporary culture?
To finish this last morning, Rocio and I started a game involving some celebrity masks I’d brought with me but hadn’t yet had the opportunity to use. We rummaged through bags of recent clothes donations for appropriate outfit options while I explained to everyone – including the American volunteers – who David Cameron was, split the group into two and set them the task of creating and performing a skit. The results were predictably amusing; the first group started off with Barack Obama giving a speech, only to be knocked off his podium by a dancing Rihanna, while the other group managed to pack in 
references to at least three films into a few minutes, with strategic use of a fan to reproduce ‘the’ scene from Titanic.
And so, after what seemed like a million hugs and some tears, my last day at the house came to an end. Monica is back later in the week and we will keep in contact via email about the project’s progress. I’d also like to keep you updated on the project as it continues on into its next phase, as well as my consultation with Casa Alianza UK around embedding an arts strand into their work across Latin America. Exciting stuff!
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to seeing all my special people again and settling back into London life. The weather here has turned cold and rainy today, which I hear is how the British ‘summer’ is turning out at the moment…
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A Passion for Puppetry
18 Jun 2011 1 Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, Blue Peter, Casa Alianza, community theatre, creativity, Mexico, play, puppet, Spongebob SquarePants, street children
You can find out more about why I’m writing this blog by navigating to the ‘About’ section or clicking here.
Andres with one of the puppets used in the group's Roundhouse performance, 'The Thinker', May 2011
Now that the baby shower madness has subsided, normal activities have resumed in the house and we’ve got stuck into making some puppets. The original intention was that this would be an integral part of the project, potentially using ‘found objects’, but instead, mainly due to a severe lack of time, Monica and I have tacked it on to the end like some kind of bonus level, a mini project within the project itself. Strangely, I’ve been feeling more in my Element (thanks, Sir Ken) these last few days than in the past week or so.
I learned how to make puppets from everyday materials – think newspapers, plastic bags, flour and water – from the excellent and extremely patient Andres Anguita, who runs puppet-making courses at Crisis Skylight London. The group have recently showcased their work through a performance at the Roundhouse and the plan is that I’ll work with Andres on his next project with Crisis this summer.
After quickly making a Blue Peter style example ‘head’ with Monica’s help, I handed things over to one of the girls to run a well-loved warm-up game, ‘Cat and Rat’ (which I hadn’t come across before starting this project, but it turns out even my mum knows), then split the group into two teams. We explained that they would be working on two puppets per team, with the puppet-making process split up into three stages. Two girls from each team would work on a stage each, with the rest of the group working on scripts for two short scenes featuring the puppets in the meantime.
Setting an example: Monica with our swiftly made puppet head
This turned out to be a useful teamworking activity in itself; the girls needed to think about how to use the different strengths of their team most effectively, share out the more and less exciting stages fairly and communicate effectively through their team so that the girls working on each part were clear about what they needed to do.
To start making a puppet in Andres’ style, we scrunched a ball of newspaper around a bamboo stick, adding more newspaper as needed and then wrapping strong tape around it to cover it completely. One of the girls wasn’t very happy with me at the time and wanted to change the shape of the original ball, so I told her to pretend it was my head. This worked very well (and, just as importantly, raised a smile).
Next, we used a papier mâché mix made from PVA glue, flour and water to paste two layers of white tissue paper pieces to cover the heads. By this time, I had discovered that one team were working on a SpongeBob SquarePants story, while the other team were writing a story about a turtle, which involved the turtle saying “HA HA HA” a lot. Brilliant.
Michelle reads us her team's turtle story while we work on our puppets
We then left the puppets to dry overnight, returning to them the next day to paint them and add features. We ran into a few problems when the first team complained that the SpongeBob SquarePants puppet wasn’t square enough, but we worked together to figure out how to get the result they wanted. The other team were happy to get on with it and had fun painting and decorating their turtle. We also made some very simple but effective hands for the SpongeBob puppet, by cutting out rough hand shapes from coloured card and sticking them back-to-back to the end of a straw.
The girls are keen to put the finishing touches to their puppets over the weekend, ready to present their stories on Tuesday, my last day with Casa Alianza Mexico. Monica can’t be there, something we are both sad about, but in true Mexican style she has been asked at short notice to work a long shift on Sunday and will therefore take Monday and Tuesday off. Qué pena.
One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about this ‘mini project’ is seeing the girls be uninhibitedly and spontaneously creative, which is something they’ve found a real challenge in our drama work. Given simple materials such as paints and coloured paper, which they’re not usually given the chance to play with freely outside of a more structured activity, it was great to see them mixing paints with their fingers and getting excited about trying to find exactly the right shade of ‘café’ brown. So what if it turned out as a dark grey and they got paint all over the place?
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The Mexican Clown
15 Jun 2011 1 Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, baby shower, Casa Alianza, clown, community theatre, Mexico, play, street children, street performance
Today I learned how to make decorative baby shoes out of mini plastic cups, cotton wool, Kleenex and ribbon. For the last two days, the girls have been preparing for a surprise baby shower for one of the CAM staff, which will take place tomorrow, Mexican style.
In other news, I’ve been thinking about Mexico’s relationship with theatre, specifically clowning, and looking back on some street performances that I’ve enjoyed in the last month or so.
Just a few days after arriving in the city, I happened upon this guy entertaining some bored motorists (thanks to my very clever website expert friend Frankie for helping me to get around the video clip issue):
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Since then, I’ve been in the audience for several very earnest, and yet incredibly playful performances up and down the aisles of the metro – even if they don’t seem to be particularly appreciated by passengers – apart from me! I wish we could have some of this on the tube in London (although would there be enough space?) I can imagine grumpy Londoners tutting because their Selfridges bags are being trodden on by some ‘wacky’ young actor with his face painted like a skull. This is probably another reason for starting up some tube theatre.
A couple of days ago, my friend and I were also entertained by an elderly man with a rabbit hand puppet whilst in a traffic jam (I wish I had captured this on video, but I was enjoying the moment too much) and, on a walk in the park one weekend, I spotted the man on the right entertaining a crowd. I’m not sure what he was up to, but I instantly regretted taking this photo, as it attracted his attention and he proceeded to get some laughs out of my general giant European-ness. Sigh. (The added disadvantage of being singled out in a crowd by an entertainer, which happens to me here on a regular basis, is that I am immediately chased down the street by at least one group of students who need help with their English homework. Very conscientious).
I recently read that this ‘popular’ type of clowning in Mexico is a serious business; there is a well-established annual clown convention and these street performers are described as being an incredibly important part of Mexico’s culture and its economy, despite street clowning also being seen as the lowest form of entertainment by some Mexicans.
It’s funny (literally) that I’ve brought a project to Mexico that is rooted in theatre and the world of clowning, only to find that street performers and clowns are an important part of Mexican culture.
Just like making baby shoes out of Kleenex.
Michael Jackson clown, 15th Annual Clown Convention, Mexico City, Oct. 2010
Pens and professional development
11 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, Casa Alianza, community theatre, House of Games, Mexico, play, professional development, street children, sustainability, Teotihuacan
You can find out more about why I’m writing this blog by navigating to the ‘About’ section or clicking here.
Monica ran up to me as soon as I got to the house this morning, saying she needed to talk to me. I was worried; yesterday had been a tough day, with my session having to be cut short as one of the girls had stabbed another in the arm with a biro. It took me a moment to realise this wasn’t part of the image the group were creating (I once ran over to stop a girl picking up a chair in a session as I thought she was going to throw it at someone, only to find she was just getting into the role of a protestor in the activity we were doing).
For me, this was the culmination of a week of an unsettled and slightly wild atmosphere hanging over the house, possibly because three new girls have joined the community recently and definitely due to Monica being taken away from the house for several days by other responsibilities.
My worries were unfounded, however. I’d emailed a presentation outlining the project’s content to Monica a couple of days ago for her to comment on and had, to be honest, let it slide to the back of my mind. In addition to the pen incident, we’d both been ill with a stomach bug and I was happy for her to take some time to think about it and get back to me when she was ready.
Example slide (Part 2: Building a team, using the House of Games themes of adaptation, spontaneity, supportiveness and empowerment)
Which was now, apparently. Her eyes were flashing with excitement as she started talking to me about how everything seemed so clear and how fantastic she thought the vision of the project was. Laying out the project in a visual way, rather than talking her through it, as I had been trying to until now, had made all the difference. It seems pretty obvious now, I have to admit.
Monica has always ‘got’ the idea of the project, but now she seems even more tuned in with its aims and how it can complement her own work. We agreed that the struggle to communicate with the group has made sessions challenging for everyone, not helped by Monica’s absence when she has to be elsewhere.
Taking this and the limited time I have left into consideration, we’ve decided that the logical next step is for me to put together a toolkit of activities with instructions for Monica to facilitate with me for the remaining sessions and for her to then continue delivering the project when I leave. We’re determined that this project is only just beginning and for me, in terms of its sustainability and the ethical dilemma of ‘parachuting’ into a community for a relatively short period of time, this is a really good outcome. From Casa Alianza’s point of view, it will feed into Monica’s professional development.
This is not where I thought we would be at this stage in the project, but I’m happy with how things are developing. Monica’s attitude has played a massive part in this; I think without her understanding of and enthusiasm for the project, we could be in a very different place.
A good way to end the week! I’ll be celebrating by going to see some big pyramids this weekend…
(I was going to end this post with a video clip of the girls playing a game, but WordPress wants to charge me an annual fee for uploading video or audio. I’ll see if I can post a link to my still-yet-to-be-designed website instead – watch this space!)
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Setbacks and opportunities
05 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, Casa Alianza, community theatre, Mexico, origami, play, street children
You can find out more about why I’m writing this blog by clicking on the ‘About’ tab or clicking here.
Little stars: Naomi and Pati with their origami masterpiece
Last week, I was about to start my second workshop when it got bumped by an origami star making session.
The session itself was quite fun and the results were beautiful but, at the time, I found it pretty frustrating; after agreeing the timetable with Monica, I’d spent time in the first session explaining when my project would run – Monday to Friday at the same time every day – and was happy that we had a structure in place that would become part of the girls’ routine.
But it was not to be.
The strangest thing was that everyone else thought this was totally normal. When I asked Monica what had happened, she talked at length about how the girls needed to take part in a variety of activities throughout the week. A valid point, but it still didn’t explain why this all happened at the last minute.
For me, this is a classic example of how easy it is to misunderstand and be misunderstood in these situations, particularly taking into account the language and cultural differences, and how debilitating it can be to be the only person who has no idea what’s going on (a frequent occurrence for me at the moment!)
Having said that, this little episode had an ultimately positive outcome, kicking off a proper conversation with Monica that I’d been trying to have since I arrived at the house, about how the project could realistically fit in with the girls’ already busy timetable.
It had seemed all too easy when Monica had agreed to the original days and times I’d suggested. This time, she admitted that there was only time for me to run a session three times a week instead of five. This was also an opportunity for her to raise concerns she hadn’t voiced until now; as I’d suspected (see my last post, ‘Anti planning‘), she was anxious about the fact that I had no fixed plan for each session and asked for written feedback in future. Maybe I wasn’t the only person who felt like they didn’t know what was going on, after all.
This presents me with a dilemma. It still makes sense for me to go to the house every day even if I’m not delivering a session – having said that, the girls are already confused about what the project actually is, despite my careful setting up of its theme and aims. As I expected, reneging on a promise to keep to a set timetable has undermined the project to a certain extent. I’m fast becoming a regular feature of the girls’ day, and yet not always leading a particular activity and it’s clear that they’re not quite sure how they should interact with me at the moment. Am I a friend? Authority figure? Big sister? Perhaps this ambiguity would still be present if I were a general volunteer with CAM; perhaps it’s just part of the natural process of getting to know each other.
It’s at times like these when theory can seem difficult to apply. The reality of this situation is that it’s not practical for me to just take on the role of workshop practitioner, and yet I still need to preserve the ‘safe space’ of the workshop somehow within the daily life of the house. In this sense, the benefits of ‘tolerating uncertainty’ still apply, while balancing this principle with the importance of preserving the integrity of the project.
Part of striking this balance is being reasonably protective over the agreed time that I do have to deliver sessions for the rest of the project. A friend asked me what my response would be if my sessions continued to be ‘marginalised’ in favour of other activities: “So – if they bring in a toothless sock puppet-making man when you’re supposed to be running a session, what are you going to do?”
Bad example. I would absolutely LOVE that.
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Anti Planning
02 Jun 2011 1 Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: anti-planning, Applied Theatre, Casa Alianza, Chris Johnston, community theatre, House of Games, Keith Johnstone, Lois Weaver, Madness, Mexico, play, street children
You can find out more about why I’m writing this blog by clicking on the ‘About’ tab or clicking here.
Chris Johnston‘s House of Games book is one of my favourites at the moment, partly because it starts with this Madness quote:
“Welcome to the House of Fun. Welcome to the lion’s den.”
There are other reasons, but generally I think this book makes a lot of practical sense, without being patronising or wanky*.
(*No offence intended, this is an official Applied Theatre term. Ask Dr Sally Mackey)
One suggestion that Johnston makes that I’m experimenting with on this project is to make a concerted effort not to plan each session in too much detail. In fact, his exact words are “make a plan and throw it away”.
This is surprisingly difficult. My first session started mid morning on Monday and I got up especially early to not plan. (I’d already made my plan, ready to throw away, the night before). I sat for an hour over breakfast making notes, which kept threatening to turn into a well structured format that was timed down to the minute.
I ended up compromising a little. I’m happy to admit that I don’t have enough experience to do a Keith Johnstone (of Impro fame), asking the group what they want to do and agreeing that it’s a great idea. Instead, I took the foci that the other Johnston (confusing, eh?) sees as important for a group who are new to drama – Attention, Energy, Imagination and Communication – and used these as broad themes within an overarching aim for the first few sessions to ‘build a supportive group’.
So – when it came down to it, did I forget all the activities I’d ever read about, as well as every Spanish word I’ve ever learned and have to run out of the room because the session ground to a sickening halt?
I think that may have happened to me in a dream once, but no.
This does work.
It is terrifying.
The reason I didn’t give in to my instincts to plan is because I can see why Johnston (and Johnstone, as well as Lois Weaver, amongst others) call for a need for more flexibility within the session, in the spirit of having a balance between some fixed elements (the outline format of the session, for example) with freer elements within these (in this case, the content).
Johnston doesn’t necessarily encourage using this with a new group though, whereas I found it incredibly useful in the first session; the fact that the activities that I selected depended on the attitude of the group meant that I was even more alert to their responses and was able to use this read the group, in terms of personalities, what individuals enjoyed more or less and the group dynamic.
It has also set a nice precedent where these young women, who, both as teenagers and as a marginalised group who have been ‘labelled’, have little choice in their lives, feel that they have agency, as well as promoting the sense that we are working as a group, rather than it just being led by me as the facilitator.
The only criticism I would have of this approach is of how it can appear externally; I can already sense that Monica and the other staff are slightly unnerved by my lack of a hard copy plan that I refer to during the session and I can understand that it can very easily look like I am just making things up as I go along. This means a bit more paperwork for me behind the scenes; reassuring the team that there is a strategy in place and reporting back to them on individual and group behaviour, in line with the way CAM runs its other activities.
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¡Buenos días, familia!
31 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, Casa Alianza, community theatre, Mexico, play, street children
You can find out more about why I’m writing this blog by clicking on the ‘About’ tab or clicking here.
Outside the "girls' house", Calle Churintzio
A typical day in the house above starts at 5 a.m. After breakfast, its inhabitants spend the first few hours of the day cleaning their sleeping and living space before coming together for ‘El Encuentro’ (literally, ‘The Meeting’) at 10 a.m. During this time, the whole group, including staff, sit around their big dining table and everyone speaks briefly in turn about how they feel that morning. They then set themselves two aims for the day: one personal and one related to others. Each person finishes their turn by reading from ‘the phrase of the day’, something inspirational, the meaning of which is then discussed by the group. Finally, everyone gets up to join hands in a circle and shout, “¡Buenos días, familia!”
I was invited to join El Encuentro on my second day at the house, an example of the warm welcome I’ve experienced there. But what to say? I suddenly felt that it was totally inappropriate for my thoughts, which felt, quite frankly, trivial, to be put alongside those of the rest of the group. But once I’d said my piece, I realised that the experience, whilst being nerve-wracking at the time, only served to cement me further into this community.
I’ve spent just under a week at the house, getting to know its inhabitants and participating in their daily activities. I’m surprised by the effort they make to communicate with me; they now know to speak very loudly and clearly, with lots of gestures, which inevitably causes much laughter. They are also very curious about what life is like in England and constantly ask me to translate words into English, which they then collapse into hysterics trying to pronounce.
It’s clear that CAM are doing a fantastic job of making these young women feel safe, giving them a clear structure to their day and allowing them the autonomy to essentially run the house themselves. The feeding in of educational sessions is also impressive; last week two members of CAM staff came in to talk to the young women about sexual health and smoking respectively, in a very direct and non-patronising way – refreshing considering the ongoing problems we seem to have with finding an effective and appropriate way to deliver this kind of education in the UK.
There has also been a little bit of fun amongst all this seriousness. On Wednesday, we had a fiesta in the house, where – shock horror – boys from another CAM house were invited in to watch a film and eat snacks (the film was The Bodyguard - I may have enjoyed it more than they did). On Friday, we took some of the girls to a fun park, where I sustained minor injuries due to some extremely mischievous bumper car driving. Unlike any trip with teenagers I have ever been on, no-one stepped an inch out of line or complained and they seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves.
Monica, CAM therapist and girls' house coordinator
In the house, the positive, settled atmosphere can be attributed partly to the strong presence of Monica, the therapist and coordinator that I suppose I can call my CAM ‘buddy’. It is obvious that the girls like, trust and respect her and she is amazingly dedicated, often working late. In addition to being a generally fantastic person, she is also totally behind the project and seems to ‘get’ the whole concept of Applied Theatre.
I couldn’t feel more supported.
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Diving in
30 May 2011 1 Comment
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, Casa Alianza, community theatre, Mexico, play, street children
You can find out more about why I’m writing this blog by clicking on the ‘About’ tab or clicking here.
Walking through the gates of Casa Alianza Mexico (CAM)’s main building in the heart of the city’s ‘Centro Histórico’, I had no idea what to expect. I’d been invited to a meeting with the Programme Director, Alex Nuñez Medina, which I hoped was a sign that someone, somewhere had read my project proposal and that today would be the day that I could finally ask all the questions I wanted to ask: What did CAM expect from the project? How many people would I be working with? Where and how often? What level of support could I expect?
The conversation started in Spanish. After a while, Alex insisted that he needed to practise his English (which was, of course, perfect) and we quickly got into the detail of the project and how it could complement Casa Alianza’s work. Alex talked about the group; seventeen young women, all living in a family house (due to a fire at Casa Alianza’s main building last year) in the south of the city.
Some of the young women, all of whom have been subjected to some kind of violence, have been referred to CAM by social services, some brought by their families and some came alone or were brought in by CAM’s ‘street teams’, who go out on to the streets of the city every morning to talk to the young people there and make sure they’re OK.
An unexpected discovery for me was that this group are still in phase 1 of CAM’s programme, meaning that they have only been with CAM a short while, may be having issues with living and working with others and that some may be ill due to drug or alcohol problems. I had expected to be working with a group in ‘Phase 2′; however, Alex and I agreed that one of my project’s aims, to build a supportive group, could actually enhance CAM’s efforts to build a positive community in the girls’ house. ‘Una buena mezcla’, as Alex put it. (We’d switched back to Spanish by this time).
Alex suggested that I work alongside Monica, a therapist working five days a week at the girls’ house. “I think you’ll make a good team. Monica will pick you up tomorrow morning. I’ll check in with you in a couple of weeks.”
Meeting over!
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Beginnings
26 May 2011 2 Comments
in Community theatre project in Mexico Tags: Applied Theatre, Casa Alianza, community theatre, Mexico, play, street children, The Leverhulme Trust
Been around the world and I-I-I….can’t find a convenient frame of reference to pop Mexico City into. It’s like Moscow with its ridiculously wide roads and imposing statues here, there and everywhere. Or South East Asia with tempting street food stalls every couple of steps. And in some ways, it’s like my hometown of London: an unashamedly massive, sprawling, pollution-belching hive of constant, bewildering activity. But really, it’s completely different from any of these places – and has taken a while to get used to. Having said that, I admire its uniqueness; any city that can completely throw me off balance gets a big thumbs up, for front alone!
How did I end up here?
Compañeras de Central: Natasha & Kati
It seems to have happened very quickly; three months ago, Kati Francis, a fellow MA Applied Theatre student and I had an idea for a collaborative project that we were batting back and forth. A former student on the same course, Adrian Figueroa, had worked with Casa Alianza, an NGO that rehabilitates street children across South and Central America, last year and was keen for someone to continue the partnership. Kati and I started to talk about taking the project, founded on the importance of play, to work with ‘desamparadas’ (literally, helpless) young women in Casa Alianza’s care.
You can read more about Casa Alianza’s work in Mexico here.
'Mexican Mystery' Fundraiser, May 2011
From that first spark, there have been many twists and turns and memorable moments, not least hearing on the morning of the interview for funding from The Leverhulme Trust that Kati wouldn’t be able to take part in the project. Another: opening the email giving the result of our funding application and not being sure whether I wanted to have won funding or not. The amazing show of practical, financial and moral support from family, friends, colleagues – and more unlikely sources.
‘Tolerating uncertainty’ is a phrase my fellow Applied Theatre students are familiar with, but lately it has become some kind of a mantra. Even now, having finally arrived and settled into life in Mexico City, there are many questions that lie unanswered in relation to my work here. Crucially, however, my attitude to these questions has shifted; instead of worrying about tying everything up tightly in what I see as a very British fashion, I’m surfing: keeping an eye on the horizon but appreciating and enjoying being in the here and now – and having a good laugh when things go spectacularly pear-shaped and I end up with a mouthful of sand. Shame I’m not near a beach, really…
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