In the second part of our interview with Extant Creative Director Maria Oshodi (part one is here) , she explains a bit more about some of their recent projects.
What have you been working on this year?
We worked with the Wallace Collection this year, with some young visually impaired people from a school in Newham.
The Wallace Collection has some really classic old paintings, like the Laughing Cavalier, and they give lectures on the paintings. We thought the kids would take nothing in at all – they were all between about 11 and 13 – but afterwards we quizzed them and they’d retained so much information it was incredible.
Then they had to recreate these scenes from the paintings, and it was fantastic.
Within that we got them to bring in more description, and they were getting a sense of working outside themselves. Bringing in the element of description – because it feels slightly awkward – constantly reminds the actors that there are people watching.
Were there any particualr success stories?
There was one boy [Rhys] who was slightly autistic, in a group we did in Sutton. He was a very good actor but he was little bit remote. A woman who came to video the end of term presentation was a filmmaker herself and she was looking to cast someone to play the part of a visually impaired boy in a film she was making in Sicily.
She took him to Sicily, made this short film, and he did really well and had a fantastic time.
When he came back, I asked him what he was going to do, and he said “Become a policeman”. And although I’d kind of hoped he’d say he was going to drama school or become an actor, I then actually thought, well if it’s given him the confidence to be a policeman, that’s great.
His mother also told us he’d really changed after having come to our workshops.
What else have you been up to?
Apart form the Wallace Collection project last summer we ran a 10-week course at Lambeth Academy – we had about eight young people, between about 12 and 16, involved in that.
We had run a whole year of work with them but the final 10 weeks was based on audio description. We took them to an audio-described performance of Twelfth Night at the Unicorn and then they did their own version, a modern version, including live audience description.
Nabeela was on the Lambeth Academy course. She’s a Sunni Muslim and her parents weren’t particularly happy about her being involved, but she really loved it and loved writing and drama and it’s really helped her.
We often get people looking for cast. For instance the BBC wanted to do a documentary on a blind young person using to use an ‘echo location’ technology developed by an American.
There was this great young guy who worked with us at the Wallace Collection project and we recommended him for that, and I think he’s just about to audition for it. We pass on those sorts of opportunities.
One thing we’re hoping to do is the Mouse Trap project in the West End– they do quite a lot of work with visually impaired people, but what they don’t do is some of the developmental work. So they’ll set up a workshop for people to come along and experience Legally Blonde, for example, but then there’s no follow-on from that.
So we’re thinking of coming together so that people will be introduced to a big show to inspire them and then they’ll have a chance to do a series of workshops afterwards where they’ll have a chance to create their own work.
With the Wallace Collection – there was a young woman who had been on the Lambeth Academy group the year before and was looking for a company to do a work placement with, so we arranged for her to do some work experience with us.
She was only about 14 or 15, which is about the same age as some of the young people in the group, but we gave her quite a lot of responsibility. She was fantastic – she really came into her own and that was because her parents got in contact with us initially and asked us if she could do work experience.
What problems do you face?
Transport is often an issue [getting people to the workshop venues]. It’s the issue around independence. One term we focused on older age group, i.e. school leavers.
That was interesting because initially we thought we wouldn’t have these issues with people up to the age of 25, but we found it quite amazing that there were issues with parental over-protection with people who are in their twenties, so it actually doesn’t really make any difference how old they are.
It’s also difficult to locate where the young people who could benefit from the workshops are – the way the whole education system is constructed these days means there’s more integration, and so we have to do a lot more groundwork with visually impaired units that are in particular areas that might operate with schools in a particular region.
The young people are spread across several schools and several regions and so then it’s the logistics of bringing people together that leads to transport problems.
Thanks for your time Maria and for sharing Extant’s story with us.
