The MaD Theatre Company is a not-for-profit community theatre company based in north Manchester. They have used film and theatre to examine the history and consequences of gang crime for their community.
Selina Todd, a member of the theatre company says:
“This play was an adaptation of history lecturer Andrew Davies’s book The Gangs of Manchester. It was a popular book, but in the community where MaD works, not many people enjoy reading or can afford to buy many books. So the 50 young people who compose the core of MaD’s drama group had some difficult decisions to make.
How to present this serious story in an entertaining way that would engage MaD’s young participants and bring the people from north Manchester into the city’s theatres? Could they do so without trivialising the issue or glorifying violence? How could the audience be given a taste of Victorian Manchester, when most of them hadn’t studied history since schooldays? And how to ‘fill in the gaps’ that the historical record leaves – Dr Davies’s book could only hint at the friendships and love lives of the characters involved, but the audience and the young people wanted to know more about them!
MaD’s leaders, Rob Lees and Jill Hughes, decided that digital media was the way forward. They engaged the help of local film-maker and photographer Paul Cliff to help the young people make and act in a series of short films to be shown as part of the play.
Like the rest of this production, the film scripts were written and produced by the young people involved. These films were then uploaded to YoutTube by the young people, and linked to Andrew Davies’s website The Gangs of Manchester and to Facebook pages.
Watch the film here:
This use of digital media had several impacts. Firstly, it gave the young people a range of skills, and a degree of confidence, they couldn’t have gained simply from stage acting. These skills including film-making and producing, time management (since time costs money on film) and editing (and as one participant said, that’s a useful skill for essay-writing as well as for film production and presenting it on social networking sites).
The use of film enabled the young people to improve the artistic quality of their production. Gang fights could be portrayed in double-speed or in slow motion, accentuating the dramatic effect; the tragedy and the farce of street violence could be portrayed without glorifying it.
Secondly, the films engaged the audiences who came to see the play (MaD sold-out 12 performances at the Library Theatre and the Dancehouse). An audience survey showed that over 70% of the 3,000-strong audience came from north Manchester, Oldham or Bury.
Most had never attended a theatrical performance before, but they had been to a cinema. The use of the films to promote the play on YouTube and Facebook was important in encouraging this audience to attend – and in entertaining them when they were there.
Thirdly, the films allowed MaD to engage some local celebrities who could not have committed to stage rehearsals but were enthusiastic about supporting the group and its gang-prevention message. These included Clint Boon, Terry Christian, Mike Joyce and Jon Henshaw.
These methods of working could be inspirational to other community groups who are interested in engaging young people in drama, in reaching a wider audience using social networking sites and/or in engaging their members’ interest in subjects such as history. The results would also be valuable to groups who lack the funds for an extensive website, since our experience suggests that the use of social networking sites on the Web 2.0 platform enables groups like ours to reach a wide audience.”
