Notifications from the world of the performing arts for young audiences

Ping. The phone buzzes: a notification of forthcoming cuts in the cultural sector. Cuts to voluntary services. Cuts in cultural education. 

Ping. Civic education will also be cut in the coming year.

Theatre for young audiences does not take place in a vacuum: theatres and independent productions are increasingly being confronted with bigger cuts in funding for the arts and cultural education. This is affecting a sector that was already underfinanced: now the needs of children and young people are not being taken seriously, even after 3 years of pandemic. How can theatre for young people position itself to defend the rights of children and young people? How can it open up access to artistic experiences for them, enable them to participate and offer impulses for social and political discussions? How can it contribute to children and young people’s ability to negotiate diversity, participation, identities and inequalities with each other in a self-critical, anti-discriminatory and repectful way without being afraid of making mistakes?

We’ve already thrown a lot of terminology into that first paragraph. We’re good at this: throwing in terminology. We write from the perspective of white persons who conduct networking work, (oh, ping ping, the network is getting in touch) for artists and stakeholders in the performing arts for and with young audiences, who want to bring people in exchange with each other, offer discursive formats, challenge structures and open up events to persons and perspectives that have previously been un- or underpreceived or represented there.

Ping. Right wing attacks on culture and the people involved in it.

The times when diversity and inclusion were nice pluses or a pleasing achievement at festivals are over. Too many discourses are already moving firmly in problematic directions: spaces are being restricted, artistic explorations of diverse themes cannot be experienced (any more). With severe consequences, because by doing so, we deny children and young people important experiences and hinder them in their development as autonomous and self-aware people.

Ping. Individual artistic disciplines or venues will be cut or closed down. Often these are those dedicated to young audiences. 

The young audiences that come flocking to our theatre performances every morning (predominantly in groups) bring the broadest range of lived experiences with them. Children and young people have a right to places where they can receive a cultural education, where they can experience, learn about and make art. The performing arts for young people can be places where the worlds in which they live are represented, places for multiple perspectives and many voices in the audience as well as on stage and backstage. And they have to remain those places. Funding cuts – and with them, the loss of such places – should not endanger this.

Ping Ping Ping. Our social media posts in recent weeks, based on data collected about the financial situation of freelance theatremakers for children and young people, create more traffic on social media than the discussion of issues. Excellent that definitive, alarming figures for net income and single digit percentage public funding of projects generate attention.  But the threat from lived realities cannot be expressed in figures.

There is a huge dichotomy between the ambition to make good art a discussion topic (for example through exchange events, festivals, conferences or similar) and also studying the structures within which this art is created. Because many theatremakers barely have to give these strucures a thought because they are caught up inside them and because it is never asked of them. And as soon as an extension of established and powerful perspectives occurs, works corresponds to it.

Even if this sounds like the 752th message – ping ping ping ping – on this subject: we have to learn to be honest with ourselves and with our projects and to ask: why am I doing this? Why do I want to include perspectives? And how do I actually talk when nobody is listening?  Who benefits when projects are supposed to be inclusive, diverse, participatory and intersectional? Me, for my own self-image or for the self-image of the institution?

The path to examining diversity in a manner that is critical of power begins with questioning one’s own privileges: if white theatremakers depart from their claim to absolutism, theatremakers with experience of marginalisation have the prerogative of interpretation over their identity. Precisely those people who previously always had to explain themselves and who were not listened to – and who have repeatedly experienced violence and hurt in the theatre system. It is important to unlearn and regnegotiate a great deal, and that will not be possible without external help from experts. If we are not prepared to do this – and if individuals persons experience violence in processes of work or reproduction – then there is no need for us to talk about institutional change. Neither for young audiences, nor for adult audiences, nor for those who work for the audience.

What is not important is having to learn this whole vocabulary of discourse. What is important is asking sincerely whether there is a serious willingness to question and surrender positions of power.

Pi…  I can turn the phone off. But cannot turn the world off. 

What we need are collective, discrimination-aware, intersectional encounters that prioritise dialogue and a respectful negotiation of differences. Without reproducing discrimination, without awakening negative emotions – but which facilitate the opposite: understanding for and empathy with the various different lived realities of young people. And theatre can and should be a place for such encounters.

The phone has stopped ringing, it’s lit up.