Active Inquiry

Welcome to the Active Inquiry Blog!

4th January, 2011 - Posted by Gavin - 2 Comments

Happy New Year and welcome to the brand new Active Inquiry blog!  Having this blog means  that you can get involved by commenting on posts and becoming involved in online discussions and debate about our work. What do you think about our current work? What other workshops/performances/projects would you like to see from Active Inquiry? Remember our website is continually updated with our current work so click on one of the links on the right-hand side to find out about what we are up to. As we always say “if you don’t participate then we won’t exist”, so now as well as coming along to our workshops and performances you can also participate in cyberspace too!

Gavin leading a warm-up exercise at the start of a News Group workshop during the Festival of Politics

For those of you who are new to us we are a theatre company based in Leith, Edinburgh committed to making dynamic, challenging and entertaining theatre with and for the people of Leith and beyond. We are particularly interested in working with non-theatre professionals and believe that anyone can do theatre, that theatre can happen anywhere and that theatre is a great way to come and learn together through dialogue. In this way we are not afraid to say that our theatre is political (with a small p!). We are very much influenced by the ideas of Augusto Boal and the Theatre of the Oppressed.

Coming up in 2011 we have:

 Flashback Drama – our regular devising company who are creating a show for the Leith Festival in June 2011

 News group – which meets once a month to explore the world of current affairs – in partnership with Leith Open Space

Power to the People? – continuing our Forum Theatre Project exploring the tricky concept of “empowerment”

An audience member comes up on stage to make her point at a Power to the People performance!

As well as this we are collaborating with Stirling University and the Thistle Foundation working with people with a disability in exploring the concept of risk and with Pilton Community Health Project exploring barriers to accessing healthcare.  We will also be working with activists from the Nicaragua Learning Exchange and So We Stand; training them in using theatre for dialogue and action. On top of this we will be working with Shakti exploring the issue of violence with teenagers from the BME community and continuing our gender justice project using theatre to explore how we can understand and take action on the continuing inequality between the genders in our society.

Phew! What a lot of work – I feel tired just reading about it! But we would love to do more. So please let us know what kind of work you would like to see us doing in 2011. What workshops/issues/topics interest you? If you live in Leith how could a Leith-based theatre company be a resource for you? Please comment below or email us on gavin@activeinquiry.co.uk so we can get started on making it happen!

2 Comments

fay young

January 6th, 2011 at 1:43 pm    

This is really exciting stuff – very much looking forward to following the new blog!

a great start to the new year.

merlyn bell

February 24th, 2011 at 1:24 pm    

Hi there –  I am part of the group which meets at ALP  organised through the Nicaraguan Exchange Group. It is a great opportunity to wotk with Gavin. I have long been interested in this work but haven’t had the opportunity to be part of a group so …..Thankyou ! My desire for the future would be that a focus on literacies in a Forum Theatre project might be possible…… I don’t have the courage to take this on myself but  will continue to hope I might   get together with  others to make this happen……  

Leave a reply