A blog series by Duška Radosavljević on the emerging work of The Performance Ensemble.

There is a guy called Garry in the Chapeltown area of Leeds, who cures people’s aches and pains with art. If you have a frozen shoulder, for example, you can go to him to make your shoulder out of ceramics. He crafts it carefully according to your detailed specifications capturing the way in which pain sits in it – and then he smashes it. The act of smashing the frozen shoulder – as you’ll find out in a few days time – takes the pain away. No one knows how this works but it does. He has also invented a card game for such medicinal purposes (https://garrybarkeronline.com/project/votives/) getting men to open up over a pint about their ailments.

In an Open Space symposium on Creative Ageing organised by The Performance Ensemble, artist Garry Barker has called the question ‘How can we establish meaningful relationships through art?’, and his story about curing frozen shoulders has stopped me in my tracks though I had originally intended to rotate around all the groups.

‘How is this work funded?’, I ask.

‘It isn’t’, he says, ‘I do it voluntarily through other sources of income as an artist.’

Having lived and worked in Chapeltown for a long time, Garry is embedded in the community and he engages people because they know him already, or through word of mouth. ‘It is a familiar story from the history of humanity’, someone observes, ‘all societies have had a form of a healer, although the multiple functions of this sort of individual might have fragmented into the separate domains of medicine, art and alchemy over time.

Having spent the last few years watching fledgling – often culturally displaced – artists hoping for instant fame in the global mecca of London as they prepare for their career take off, I have been painfully aware of their problem number 1 being how to find an audience. I marvel a little too loudly at this revelation of contrast and well-earned privilege that comes from being a local artist with deep roots and long-held trust of the community.

Sue Gill, who also happens to be in Garry’s open space group, proffers more evidence of how this works in her community of Ulverston where she officiates, often at the request of her local community, at alternative wedding and naming ceremonies, designed bespoke with and by the celebrants themselves. Sue is the second half of Welfare State International, the ‘engineers of the imagination’, the very company that graced the covers of my university coursebooks in the 1990s, as the prime example of the 1960s radical theatre.

I am slightly in awe of Sue Gill and John Fox who are also present here today, invited by Alan Lyddiard to add some ceremony to the opening of the Open Space event. And so they did, by bursting some balloons to cover us in glitter, some impromptu accordion-playing and reading from their beautiful new book titled Eighty-Something (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eighty-Something-Lifetime-Conversation-Sue-Gill/dp/0956858341/). Though age has crept up on their physical bodies, they are bursting with energy, still dazzling with articulation, inspiration and mental clarity. Sue has a quirky story in response to every question. John has an ease of verbal expression that he tends to speed up so ‘not to take too much time’, as he says. They both have a love for and a belief in humanity that is infectious.

There are more dispersed conversations in the room, definitions of elitism, redefinitions of diversity, attempts at envisaging improved access and ways of reaching those who are difficult to reach. Diverse voices are present in the room, different cultural perspectives, different interests in arts and cultures and although this is energizing for everyone present, Alan is thoughtful. I later find out he is not sure how this will translate into constructive action, what will happen next, and how?… But I think this is good because, knowing Alan, it is bound to lead somewhere.

If nothing else for today, there is a guy called Trevor from Bradford who takes to the stage at the end to revel in the newly found enthusiasm of this accidental community, and in the promise for creative ageing he has found today that goes beyond quotas, free public transport, and the mere ticking of boxes.

Duška Radosavljević

Duška Radosavljević is a writer, dramaturg and academic. Her books include Aural/Oral Dramaturgies (2023), Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes (2016), The Mums and Babies’ Ensemble: A Manual (2015), Theatre-Making (2013) and The Contemporary Ensemble (2013).