The beta version of my Trauma Sensitive Theatre & Performance Making Course is now available to sign up to. Find all the information here.
In this episode of the podcast I talk about why I think it’s absolutely vital for theatre and performance making spaces to be trauma sensitive. I hope you can join me on the course.
Transcript
Welcome to Create Shift with me, Ellen Franklyn-Carr.
I am a holistic and trauma-sensitive coach for creatives and artists and on this podcast we have conversations at the intersection of creative and artistic practice, holistic well-being and entrepreneurship.
I believe in artists making heart-led work that feels true to them and I believe that this kind of work has the power to create positive change in individuals and society but I believe that can only happen when those who make the creative work are nourished, supported and able to thrive.
Thank you for being here, if you are new here welcome and if you're returning thank you so very much for coming back.
I hope that you enjoy this episode and as always stay curious, stay inspired and stay connected.
Hello, welcome back to another episode of Create Shift.
Today I want to talk to you about the absolute vital-ness?
Vitality?
The vitality?
I don't think vitality is the right word to use there.
How vital it is that we start to make theatre and performance making practices trauma sensitive.
Now, I'm talking about theatre and performance making practice specifically today because that is my background as a creative practitioner, although I work with artists from all sorts of mediums and I'm taking a more multidisciplinary approach to my practice at the moment.
But for a long time theatre and performance making has been my thing and so it's the medium that I have the most knowledge of and that's where I'm starting with this trauma sensitive work.
I really believe everything in our lives, in our work, in society should be trauma sensitive and would benefit from it.
But, you know, that's another topic of conversation.
So today I'm talking about theatre and performance making practice, but if you are listening and you're from a different art form, it's kind of mainly what you do.
I think you'll still get benefit from what I'm sharing today and I'd be interested to know how this applies to your medium.
Please do let me know because like I said I do want to take this work out to artists from other mediums as well.
So for me I started thinking about this
A few years ago, and definitely this year in earnest, it's been written on my whiteboard as one of my seeds for the year that I wanted to grow, is this course in trauma-sensitive theatre and performance making.
And I do now have a beta version of the course open.
As this episode goes live, you're able to sign up to take the beta version of the course, which starts on the 11th of October.
So just a week actually from when this episode is going out so if you are interested please do have a look at the link that I'll put in the show notes and I'll tell you a little bit more about the course in a little bit more detail at the end of this episode.
So in 2019, I did a trauma sensitive yoga teacher training.
So that's where my trauma sensitive background comes from is coming at it through yoga.
And now I'm taking a trauma informed yoga teacher course to become an accredited trauma informed yoga teacher and
As I learned about trauma-sensitive practice in yoga and I applied those principles and that theory to how I was delivering yoga classes, workshops, retreats, all of those sorts of things, I realized that there was a really big
difference in how I facilitated space in a yoga or holistic health kind of context and how I facilitated space in a theatre context.
And I
and had kind of stepped out of the theatre facilitation for a few years and so most of my focus and experience had been for those years on the yoga spaces and then thinking of coming back to the theatre spaces I had all these questions about how to make them as accessible as I could and how to make them supportive spaces and could I make them trauma sensitive and why
Why did I bring so much concern for the well-being of the people in the spaces where I was doing yoga work and that was less of a question in the theatre-making spaces.
Not to say that people come to theatre-making spaces or I came to theatre-making spaces not caring how they
were run or how the things that we were doing impacted the well-being of the people in them but it's definitely been less of a question and I guess part of the the reason for that difference is you know yoga holistic health those spaces are already in the well-being space so you've already got that sort of front and center of mind but I thought it was really interesting and I thought that it was something that needed to be explored and so I've kind of done my own thinking around this and now like I said have developed this course and
I have really come to a place where I believe that in order to make theatre and performance making truly accessible
they need to be trauma sensitive, those spaces need to be trauma sensitive and I'm specifically talking here as well about the actual making spaces or teaching spaces, so like I'm talking about making the space trauma sensitive for professionals, for the creative team, for the people who are coming to rehearsals or auditions or workshops that you run for people
who are in the industry or even in educational settings.
What I'm not talking about is participatory work where you might be working with people who have experienced trauma and it's like a real clear intention of the project.
And the reason I'm not talking about that, although what I share in the course and all of the things I'm going to be speaking about are completely relevant to that setting.
The reason is that I feel like there is already
work addressing that.
There is already a focus on how we support the well-being of participants in that more participatory theatre-making practice and there's just so much less of a focus on how we support our own well-being as artists and how we support the well-being of other artists that we're working with and that's really my focus of my work, you know, my coaching in this exploration and other courses and things that I want to run.
It is on the artists and the creative team
What I have experienced and what I know to be true, and I'm sure you will have experienced this too, is that burnout is a real industry norm.
It's even more prevalent now, I think, perhaps, after the COVID pandemic and we're seeing people leaving the industry, leaving jobs because of the burnout.
And, you know, I've experienced multiple burnouts
after working on projects, and I'm sure you have too.
And so one major thing that being trauma sensitive can help us with, and it might not even be the first thing that you think of, actually.
But one major thing is that it can help us actually take care of ourselves in these processes.
It can help us acknowledge what's going on inside our own bodies and nervous systems.
and do something supportive for ourselves about that so that we perhaps don't end up completely destroying ourselves every time we do the work.
So what I'm talking about here is having like an awareness of the nervous system and this is like one of the core things that we'll explore in the course is gaining this basic nervous system understanding so that we know what happens when someone with trauma
Creative Embers.
and what impact that has on us and we'll also be learning tools, really practical tools that can help us bring ourselves back or help us support other people to come back into a nervous system state that is much more supportive and is actually conducive to creativity and here's one of the big things that is so important to know is that
If our practice isn't trauma sensitive and we don't have this awareness, what can be happening a lot of the time is people are becoming triggered or their nervous systems are in such a place that they aren't actually in the nervous system state that they need to be in in order to be creative.
And this is just like our
neurobiology right it's it's what happens there are so we'll be using a traffic light model of the nervous system um as we go on the course and i'll share this and we'll do education around that to understand the different states our nervous system goes into
and I'm sure you'd be familiar with the term fight or flight and so that's one state that we can go in in the nervous system that we would call the amber state and when that and only that is online in our nervous systems which can happen with people with trauma which can happen when we become triggered
The way that the brain needs to function to be creative and have ideas and problem solve and think into the future, it goes offline because it's not needed.
Because in that state the body thinks we're in a place of real threat.
It's a part of our nervous system that's really ancient and
and I know I'm just going into a whistle stop and I'm brushing over a lot of this real deep information and I will get into this in more depth in the course but this ancient part of our nervous system
um developed when we were living you know we were we were more hunter-gatherers um we were literally would be chased by wild animals and so when this nervous part of the nervous system comes online it's a okay we need to do something quickly to survive and this is what can be associated with anxiety stress all of those feelings
And what the nervous system does, what the body does then is to prioritise the things we need for that survival.
That is not thinking of creative ideas.
It is stuff like increasing our heart rate, making our vision go more laser focused.
Stopping us being able to digest properly because we don't need the energy for digestion, so conserving energy in other places.
All of these different things that would be really helpful if we need to run away from an animal that's chasing us, but are not so helpful if we're, you know, dealing with a creative problem in the rehearsal room or something has come up that has made us go into that state and we're unable to actually access that creative faculty.
So being trauma sensitive helps us stay in the places where we can actually do our best work.
So it helps us stay in the places where we can do our best work and where we can stay well whilst doing it.
We cannot feel like completely broken at the end of the day.
I'm not saying this is the only thing that needs looking at in order to make these spaces more supportive of our well-being but it is a really major thing and doing this work can help us also treat ourselves with much more compassion and kindness and other people the same way.
So that's one of the big reasons that we need this work but
You know, the biggest really is there's so much talk and work around accessibility now in the industry, which is great.
It's a brilliant start.
More talk about things like access riders and making provisions for different people with different needs so that they can actually access spaces.
Because we still have a major issue where most of the work being made is not representational of
you know, as Arts Council England might put it, the people who make up our society here in England.
There are so many voices that are left out of the creative process.
There are so many people who are left out of the rooms where the creative work is made because of issues relating to accessibility.
And again, I'm not saying being trauma sensitive is the only thing.
We need to combine this with things like the access riders, with things like considering real practical accessibility features of the spaces that we're using and listening to people when they talk about what their needs are.
but we also need to combine that with being trauma sensitive and that's part of doing the work ourselves so we're not just going to the people who we want to include in our spaces you know whether that's disabled artists, neurodivergent artists, artists from the global majority, working class background artists, care experience, LGBTQIA+, whatever the groups of people you're wanting to invite in are
We can't just say to them, OK, what's your access rider tell us your needs and then and then, you know, hopefully meet those needs.
That's great.
But that's putting a lot of the work onto those people.
Learning to become trauma sensitive and learning what parts of our practice are not trauma sensitive and might be really challenging for people with experience of trauma.
is something we all need to do so that we can be doing this work ourselves so that we can then be inviting people into the spaces and that space is set up for them on a practical level because we listened to their needs and what they actually need in an access way, but also on a
a less tangible front.
We know how our language might need to be tweaked just to be sensitive to those with trauma.
We know how we want to set up the frame of a space so that it's supportive and it's accessible to people who have experience of trauma.
We know what might happen when people go into those nervous system states where, you know, they've been triggered or something's happened or, you know, because of how trauma is showing up in their bodies and in their minds, what it's doing to their nervous systems.
where we have that awareness of the different nervous system states and we have a toolkit for different things we can do and just bring into our practice to help us bring the nervous system back to that place that is conducive to creativity, rest, connection, groundedness.
And what this does is helps these spaces be much more accessible, so it helps us support a wider range of voices to make work, to stay making work, yes, because we make the spaces actually nice to be in, hopefully.
not places where people have an experience and they just can't cope because they're burning out and it's just not supportive and therefore they can't come back and do anything else you know so hopefully we're making this supportive of like a sustainable careers as well and we're also ensuring that we're equipped to be able to make more challenging work
which let's be honest like there's probably a lot of that that wants to be made right now because the world is in a state and as artists we want to respond to that and not that all the work we we want to make needs to be really heavy and serious and about challenging issues but some of it might be and
Doing this work to be trauma sensitive will equip us with the tools to be able to make work about the challenging subjects and stay safe and well whilst doing it.
But I really want to stress that this trauma sensitive
um work and this course that i've developed i'm developing is not only for the people who are making work about trauma it is not only for the people who are really clearly working with people who have experience of trauma and something that you'll learn on the course is that so many people can have experience of trauma can have trauma and not even know it okay there we'll look at like how we define trauma and what it is and it's not
only the things, the big things that we might think of as like, oh, that's trauma, you know, the really big things.
it's much more nuanced than that and so you'll find that there are so many more people and for sure there are people you've already interacted with or people in your spaces right now who have experience of trauma but they might not know it and that's fine like this isn't a course about helping people to use trauma use theatre and performance to heal trauma it's not a course about any kind of therapy
it is just saying let's learn these tools to be trauma sensitive in our spaces and we don't even have to broadcast that this is a trauma sensitive space like we can but we don't have to say oh let's use some trauma sensitive tools now we don't have to bring any awareness to it on that front we just need to know and be grounded in this practice so that we know that our spaces are as accessible and as supportive of artist creative well-being as they can be and this stuff is so important
Because if we don't do this, then we will find that the only people who are able to consistently, sustainably make work in the industry are a homogenous bunch, are the people who have the resources, who have less trauma, who it doesn't matter if they burn out all the time because they can take months and months and months off after a project.
Like, you know, even I wouldn't condone that either.
It's so important, you know, and trauma so often intersects with so many underrepresented identities in the industry that it's just vital that we do this work because it's vital that stories from these underrepresented voices are told.
These are the stories we need to hear, the stories that will help the industry and help society and individuals to grow and to heal and change.
And it's not a really intense, long, crazy amount of work that we need to do.
It's real basic awareness and understanding of some of these things, of how the practices that we're doing at the moment might not be trauma sensitive, and what we can do to change them.
A basic grounding and nervous system understanding.
But I'm not asking you to read all of the books and do years and years of study.
and it's not the case that you'll need to completely overhaul your whole rehearsal process or practices.
It's actually really quite small, simple tweaks that you make in your language, in the way that you set up a space, in boundaries, and in bringing some little tools into your warm-ups, into your game repertoire that you've already got as a theatre and performance maker.
that just, you know, work with the nervous system in a certain way and support with these certain things that we need to support with.
So, please don't think that you suddenly need to do loads of stuff because I know that can be really off-putting and, you know, although, yeah, you may do this work and you'll want to keep reading the books, you'll want to keep exploring and that's great,
because there's always more we can learn and there's always more we can do and something that I'm setting up for everyone who's done the course is you'll be able to attend a number of group calls with me and other people from the course throughout the course of the year and that'll just be ongoing, rolling and those will just be open calls where we can chat about our experiences, our questions, our ideas, challenges so we can be part of this supportive community that hopefully will grow and grow
who is exploring this together and so you'll continue to feel hopefully supported and resourced because I know that thinking about access and and sort of what we need to do with regards to that and our well-being it can feel like a lot and it can feel like a lot when we're already overworked, overwhelmed, exhausted and so
What I really want to do with this course is to give you really simple practical information and tools so that right after finishing the course you could go into your rehearsal process and you could bring in trauma sensitive tools right away so that it isn't overwhelming so that it's just real simple things that you can do and you know this stuff will then help with those feelings of overwhelm as well they should help you to feel more resourced personally.
So if you are interested if that's kind of piqued your curiosity and you think this sounds good and you're interested in joining me for the course then like I said the beta version is open now for registration.
I'm only taking a small group for this one because it is the beta
and what that means is basically I'm going to be making the course alongside you so we're going to have three live calls on Wednesdays but you'll get the recording if you're not actually available at the time so that's fine.
We'll have a little community space that I'll set up for us and
Your questions and the things that come up in the live calls and the workshops that we have together will inform how I shape and develop the course.
And then you will have access to the whole course content once I've made it all.
So that'd be like videos and text and all of the different things in the lessons.
You'll have access to all of that.
And you'll also be able to join the next full live round of the course, which I think will be in the new year, 2024.
So all the details are on my website and I'll pop the link below, have a read through, ask any questions and yeah, if it's for you, book on.
The beta round is a really good way if you like a more intimate style as well of learning and if you like a bit more direct access to me, you'll be able to ask more questions and chat things through a little bit more than on the full course perhaps.
a video
5 pounds, British pounds.
And yeah, if you feel like the course is for you, I trust that it is for you.
You know, you don't have to have a certain amount of experience, you don't have to have certain roles that you take.
But yeah, I'd love to have you join us.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Create Shift.
I hope you found it supportive, encouraging and inspiring.
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Until next time have a great day.
Have a great evening Support yourself in whatever ways you need and I will connect with you again soon
Ellen Franklyn-Carr
Trauma sensitive theatre & performance making