Vici Wreford-Sinnott
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Vici's blog

Vici Wreford-Sinnott is a theatre maker who believes in a cultural landscape without limitation. She strives to make dynamic contemporary theatre which is colourful, physical, energetic, still and which challenges accepted widely held perceptions. Vici is interested in the aesthetics of difference, the power of theatre to bring about change, and ongoing development and assessment of cultural equality in action. Vici champions disability and mental health theatre. This blog charts her creative journey.

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Gaps in The Landscape - Learning Disability Identity and Culture

2/16/2015

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The Lab - A Devised Collaboration between Little Cog and Full Circle Theatre Company. Presented at Arc Stockton in May 2014. Photo Credit: Black Robin
‘Los Muertos’  is the working title of a new piece of theatre being created between myself and Full Circle Theatre Group, a company of theatre-makers with learning disabilities.  Our priorities are to make an excellent piece of theatre which questions commonly held perceptions of learning disabled artists, and one which reflects the identities and culture of those making the work.  We’re all extending our skills and raising our ambitions. Last year we devised a science fiction adventure called ‘The Lab’ where we invited our audiences to visit Compound 49 to witness a unique experiment. It was the first time that Full Circle had performed in the large theatre space in ARC Stockton, and for the first time, presented their work to an evening audience as well as a day time audience. Audience numbers were fantastic and the response to the standard of the work was amazing. Really positive feedback all round. So this year again, we’re ‘upping our game’. We’d like to do a mini tour but this raises all sorts of questions to which we don’t yet have all the answers.  I’ll write more about this on another occasion.

 Los Muertos is a reference to the Mexican Day of the Dead, a celebration and tribute to those who have gone before us. It’s an exciting theatrical vehicle of course, it’s lively, has an amazing soundtrack, is colourful and party-like. As a piece of theatre which relates to learning disability culture it is highly visual, is a celebration, a bringing together of a community and provides  references to the soundtrack of peoples’ lives – in the devising process there have been some instantly recognisable party tracks that people often suggest, part of the cultural furniture from discos and parties. And then there have been some complete surprises – tunes which have filtered through, Hip Hop, Grunge, Goth and  Latin American beats to which people just ‘feel’ how to move. I have to say it’s been a lot of fun so far. We work hard but we do laugh a lot too. I love my job.

But it is also taking us to fascinating levels of exploration. We’re looking at a fairly simple narrative, the devisers want a mix of spooky stuff, a sprinkling of love and loss, real pathos for troubled souls who cannot move forward due to one barrier or another, and some real dramatic tension. Members of the group really want to surprise people who come to see their show and so this means we’re involved in a really creative devising process.  For our last production, The Lab, in addition to physical theatre, digital images and a pumping soundscape we used masks, and Los Muertos allows us to return to this technique to explore it further.  The performers had a real affinity with mask and physical theatre. They want to create interesting characters with interesting stories. They are not necessarily exploring the experience of being disabled people in terms of a ‘message’ for the piece but they are working in ways that are absolutely about communicating disability identity through culture. And, like all disabled artists, because of our lived experiences, it is inevitable that we draw on from a disability palette which informs the work on a number of levels.  There are great subtleties at play here too.

It’s brilliant to be so supported by ARC Stockton, a thriving arts centre in Stockton-On-Tees, North East England, with whom  Little Cog, the theatre company I founded in 2011, have developed a strategic partnership to increase opportunities for disabled artists and for disabled people to be able to take part in high quality arts activity and to work in disabled-led ways. There is a real momentum to our work in the Tees Valley and we are developing really interesting, new models of creative practice and new art works to provide platforms for the voices of disabled people in the arts, so that we can have a more complete cultural landscape, which includes the voices and identities of learning disabled people, not just as project participants but as artists. (It was suggested by one anonymous mainstream organisation that they would not programme the work of learning disabled performers due to poor quality, [Brighton Creative Minds Conference], and that anything of higher quality has been made where learning disabled people were merely ‘participants’ ie not leaders/creatives ).

Our work is part of a movement and strong tradition of theatre created by learning disabled people and we want our work to be part of the critical dialogue about learning disability theatre, and also to be part of the debate. If you want to know more about our work please contact me by email at littlecog@rocketmail.com

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Politics, power and Provocation - The Serious Business of Comedy

2/11/2015

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Things are really serious for disabled people in 21st Century Britain. A whole agenda shift has avalanched upon us in the last 5 years. It is estimated that 30,000 disabled people have died since the changes to the welfare system in 2012. How does that happen - are we hidden in plain sight? It would seem so.

Today I've had the pleasure of being in the rehearsal room with actress and writer Pauline Heath. Pauline trained with Graeae theatre company as part of their Missing Piece training and toured in their production of Mother Courage. She has trained with Candoco, Adam Benjamin and Caroline Bowditch, and toured in Edinburgh Theatre Workshop's acclaimed Marat Sade. With so few opportunities for disabled actors out there, Pauline has decided to create her own work. With an award from Grants for the Arts, Arts Council England, we are working together to refresh her skills and generate material for two pieces of work - Never-Never Land is new stand up material and OCCUPATION is to be a new four hander to be developed in the autumn to a rehearsed reading stage. We are also being supported by ARC Stockton.

Pauline and I are both political creatures, so inevitably the work we collaborate on is going to be socially engaged. Understatement! But given what I've written in the first paragraph of this blog, why have we chosen comedy, and how is it possible to create comedy in the face of austerity and its impact on such a large part of the community. I think, given the facts that we trawled through today, and the stories of peoples' experiences, we asked ourselves those questions more than once.

But comedy is incredibly powerful - you get to make the rules, break the rules, create real and imagined worlds, and you get to say it how it is in the most biting way possible, whilst bringing an audience with you. The challenges are about facing where we are....again!....and having the courage to say what needs to be said in as creative a way as possible.

Disability comedy and comedy created by disabled people has become incredibly sophisticated, with some incredibly talented artists out there, and has challenged both our own and other peoples' perceptions of us. So I'll keep you posted with how we get giggles from the cuts, reality tv, media representation of disabled people, social control, fat cats and little rats, immigration and food banks. And why we think it's important to make the work.
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Pauline Heath taking part in a Little Cog Residency at Zinc Arts, Essex
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Getting started...

2/9/2015

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Really pleased to be finally brave enough to start my own blog positioned within a website about my own work. No company name to hide behind, finally putting myself 'out there'! I'm at the creation and production stage of my latest play, The Art Of Not Getting Lost, after a brilliant research and development stage which consisted of two residencies at Zinc Arts in Essex and a residency at ARC Stockton in Stockton-On-Tees. I've shown works in progress at two scratch events, and a rehearsed reading to an invited audience. At last the final draft of the script has had all final adjustments and I've begun the directing stage with two amazing actors: Ree Collins is playing No-one and Eleanor Crawford is playing Everyone - two long term friends who are hiding out in a self-styled Lost Property Centre in a fictional underground station. The station clock is against them and the heavy boot mob are closing in . . . Everyone and No-one find their friendship tested and the truth hidden as they race to save themselves and understand the journey they've been on. My main aim when creating a piece of work is for it to be compelling piece of contemporary theatre which connects directly with its audience in a socially engaged way. I'm interested in innovation and the exploration of the aristic practices and aesthetics of difference. This piece aims to promote undertsanding of the stigma attached to mental health problems and the barriers created by the world we live in. I want to assess contemporary realities against the backdrop of historical truths, mixed messages, stolen lives and hidden stories. And I'm thrilled that it is going to be brought to life by wonderful actors, and our talented creative technician John Kirkbride. The premiere is at ARC Stockton on 20 May 2015 at 7pm. 
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