The power of drama to increase people’s self confidence and worth was proven in a recent project that took vulnerable young people from the South Wales Valley communities, and taught them innovative techniques in physical theatre, before letting them perform a final piece in front of their family, friends, and fellow community members.

This cutting edge ‘Reclaiming the Shrew’ theatre project was initially aimed at young women with low self confidence. However the project organisors quickly realised that if the project is about changing stereotypes about women, then young men need to be involved as well. The aim of the project was to investigate the way that society limits young people’s aspirations by labelling them in certain ways.

The name of the project was inspired by Shakespeare’s famous play ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. In this play he referred to a young woman as ‘the shrew’, and said that society always wants young women to behave a certain way, and that young women need to be 'tamed'. The project’s aim was to challenge this idea, and through physical theatre techniques ‘reclaim’ the shrew within the young people, along with their inspirations and passions.

The project leader, Dr Rea Dennis is a senior lecturer at The University of Glamorgan, she has an international reputation in applied and physical theatre, and 20 years experience as an actress, director and facilitator of theatre and drama. She worked with Gemma Fraser Jones, an accomplished dance artist from the Valleyskids Artworks programme. Gemma has first hand knowledge of the difficulties of growing up in the valleys, she said:

‘As I grew up in the Rhondda Valleys, I know from personal experience that these creative projects really help young people to develop and escape from the negative effects of peer pressure, and the difficulties apparent in some communities. These projects offer social inclusion and give young people the chance to express themselves in a creative manner, and often lead to the individual growing in confidence, and giving them the ability to have a voice and the opportunity to share and extend their talents. My past experiences of participating in such groups and projects have played a vital role in shaping me into the person I have become.’

The young people were involved in workshops for 10 weeks before completing a final performance in front of family, friends, and other members of their community. The changes that were seen in the young people were remarkable. Particularly in the case of one young woman, who according to Dr Rea Dennis, was one of the most ‘at risk’ members of the group. Dr Rea said:

‘When this girl started the workshops, she was not even able to introduce herself and say her own name, she needed someone else to say her name for her, and she always had someone speaking for her. Everything stopped when she had a line and needed to speak. I knew the project was a success, when, in the middle of the performance when her partner was supposed to cue her, she cued her partner instead.’

‘Everyone was talking about her at the end: her friends, her family, the entire community. She had a whole scene where she was the protagonist, she was herself, but within the safety of the ritual. She became the energetic force of the play.’

‘Another boy was one of the leaders of the antisocial group in the area. I had him doing press ups in the middle of the performance. At the end as he gave me feedback, he said he never wanted to do another press up in his life. In the performance the spotlight was on him, but the story actually became about him copying someone else’s movements. The story was that he was envious of the cooler guy, he was readying himself to take over.’

Part of the success of the project was down to the repetitive and patterned physical method that removed the need to deliver spoken text, which can feel more exposing.

Art worker Gemma reflected that the non-verbal approach had fast results, early, and at a high level. She states:

‘The way that physical theatre works, I feel, had a great effect on the group. I feel some of the group members would have struggled a lot longer, had we used another form of theatre. The text and verbal content was limited, which helped participants express themselves without feeling too self-conscious.’

The comments from the young people themselves supported this. Some of their comments included:

‘You could be yourself in the play – you didn’t have to worry about what other people thought about you’

‘I was surprised by how far I can push myself’

‘I got so much more confident when we didn’t have to speak and just relied on our bodies to tell the story’

And

‘It was good that it was none-scripted as we didn’t have to worry about learning lines, just remembering where we had to be!’

A member of the FlightWings group agency team said of the method:

‘In a sense we are left with the impression of how it seemed to calm the group, give them a clearer sense of themselves and that they were most often fully engaged in the work.

‘For the most vulnerable people in the group particularly we feel it had a powerful and lasting effect in developing their confidence.’

‘The University students also commented on how surprised they were that the young people were able to develop the text so effectively, and this made them wonder if they had underestimated the capacity of the young people. It seems that something about the interaction, power of the story and Shakespearean language enabled the young people to find a new footing in the project.’

The outcomes of this experience are that two of the young people have enrolled at drama courses at the University of Glamorgan. One of them commented ‘now I understand Atrium, I think I could just come, whereas before I didn’t think the opportunity was open to me.’

Dr Rea Dennis would like to elaborate more on the project. She said:

‘Ideally with funding I would like a tour of this in the valleys with this group. If they could show their work to others, especially the Welsh Assembly and if we could bring it to other communities as a methodology it would be good for my students, and it would be good for the relationships between the university and the rest of Wales. Because of this project we now know the community much more than we did before.’

Read more about a workshop that Dr Rea Dennis ran explaining her techniques in further detail