Universal Truths

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This morning at Gold Company we explored some universal truths and I was reminded once again of how important it is to explore and make discoveries about the world instead of just getting told what to think. It was an affirmation that true learning is a social event where ideas can be shared, new thoughts can be experimented with, old ideas can be debated, turned upside down and re-assimilated and conversation is vibrant, honest and non-judgemental. It is an open and inclusive process entirely at odds with the reductive nature of some mainstream education… It takes place in a world where people are allowed to take risks, allowed to fail and allowed to ask the stupid questions…and as such it is a refreshing, revitalising process…

We were dealing with some big stuff this morning in our devising and in our writing…faith, war, politics, censorship, media, social networking…prevalent issues that it would be easy to say were too big for a group of young people attending a youth theatre to deal with.

I just wanted to repeat what I said to the gold company earlier and propose to the rest of the youth theatre…we need to look at these issues…we need to be brave as the makers of theatre in the present and of the future…we need to have a voice…as long as we treat the subjects with integrity and honesty…(these were the universal truths at the centre of our time together today) we have a right to say something about them in our work…

As a final thought… if all of this is something we need to do then there is a real purpose to our time together as we are essentially learning the eloquence needed to present these issues in a way that will engage our audiences. And in so doing we open up the debate to the wider world…

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