Creative Kernow
Ellen Moule, Director of Bylstra Arts, tells us how they adapted a live show to bring joy to families through online screenings.
With the support of the Feast Reignition 2 grant, funded by Feast Cornwall and Cornwall Community Foundation (CCF) Blystra Arts were able to create The Grand Old Oak, an online storytelling show, reimagined and adapted from a previous live performance piece.
The show, initially commissioned by children’s charity: Action for Children’s Cornwall Space project, was performed live over Microsoft Teams to disabled young people (Aged 4 to 18) and their families on the 12th and 13th of Dec 2020. The extra funding from Feast and CCF allowed Blystra to employ 2 heavyweights of the Cornish theatre scene, Storyteller Jenny Beare (Kneehigh, Goldentree) and actor and director Jason Squibb (Poldark, Collective Arts), as well as 2 members of the Blystra team, Ellen Moule – writer and director of the piece and Dave Brown, the company technician.
The Reignition 2 funding enabled the company to bring a bespoke, interactive show into the living rooms of 36 families from across Cornwall, and then edit and put out the show onto an online platform where it could be seen by an even wider audience.
Cornwall Space used the show as a way to replace their usual Christmas short break activity for disabled children, due to face-to-face delivery being so challenging in 2020. The partnership between Blystra Arts and Cornwall Space has offered an innovative way to provide a short break online for families, spreading some festive cheer at the end of a long and uncertain year, especially for the Space clients, many of whom are in the vulnerable bracket and so have been self-isolating since the pandemic began.
The online and intimate format of the piece, which was performed live for only 5 to 8 families at a time allowing for lots of interactive content, utilising the characters’ of Father Christmas (FC), music, sound effects, lighting and creative narrative to allow the audience to be involved in the piece in a much more meaningful way than even a traditional live format would have allowed. Father Christmas was able to chat direct to individual children, ask opinions and get the whole audience to close their eyes and imagine Christmas morning and their presents, to help him magic a present in to their homes, which the young people reacted to with wonder and genuine astonishment, invoking the kind of reactions that all good festive shows should aim to.
Cornwall Space families had fed back that the show:
“Had made them feel less isolated”
With the Space team adding that the piece had:
“Offered something special when things were so difficult.”
And had:
“Delivered a magical experience for the children and families involved.”
The filmed version of the show can be viewed via the Blystra Arts Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O0K9Xju-bI&t=1230s
Blystra Arts is a Newquay based performance art company who put on and create unique arts’ events and performances that are interactive, fun and accessible, designed to engage the whole community.