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SETTING UP THE THEATRE COMPANY
COMMENTARY ON WORKING WITH THE BAKED
BEAN THEATRE COMPANY BY GARY BUTLER
Jade Hardrade-Grosz
In the summer of 1997 I worked as a drama tutor at Hill House
Social Education Centre in Wandsworth. For our Summer project,
a group of centre users and myself thought it might be fun to
set up a Theatre company. The project was intended to last for
six weeks and to culminate in a short play devised by the company
for performance to the rest of the centre's clients. A group of
16 "actors" created their first piece of theatre and
put on an outdoor production of "A Crossing of Dreams"
in Richmond Park to an audience of over 150 people. The group
called themselves the Baked Bean Theatre Company, and far from
running for six weeks, they have been going from strength to strength
for the last seven years.
Not long after the initial project, the white paper "Valuing
People" was released, setting out a strategy for intellectual
disability in the 21st century. The paper included 11 main objectives
which are briefly summarised as follows:
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1. Maximising opportunities for disabled children
2. Facilitate Transition into adult life
3. Enabling people to have more control over their own lives
4. Supporting carers
5. Facilitating good health
6. Housing
7. Fulfilling lives
8. Moving into employment
9. Quality of service
10. Workforce training and planning
11. Partnership working
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These goals very closely matched the working practices
we were trying to follow and implement with the Baked Bean Theatre
Company, so my husband, Nikko, and I put in a bid to Wandsworth
Borough Council to set up our own company as an alternative to
current day care services, under the Wandsworth Borough Council's
"Changing Days" initiative, which was set up to implement
the goals of the "Valuing People" White Paper within
the borough.
In February 2000, our bid was accepted and Act Too was born: a
company dedicated to providing quality drama and art-based services
to people with intellectual disabilities, enabling personal development
and community integration through recognising and responding to
individual needs and choices, resulting in self confidence growth
and empowerment and creating new and exciting employment opportunities
for people with intellectual disabilities.
Five years later, Act Too still teach and manage the Baked Bean
Theatre Company as well as providing a multitude of other community-based
projects, offering more than 200 workshop spaces each week, including
five distinct drama projects, and our Art-works project which
includes a Gallery/shop space staffed by people with intellectual
disabilities and selling artworks created by people and artists
with intellectual disabilities. Through these projects we aim
to support actors and artists with intellectual disabilities to
move from day care into educational and/or meaningful employment,
in turn encouraging inclusion and acceptance of the rightful place
of people with intellectual disabilities in society.
Photograph by Paul Stuart
This article was published on the site in 2005.
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