Company Three, Friday, March 6th
Camden Passage
Camden Passage
Antiques in Camden Passage
The morning started off with some breakfast in the coffee shop and wandering around Camden Passage in Islington. This quaint little walking street is filled with vendors with everything from flowers, fun clothing, chocolates, perfumes, nick knacks and various coffee shops and antique dealers. With Cobblestones and ancient buildings (some with doorways so tiny you may even have to turn sideways to walk in!) there are wonderful and unique delights in every nook and cranny! We made sure to stock ourselves up with some more chocolate pieces and some rich, decadent hot chocolate from the local chocolatier.
Arriving for our morning meeting with Company Three we experienced a fire drill shortly after we arrived and were shuffled back down the stairs and outside to the muster point. Company Three is nestled inside a library, also in the Borough of Islington, about halfway between Tuesday’s visit to London Youth, and Thursday's visit to Platform. After waiting outside with the entire library staff while the drill was carried out, Angie Peña Arenas and Ned Glasier graciously met with us and showed us around their modest space on the top level of the Library.
Meeting Angie Peña Arenas and Ned Glasier at Company Three
Company Three is an agency that engages youth ages 11-18 for a long-term, multi-year basis. They use drama as an outlet that encourages them to share their voice and perspectives. Teens work with theatre professionals on full scale productions through a process where they are supported in designing the content and are integral in the decision-making process. Company Three gives teens a chance to really explore and talk about things they are passionate about and they believe in meeting kids where they are “at”, as youth, and not where they are meant to be in 15 years or as ‘potential adults’. The teens have the chance to tell their stories on a stage to a wide and diverse audiences.
Islington has the 4th highest child poverty in the Country; although this can be easily missed with a surface level glance at the area as some parts look rather well off. Young people are nominated by schools to join Company Three, on the simple criteria of being able to benefit from the program. They start off with a project called Big Weekend which is an intensive weekend of creativity and connection. They then join the company on a regular basis starting in Grade 7 (11 years old) and are intended to stay enrolled until graduating at age 18/19. Company Three aims to foster creativity and agency in youth rather than setting them up to have a career as an actor. The youth don’t necessarily go on to performing after, but they are given the tools to think critically and approach situations in a unique and creative manner. Although they take great pride in producing high quality work with their young people, their groups, like ours, are more focused on the Social Emotional Learning and development of the youth.
Company Three currently works with 75 young people. They are majorly funded by trusts and grants as a charitable organization. The company is always working towards a show which can sometimes be 2 years or more in the making. Their current work, which was initiated a few weeks after our visit, is called Coronavirus Time Capsule and is based off another project called Everything that they had been working on before the world-wide CoVid-19 pandemic resulted in mass closures. They have created a series of time capsules, capturing and responding to what is going on in their lives right now, and are encouraging other youth around the world to do the same. Their weekly sessions rotate between core programming and training, open hangout times and lab times where they create new stuff. They also host Summer and Spring intensives.
Brainstorm by Company Three
We talked about the dis-service that can sometimes be caused by pretending that all youth theatre is inherently ‘good’ and how without the possibility for the equivalent time and resources invested as in adult theatre, it can be very difficult to create work of the same caliber. We discussed the tendency in organizations to embellish their language in granting and promotions to try to appear as 100% youth-led when often the best theatre comes from the youth collaborating with a professional artist instead to learn and grow, while still having their voice. There are benefits in transparency that exist in admitting that it is most often a back and forth process where facilitators start by making an offer, and youth are supported in bouncing ideas back. Especially in the early stages of creative development, it is often helpful to be given a box or guidelines from which to start. We also reflected on the privilege of being able to work with young people consistently and with commitment for such a long period of time, in contrast to many other programs including our own, where youth are much more transient. There are definitely great benefits to maintaining an open model, including our ability to be inclusive and reach youth at any stage, but this long-term commitment allows for a different level of connection, development and progressive learning, as well the possibility of full scale creations. Their last show Brainstorm was highly successful and even performed at the National Theatre, where they reached a wider audience and gained recognition as a professional youth theatre company. The script is published along with a blueprint of guidelines on how other groups can create their own version of Brainstorm. In addition to creating theatre division guidelines and detailed lesson plans for other organizations, they also run theatre and facilitation training for anybody working with youth.
We were inspired by our honest conversation with Company Three and found that there were many similarities between us in how sessions are lead, the themes their youth choose to work on, and their strong focus on Social Emotional Learning with their teens.
After our visit we journeyed all the way across town to one of the more touristy locations close to Buckingham Palace. Our goal was the necessary English experience of luxury High Tea, enjoying fancy trays of sandwiches and pastries along with hot tea at The Wallace Galleries. As we were on our way to the galleries, Stephanie got sidetracked by the biggest Kitchen Aid mixer she had ever seen and we had to take this photo opp. We were only disappointed that we couldn’t get into the bowl. We then continued on to our primary destination for some afternoon tea.
The building functions primarily as a gallery chalk full of 18th & 19th Century Art including paintings, furniture, and sculpture; a collected by the wealthy Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace. Beautiful paintings, sculptures and other artifacts adorn every space in this Victorian style mansion. Art galleries are free to view in England so we made sure to take it all in before we settled in the converted courtyard for our luncheon. Plenty of tea, tiny sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, petit fours and tarts later, we were stuffed and made our way home.
Stephanie would jump in if she had the chance