Pictured left to right,  Rebecca Woolley, Director, Action on Hearing Loss Cymru, Get the Chance volunteer Helen Joy and Maggie Hampton, Trustee, Action on Hearing Loss Cymru.

Get the Chance were recently announced winners at the Action on Hearing Loss, Excellence Wales Awards 2018. The Awards were presented by ITV Wales news reporter Megan Boot at the St David’s Hotel, Cardiff, on 4 May, 2018.

Get the Chance won the Excellence in Arts and Entertainment, Fewer than 30 employees category.

The awards are an opportunity to celebrate organisations in Wales that make themselves accessible to people who are deaf or have hearing loss. This includes making services truly available and/or ensuring that opportunities in the workplace are open to all.

On accepting the award on behalf of Get The Chance volunteer critic Helen Joy said,

“Its an absolute privilege to represent an organisation which simply treats people as people. Get the Chance gives all of us the opportunities to develop our skills and our confidence; and find our voices in a safe, encouraging environment. 

It’s about encouraging all of us to concentrate on what we can do, not what we can’t. For me, Get the Chance has shown me that I can change, that I do have a voice and that it matters.”

If you are interested in joining Get the Chance or supporting our work please email getthechance1@gmail.com

Hi Suzanne great to meet you, you co-founded the online magazine, The Advantages of Age, with the objective of challenging the media narrative around ageing. What led you to develop this new organisation?

It was completely accidental! I have a hot tub in my back garden to which I often invite my friends. On this one occasion, I was sitting in the tub with four other women, aged 42-63. We were talking about sex, relationships, our work, our kids. We all said how good we were feeling, liberated and creative. It struck us that the conversations we were having were not being represented in the media. One of the group said, “We should start something called the advantages of age.”

After they left, I looked up to see if the domain name was free and purchased it. Three months later I’d had the site built and Advantages of Age was born!

Advantages of Age work to challenge the prevalent media narrative that ageing means past-it, inadequate and invisible. How have you approached this work?

We didn’t have any strategic plan – it has all flowed organically. Rose Rouse and I started writing articles for the site, linking to other positive stories around age we discovered and approached many of our friends to write articles for us. In March 2017 we were lucky enough to receive an Arts Council grant which had a massive impact on the organisation. We put on three events – the Fabulous and Flamboyant Bus Tour.

Created a dinner party that we filmed about death

and held a racey ‘Taboo’ party at a London based member’s club. In May 2017 a Facebook group was created to build up the community aspect. We’re over 3k members and we now have a part-time Facebook moderator, Eileen O’Sullivan who has come on board and whom also has taken on the job of co-editing the website.

You will be supporting the Ffabulous and Fflamboyant bus tour funded by Gwanwyn on the afternoon of Saturday the 19th in Cardiff. What interest have you had from Wales as regards your work to challenge the media narrative on age?

I was introduced to Leslie Herman by a mutual friend and, since then, we’ve been in touch and collaborated wherever possible. We are keen to work with any organisation who supports our aim. It just makes sense to do so as the more organisations, wherever they may, that encourage pro-ageing, the better! I’m delighted to be able to join the bus tour this year and look forward to meeting the others on the bus.

Get the Chance works to support a diverse range of members of the public to access cultural provision In your personal experience, are you aware of any barriers to cultural provision?

I feel there’s a lack of support, in general for older performers, groups. The National Theatre’s upcoming Bold Festival, which starts this week is addressing this, which is a start and hopefully will lead to more awareness.

If you were able to fund an area of the arts in what would this be and why?

Wow. Where to start? The Arts are so massively underfunded it feels wrong to have to choose one area.

What excites you about the arts?

The way it can transform one’s perception of another, how it can challenge beliefs, give us access to areas of society that usually remain hidden. Art has the potential to change the world.

Thanks for your time Suzanne

To get involved in the free Ffabulous and Fflamboyant Bus Tour please see the information below.

Following the success of Advantages of Age’s Flamboyant Bus Tour in London in 2017, Get The Chance are thrilled to be onboard! We will be bringing the – Double F – Ffabulous and Fflamboyant Bus Tour to Cardiff in May 2018 as part of the Gwyl Gwanwyn Festival of Creativity for Older People in Wales. The Bus will be at the front of the National Museum from 1pm this Saturday the 19th and will depart at 1.30pm. The event will end at 3.30pm.

More information can be found at the link

We hope you will join us online and on tour!

The Royal Court does a wonderful thing with it’s writing/writers. There always tends to be a simple premise – a production will often start as normal as possible, with it then changing and surprising you through time.

Instructions for Correct Assembly, written by Thomas Eccleshare and directed by Hamish Pirie features a plain family – Mother, Father and Son. They have fun neighbours who are their best friends, who boast excellent children which always feels like a comparison. Their home is perfect, precise and generally like an Ikea show room.

There is a difference to this story however – as time goes by we see flash backs of their son who finds himself deteriorating in life; their struggle to help and eventually their resistance after the last straw. And once he is gone, their need to fill the void. In this futuristic world, the void is in the shape of a robot son.

The narrative is relatable even though the events seem a little impossible in our current world. We relate to the characters, feel what they feel, laugh at the right parts, but we also question how we would take the situation.

Jane Horrocks, of Little Voice and Ab Fab fame takes a front seat in this production as our mother. She is as homely and approachable as a stereotyped mother is. It’s nice to see her in a more ‘ordinary’ role in comparison to the hyper-comical characters we are used to seeing her in.

Mark Bonnar, known for Shetland and Apple Tree Farm is the doting husband and father who is easily bent by his son. He does well to play this goody-teacher type but together with Horrocks, evokes the emotion and feelings of a Mother and Father duo who are distress and worry for their son.

Brian Vernel does a fantastic job in a double role as our robot and the human son. His movements in comparison to the two characters are distinguished and differentiate them very easily. But he is also believable. As if this situation is real in our current society.

My only issue with the acting is at times when they have been instructed to move in jumpy motions, I can only assume to represent ‘models’/’robots at their basic moments, but this doesn’t feel like it fits. While I can see what they have done and why, and it does seem fitting, it just felt disjointed to the process of the production.

A review cannot be left without a comment on the staging and lighting/sound. Design is by Cai Dyfan and lighting by Jack Knowles. The Royal Court is known for its unusual take on these and this is no exception. For the ‘perfect’ family, the rooms look like they are all made of Ikea furniture and works well with the narrative, especially as the characters like to build flat packs. Slowly as the perfection breaks down, parts of the staging come away, revealing more emptiness, possibly close to how they feel. Finally a large natural wall of flowers and fauna appears at the back – an argument against robotics in comparison to naturalism? For whatever reason, this adds such depth and interest to the so far basic, perfect rooms.

Instructions for Correct Assembly is an interesting and inventive piece of theatre. While the concept of the breakdown of robotics in our future is a common topic, there is something more human and certainly different to similar writings.

Brad Birch’s new play Tremor follows Tom and Sophie, former lovers and trauma survivors, as they reconnect years after the cataclysmic event which split them apart. We watch as the titular tremor of trauma continues to flay and fragment Sophie and Tom’s fractured, dormant relationship, as well as their own psyches, during a straight-through, seventy-minute emotional roller-coaster ride that expertly manipulates our understanding of events, and with whom our sympathies lie.

Being the only two actors onstage, Lisa Diveney and Paul Rattray have the unenviable task of navigating the muddy waters of their supremely complex characters as well as engaging the audience without the use of props, detailed sets, or other actors. Happy, then, that they are more than up to the task. You feel these characters know each other, but how? When? Why did they separate? These questions are all addressed by the end, but our interest in finding the answers is down to the script, and the actors’ skilful interpretation of it.

The audience’s perception of the characters, and their perception of each other, shift constantly throughout the engaging seventy-minute runtime. Lisa’s unexpected arrival at Tom’s new home is the re-opening of a wound, but the exact nature of the laceration is only revealed towards the climax. The meatier role of Tom has the tendency to tip into hyperbole, though Rattray does well not to lapse into megalomania, portraying a very believable kind of badness that permeates the realms of the personal and the political.

Diveney’s performance is perhaps the stronger of the two, partly because she represents the far more reasonable standpoint, and partly because she weaves intrigue and nuance more subtly; mesmerising throughout in a subtly tricky role, Diveney proves herself a captivating stage presence, and certainly one to watch in the future.

Tremor is essentially a power play between two highly unreliable narrators. Its genre shifts from post-break up meet-cute to an acute discussion of trauma, to a legal case dissected long after the fact, to a full-on horror story. But there’s no Freddy Kruegers or Jason Voorhees on the stage; rather, what we are confronted with is a very human brand of evil, the kind by which we are surrounded on all sides in our increasingly fraught political climate. The mystery and intrigue drive most of the early action in particular, and David Mercatali deftly directs the actors into weaving a murky tale of interpersonal strife that carries the play from the tentative awkwardness of a long-separated couple reconnecting, right through to the dark denouement.

The stage, designed by Hayley Grindle, is the barest of settings; a circular plinth which resembles the moon, the earth, the cyclical nature of trauma which plagues the two major, and only, characters who physically appear in the play. There are three props, two of which will be discussed a little later, but they do little to distract from the otherwise spartan stage. The third prop is a painting; a colourful, scrambled scrawl that makes one increasingly anxious the longer one gazes into its tangled depths. The chaos on canvas effectively externalises the tangled web of trauma both within and between our two characters. The sparseness of set is evidently a purposeful choice; no props means no distracting from the drama unfolding between the characters. It also lends the story a metaphysical, almost fantastical quality. As such, the lighting and sound, by Ace McCarron and Sam Jones respectively, has to work overtime to underline and enhance the dialogue-driven dramatic shifts, which both do to subtle, sinister success.

I was privileged to once again be a speaker on the post-show panel, led by Timothy Howe, Sherman’s Communities and Engagement Coordinator, along my co-panellists Matthew Holmquist (Tremor’s Assistant Director) and Dr Alena Drieschova (Lecturer in International Relations, Cardiff School of Law and Politics). The discussion was as intriguing and engaging as always, with some fantastic insight from panellists and audience members alike. One of the audience members spoke about her experiences as a visibly Muslim woman living in the UK, and found the discriminatory realities of her own life being reflected in the events of the play. Despite its expressed focus on the relationship between two traumatised characters, the play’s socio-political dimensions,  channelled and expressed through its protagonists, certainly appears to be its most successful innovation.

As well as portraying examples of post-traumatic stress and interpersonal drama, it is impossible not to read Tom and Sophie as manifestations of two distinct socio-political archetypes. Tom could be read as representing toxic masculinity incarnate; a man who twists his trauma in order to express his latent bigotry. Conversely, Sophie could be read as representing the more liberal left, specifically the kind of person who would have participated in the various global marches against the rising conservatism of recent years. Her entire raison d’être during the latter acts of the play is to act as witness, advocate and legal defender for the voiceless defendant. Sophie rightly points out how the defendant, a Muslim man, was  a victim of institutional racism – but despite this, we still have two white people discussing the case, whilst denying the Muslim character the same opportunity; indirectly refusing him a voice, an opportunity, and a stage on which to defend himself.

And now for a little discussion on duality from your friendly neighbourhood Doubles researcher. Sophie and Tom could be read as fragmented parts of a singular person, separated into the ego and the id, with Tom as the Hyde to Sophie’s Jekyll. Tom can be read as the primal self, the monstrous extreme, who manifests and reflects humanity’s dark side, the kind you find writ large in tabloid newspapers and certain presidential twitter feeds. Sophie, on the other hand, is the rational self, who calls out Tom for his racist views and actions, and who tries to use her privilege to fight for those who aren’t born with such a societal luxury. As such, the play just scratches at the surface of interrogating the shifting landscape of identity, both personal and national, through the characters of Sophie and Tom, although the narrow scope and reduced cast meant that we lost out on a wealth of diverse perspectives on such a broad, knotty topic. And from a Law and Literature perspective, the play gives laypeople the stage, both literally and figuratively, to discuss and dissect legal issues through the medium of literature, foregrounding emotion and empathy over technical legal analysis.

I did promise I’d get to the other two props; the props in question, such as they are (the actors only directly interact with them once), comprise a pair of duelling dinosaurs, children’s toys that face each other confrontationally, poised to strike at any moment. At first, I assumed they represented the children that Sophie and Tom may have lost in the crash, but we later learn that this is not the case. Their trauma stems from their own physical and emotional pain, rather than from the loss of a loved one. And so, over the course of the play, those two seemingly innocuous prehistoric playthings lost their innocent façade and seemed to become more confrontational and more monstrous with each passing moment. Their transformation is certainly reflected in the shifting personas of their human counterparts, certainly in terms of opposing moral viewpoints, though only one character emerges as a true monster.

As the post-show panel came to a close, one thought struck me as I left the room: there can be no justice, only closure. With such a complex legal, personal case, how can it truly be said that justice is done? People died, a man was punished; but he did not receive a fair trial, lies indicted him, and the prosecution expertly manipulated societal prejudice that made him a scapegoat. Though Sophie wants closure for herself and the other victims of the crash (including the man responsible for it), what she truly wants from Tom is a confession, an admission of his guilt in prolonging their trauma and perpetrating prejudice. She gets it, in a way; but Tom transfigures it into a rallying cry for racists. Sophie’s answer to his offer remains a mystery, the abrupt cut to black denying us the closure of her response. But for all of us gathered there in the audience, Tom’s cruel climactic call was unanimously, and cathartically, rejected. Emotionally intriguing and utterly gripping, Tremor wades through the dichotomous mire between a person’s true self and the mask they wear to conceal it.