Creativity, Arts and Older People
A blog by David Slater
Entelechy Elders company member Sybil Reid reflects on some of the reactions on the street to their latest performance event ‘Bed” performed on the streets of southeast London in September 2014 A lot of people didn’t want to look. They didn’t want to see it because that could be them in a few years from… Continue reading Invisible in plain view
‘Sometimes you’ve got to take risks for the unknown. You don’t know what you are going into but you’ve got to take that risk.’ - Gwen Sewell, Entelechy Elders Company It’s lunchtime on Wednesday afternoon. A teenager stands in the foyer of the theatre with her two friends. They are in school uniform. Collectively they… Continue reading BED
Guest bloggers Rosie Wheatland, Rona Lewis, Nelly Andoh, Gwen Sewell, Thelma Hunte, Madeleine Keckwick, Sybil Reid, Shelia Powell and Lillian Bartholomew write about their experiences of working together in Entelechy Arts elders company. We speak about the past and the present. Both. We are old but not cold. We’ve all had experiences that have taught… Continue reading Laughter and silences
Guest blogger Lillian Bartholomew is a member of Entelechy’s Elders Company. In addition to working with the company devising and performing theatre, she volunteers her time as a peer mentor working alongside Entelechy Artists in a local care home in Deptford. Here she describes how listening and sharing stories can support and invigorate people moving… Continue reading Mick and Molly
In the former mill owner’s house, now home to the Ukrainian Centre in Bradford the Ukrainian women, in their beautifully embroidered blouses, are singing the once prohibited songs of their childhood. They are all clutching song sheets but they don’t need them, the words seep from their souls. They sing of love and loss. They… Continue reading Bradford (part 2)
I’m having supper with the eleven members of Entelechy’s elders company in the elegant surroundings of the restaurant in the Midland Hotel in Bradford, Yorkshire. We have all travelled north to participate in the next stages of the ‘Home Sweet Home’ project with Freedom Studios. It's a two year theatrical exploration into the art of… Continue reading Bradford
I can hear the laughter from the other end of the building. They’re meant to be working on some nuanced point of the script but the energy has clearly broken out and rampaged down the stairs. There is under a week to go before we take the raw new show for a first outing to… Continue reading In rehearsal
It’s almost midnight and the sounds of the organ from the chapel below are seeping up through the floorboards. We’re on the final leg of a midnight stroll, styled after the Midnight Runs from the imagination of poet and spoken word artist Inua Ellams. It’s the second of two journeys across our city, London. The… Continue reading Writing on Walls
I try to make contact but only ever get the automated voice of the answer-phone: ‘The person you are calling is unable to take your call.’ Meetings of the elders company have been depleted; it’s been a long winter full of heavy un-shake off-able viruses. At rehearsals have we adopted the ritual of conjuring absences,… Continue reading Rodney
Creativity, Arts and Older People 