The "Weebles" - A Site-Specific Project

The "weebles" are a popular name in South Shields (where I work) for a 22-piece sculpture called Conversation Piece, situated on Little Haven beach

Created by Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz, each figure is about 1.5 metres high and is cast in bronze.

Conversation Piece is part of the Art on the Riverside project, the largest programme of public art in the UK, funded by a £3.5m National Lottery grant and £2.7m from public and private sources, which will place over 100 artworks, created by local, national and international artists, on the banks of the Tyne and theWear.

You can imagine how flattered we were when we were asked to do a performance piece for the official opening of the sculpture! We were to work with a professional company, Dodgy Clutch TC (based just across the Tyne from us and specialising in very visual productions, and we had to involve kids from our feeder primary schools. The brief was simply to produce a piece which would relate to the sculptures, be visually appealing and last no more than ten minutes. I must have hesitated a whole tenth of a second before saying yes!

We began with a meeting in the Customs House, our local theatre, between Liz White of the Tyneside Enterprise Development Company (which was organising the whole thing), Ozzy Riley (director of Dodgy Clutch), and myself. Here we discussed the brief and threw a few ideas around. I have to confess that I couldn't really make that much of a contribution because I hadn't actually seem the statues!

However, once the meeting was over I shot off down to the beach to take a look. I was impressed: I found the sculptures attractive and thought-provoking, and a few ideas began to form somewhere in the depths of my mind.

The next stage was was for Ozzie to meet the kids who would be involved, so we arranged he would come to the school half an hour before the Drama Cub was due to meet so that we could have a chat about how to approach the project. It was clear from what he said that he was concerned about the experience and ability of the kids who would be taking part, and I did all I could to reassure him by outlining their experience, and I think he was a little more confident when he met them thirty minutes later.

The workshop that followed was obviously designed to enable Ozzie to get to know the kids' abilities ad they came out of it with flying colours. He was, he said, impressed, and looked forward to working with them.

The following week's workshop explored the kids' reactions to the sculpture and included exercises in which, with no preparation at all, they were asked to make a public speech praising or condemning the work, with the rest being given full permission to heckle to their hearts' content! It worked well and the kids were really stretched by it.

Ozzie would be away on tour for the next four weeks, so the workshops would be taken by Peter Mortimer, a well-regarded local writer who would produce the script. After the first meeting (in school) which was intended as yet another "getting to know you" session, we arranged another two meetings on site where we thoroughly explored the sculptures, "became" them and discussed what we thought they actually were. They proved to be a true "conversation piece", for the ideas the kids produced were many and varied.

For the following week Peter produced a synopsis - which was subjected to minute analysis! - and the week after a full script.

The piece was constructed around the opening of the sculptures, with some members of the cast being part of the official party, one the person who would guide the guests around the groups of sculpture, and the rest actually being the statues. We read it through and I did some on-the-spot casting, which Peter agreed with, having assessed the kids pretty well in the previous weeks.

From then on it was a pretty normal rehearsal period (except, of course, for the fact that we only actually had six more rehearsals!). We worked in my Drama Room in school for three of them, went outside into the open air for the last in-school rehearsal, and managed two on site, one the day before the performance.

Ozzie and I split the work between us: I worked on the text with the family whilst he worked on movement (and special effects) with the "Weebles" and the junior school children who would be flag-carriers. The dialogue didn't change - except in one or two places where one of the family found it easier to change the odd word or re-cast a sentence - but the movement did because the play was written in the expectation that the official party would consist of about twelve people, whereas we were told just a week beforehand that there would be at least thirty, probably fifty, and possibly more. That necessitated major changes in the movement, and in fact it was not until the day before the performance that we were able to finally set the moves!

But it worked! Quite superbly, actually. The crowd of guests was huge and it was obvious that we couldn't move them around the site as quickly as we had anticipated, so we had to tell the family to ad-lib like mad! They rose to the occasion: at one point Father was telling the Mayor how to get on in life: "Don't make a fuss. Just get on with the job. That's the way to get on!" The Mayor nodded agreement throughout!

If you ever find yourself in the South Shields area, pop along and have a look at Conversation Piece. It's worth it!