Theatre is therapy

IF YOU CAN'T COME TO THE THEATRE, WE'LL BRING THE THEATRE TO YOU! Our advertising fliers and posters proudly proclaim. Hundreds of them, going to every nursing home and special needs school across the whole of our county.

And having received, and accepted our invitation, the residents of HollyTrees Cottage eagerly await our arrival; so it's time to pack the car. Mike stands, mikes, wires and speakers - so we can perform outdoor shows for barbecue and garden party days like theirs, meaning everyone stays safe in covid times, no strangers coming inside the building that's become their sanctuary.

Rails, and reams of cloth, to mock up a curtain to give it the look of a true theatre show. The stack of posters to show off the shows that every song in the set comes from.

The suitcase full of hats, scarves, flags, ribbons, pom-poms and masks to make throw-on-throw-off costumes and props, so we can play the characters singing the songs - and by "we", I mean everyone - audiences, big or small, old or young, mentally or physically high or low functioning - everyone is part of the show in whatever way they can be.

Instruments go in the car next. We get the big ones - guitar and keyboard - and everyone else who wants to be part of it as the show goes along, gets all the others - tambourine, maraca, bongo, kazoo. Now we're ready. We're off to our morning performance in the first town in the diary today. It's "Rat Pack Casino", our newest show, so we pack a deck of giant playing cards for doing tricks with in between songs, to give this Sinatra-and-Co tribute show a Las Vegas atmosphere. We turn up, the show gets unloaded and unfolded from the back of the car, everyone finds some way - quietly or loudly - they can join in, they clap, and the show is re-folded and re-loaded back into the car, we collect our little envelope of cash, and we're away, promising we'll come back in October to give them "Monster Mash - Halloween Disco Show".

On the road again, to the next town where we're booked for our afternoon show, hopefully finding somewhere green to stop off for a picnic lunch on the way.

Our afternoon show is "Let There Be Love", meaning we need the tuxedo, corsage, veil & bouquet, to play the characters of newlyweds picking the songs for their wedding dance, in the little story we cooked up to join together this set of classic romantic ballads, to give the show a bit of sparkle. Again we unload, unfold, get everyone involved as best they can, they clap as best they can, and we'll be on our way - clutching our second envelope of money and promising we'll be back in December to give them our Christmas pantomime show.

This morning our audience were a home full of elderly people with dementia; this afternoon, a school full of college-age people with autism. This evening, it will be a village hall filled with people of all ages with various reasons for being in wheelchairs. For them, we'll do "It's Showtime", a show about showbiz, with songs and stories from golden-age Broadway to modern-day Hollywood. For that, we'll need our rotating board of posters of movies and musicals from the old to the new, and a set of vocal exercises to fulfill the demands the singers of soundtracks make on the voice range of anyone taking on the challenge of trying to sound like them.

And what to us is a session of theatre, to them is a session of therapy. The key component of all the conditions they live with, that make them physically or mentally unable to come out to a theatre, and so need a roving show like ours to come to them, is that it's the *connections* in the brain that don't work for them in the same way as they do for us. Brain functions are chain reactions. Sense input stirs memory, memory stirs response, response provokes movement, movement expresses emotions. Those conditions we call disabilities are breaks in the chain. Music is unique, though, in its ability to stimulate different areas of the brain in different ways, *independently* of the chain. Memory, sensuality, movement, emotion, are all stirred by movement. So, for a moment, those with severed connections are no worse off than those of us privileged enough to be in no danger of daily dysfunction. And the research results are coming in increasingly on the side of music having deeper-meaning, and longer-lasting, physical and mental health effects than just a joyful moment. The more group activity time, especially involving sound-and-movement stimulus like dance, people in institutional social care get, the less hospital care they need - having people to do for them what we do for them, actually makes them genuinely healthier on a deep tissue level, both in brain and body.

We're performing artists, of various stripes, from modelling to stand up comedy, but what we do is full of potential for self-gratification - except the "If You Can't Come To The Theatre, We Bring The Theatre To You" shows that we emptied our fuel tank to perform across the county today. They actually do some genuine good for someone besides ourselves. We're not saints by any stretch of the imagination, nor do we do people's health and happiness a fraction of the good that full time we'll trained doctors and nurses do - but when we get home with our last envelope of cash and the delivery pizza we ordered on the way home because we knew we'd be too exhausted to cook, we're filled with a warm glow that comes from more than just the pizza - it comes from the knowledge we actually did somebody some good in the world today, in our own theatrical way.

Sorry, did you want a short answer when you asked me, "So, what do you do for a living?"