Hello one and all! I’m pleased to bring you another monthly update from The Bridge.
In this edition: there is an opportunity for you to contribute to our Summer Theatre Workshop (last places available)! Plus, an update on our podcast and on when you might get to see a professional English-language production by The Bridge.
As ever, please do get in touch with your ideas and comments - it is always a pleasure to hear from you. And tell your friends about us. Just hit the button below!
Meet our Summer Workshop Team
Our Summer Theatre Workshop is taking place 23-27 August at the Pianofabriek in St Gilles. We have brought together a stellar team to give participants the best experience possible. Our team of five bring approachability mixed with incredible expertise. They all have long experience working with young people and they are excited about sharing their skills with Brussels! Pictured below, left-to-right, are: Kate, Bex, Eamonn, Lisa and Jess. You may recognise Kate from our June podcast, available to listen now!
The Summer Theatre Workshop is going to be an extremely fun, pretty intense and incredibly rewarding week for the lucky 10-18 year olds who are able to join. There are still some places left, but the workshop is quickly filling up so get in touch asap if you are thinking of registering. And don’t forget to tell your friends about the workshop!
Registration is open until 30 June!
Call for volunteers!
In order to help us to run a smooth Summer Theatre Workshop, we are now looking for volunteers! Could you spare a few hours at the end of August to help us supervise participants? Are you intrigued about what goes on at a Bridge Academy Summer Theatre Workshop? Do you want to know how to pull someone by the hair without actually hurting them?! Then this is for you!
Volunteers would undertake three-hour shifts. You can sign up for just one, or spend the whole week with us!
Please let us know your availability by filling in this short Google Form.
Experiential learning and human-centred leadership
Our Podcast guest for July is Charlie Swan, Founding Director of PCA. We chat to Charlie about how his diverse background - combining corporate law, executive coaching and West End theatre - led him to design business courses that use outcome-based and immersive experiential learning techniques to develop human-centred leadership. Sounds interesting, right?! You can listen to what Charlie has to say in our monthly podcast, How to Build a Theatre, from 1 July.
Theatrical backlog
I want to take this opportunity to recall that, in spite of a heavy focus recently on community participation activities, The Bridge aims to be primarily a professional producing theatre. We want to bring inspiring theatre to Brussels.
We are launching activities with our learning and participation work in order to emphasise the central importance of this to us. We believe the arts are so important in giving future-proof skills, be they collaboration skills, empathy, or confidence. We also wanted to give the opportunity for people to do things together after this period of social isolation.
Nevertheless, I wanted to assure you, dear theatre fans, that in the background we are working to bring you theatre; theatre that is enjoyable, theatre that looks great, and theatre that makes you think.
However, in order to do this, we need to first find a venue! The closures of theatres here in Belgium, just as in the UK and elsewhere, have led to a huge backlog of work that is ready but still-to-be-performed. Theatres that have remained empty for twelve months or more are trying to cram in much of the work from the aborted 2020-21 season, as well as some pieces from the disrupted 2019-20 season. At the same, of course, creatives have not just been sitting idly during the lockdowns; they have been creating! So, in addition to the backlog of unperformed works, there are now many new creations all simultaneously trying to find space to flourish.
Here at The Bridge we are working in cooperation with partner theatres and other organisations in Brussels to explore what is possible over the coming 12 months. We hope to be able to present something soon. Watch this space!
That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading and keep creative,
Edward McMillan
Co-founder