For those of you that are not aware, since my decision not to lead GAPP theatre group just over two years ago the group was initially taken over and led in direction of performances by Alan (cant think of his last name at the minute) which was fine as he wanted to do the directing of the performance and this fitted in nicely with one of the objectives of the group from when it was created in 2000.
This objective being that members of the LGBT community get involved with GAPP and take a lead for performances that they either have written, want to produce or direct.
Alan has since finished his production piece
and Andrew cooper took over leading the theatre group on a weekly basis at the REP, which has since produced a number of shows.
I am a bit out of the communication loop as to what is happening now but it feels like the theatre group have devised pieces of performance around perosnal issues with the LGBT community. The Loose Connections piece that I saw the preview to at HGL centre 146 was really very good and I was pleased to see the group expanding in mumber, but it now gets a little confusing:
a couple of years ago the GAPP group changed its focus when the new members that joined the group stated that didnt want to do personal stuff, and that they wanted to do theatre shows.
Somewhat disillusioned at this departure from the original aim and creation of the group. I had a meeting with Steve Ball, a supporter of the group from its conception about what to do about this change, and we agreed that, the nature of GAPP group had indeed changed because of new people being interested in the social aspect of joining an LGB interest group in Birmingham.
To support the continued existence of the GAPP group Steve and I talked about how it was best to encourage those people who wanted a social theatre group to do so, and that we could create two GAPP groups, if you like, the new GAPP theatre - a community group for people to put on theatre shows, Pantamime and Musicals etc and the original GAPP Performance - a contemporary performance art group that devised pieces of performances on relevant issues of concern to the LGBT population as a form of self expression through performance.
I hope you can see where im going with this, because this note is not intended in any way to cause friction about the great pieces of theatre that the GAPP Theatre group is producing. It is merely a statement to say that we need to create a dialogue and maintain updated communication for the benefit of the GAPP Group's members and potential new members to either group.
I am just sorry it has taken this long to kick start the discussion. There has been a catalyst to this message and that is how meeting Tim Miller again this week performing at the FIERCE festival reminded me just how exciting and important the work of the GAPP performance group truly is.
It is also true that the performance group has not created any new pieces since John Read and I were asked to develop and present a piece of performance at the West Midlands Police Conference last year, but this doesn't mean that GAPP performance group doesnt exist now.
GAPP Perfromance has a history and I hope a future. What I would like to see is the two groups to co-exist as agreed two years ago.
So GAPP has this website as an asset, and I hope we can all start to utilise it to its full potential, within the parameters of the web page provider service that it currently is cited. This means that the website whilst fantastic in it's existence does have limitations in the type of information that can be added. Until we can find a web sponser to create a new skin (how technical am I) for the site we are limited.
I attend the Birmingham Pride Community Forum meetings and I am always there to keep GAPP as a community resource, it would be nice to feedback some updated information to the forum about what the GAPP Theatre group are planning to do.
but what I will do now is create a community link, so that we can message each other in a professional way that gives everyone the opportunity to have a say.
I will also create a blog page so that a running diary can be added by members as to share whats going on in there lives at the moment.
There are probably lots of questions that need to be asked and since I can't arrange a time to meet with people at the moment, please do email me or GAPP, we are gayandperformingproudly@yahoo.co.uk
I know I have many questions to ask the existing GAPPers and talking to the directors and producers of pieces will be really useful to ensure we are all clear about the GAPP groups directions.
There is so much that can be done to improve our website, and I am going to be asking GAPPers old and new to contribute to make this site really up to date, and have a sense of pride within our community.
