Past Outreach Workshops

YoungPeopleFirst
Every Little Helps
September 2006

Hijinx Theatre's Outreach strand has recently undertaken new innovative work by appearing in disguise at this year's All Wales People First conference in Llandrindod Wells. This years conference theme was the area of work and Hijinx were approached by the organisation to perform two role plays for the delegates on this topic.

Outreach Officer, Nick Llewellyn and Odyssey member Martin Vick played the parts of a Tesco store manager and Tesco till packer retrospectively in a devised piece of Every Little Helps.

Taken from Martin's own personal experience of working in Tesco, the two role plays examined the idea of 'speaking up' in the workplace. The first role play saw Martin agreeing with everything the manager asked him whilst secretly being unhappy by the decision. The second role play saw Martin more confident in being honest with his employer and therefore speaking up for himself. After the short performance, a discussion was opened up to the delegates on the floor.

A Communication Skills for Work workshop then followed in the afternoon where positive and negative body language was explored with how we communicate with our bodies. Two of these images were then shown at the feedback session to the other delegates in the afternoon.

The whole day was a fantastic way of examining the notion of how we communicate in the workplace through both role plays and a drama workshop. Many positive responses followed from the delegates. Drama is a powerful way of examining relationships and situations for adults with a learning disability.