Case study:
My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding
How does a community exchange project between an urban town and a tiny village in the West Midlands turn into a sell-out, multi-year touring theatre production reaching more than 5,000 people in some of the most out-of-the-way places in the country?
In other words, how do you makea Big Fat Cowpat Wedding?
Chris Corner, General Manager at Kali Theatre in London, shares their story.
Small beginnings
My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding emerged from an initial community exchange between two small towns, Smethwick and Snailbeach,organised by Arts Alive, the rural touring scheme for Shropshire and Herefordshire, and Black Country Touring, a community touring scheme covering the West Midlands, back in 2014.
Smethwick is an ethnic melting pot four miles west of Birmingham, and high on the indices of deprivation. Snailbeach is a tiny Shropshire village whose school has only 25 pupils on the roll.Aperfect contrast between country and urban, andboth out of the way of the usual touring circuit. Their communities would have seen little if any culturally diverse work.
Not driven by the arts, but using art and creativity as a vehicle for exploring cultural differences, two separate day exchanges were organised, bringing 50 people to Shropshire, then 30 back to Smethwick. They climbed a hill and told stories, went down a mine, visited a mosque, danced Bhangra, sang, had afternoon tea with Stiperstones Brass Band and workshopped with Vamos theatre.
The participants’ responses to experiencing such different environments to their own prompted Arts Alive and Black Country Touring to commission us at Kali to create a new piece of work.
The happy union
Black Country Touring brought its knowledge of diverse urban audiences, Arts Alive its experience as a promoter of rural touring work. From our base in London, we’ve presented ground breaking theatre by South Asian women for 25 years. Wehave extensive commissioning and production experience, particularly with new writers.We brought in writer Sayan Kent.
The objectives were two-fold: 1. to take an accessible theatre show to underserved rural venues and audiences, and 2. to address prejudice and ignorance around both racial divides and the urban/rural divide, in a contemporary, humorous way.
All three companies carried out research, interviewing people in mixed marriages, from different ethnic cultures, from both urban and countryside environments, city dwellers who had been guests at country weddings, and even a wedding photographer.
Many of the real experiences discovered through this process were woven into the final script, and people enjoyed recognising their stories in the final production.
As far as we are aware this was the first theatre piece to be commissioned and created especially by and for rural touring schemes that explores relationships across these cultural divides.
My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding was born.
Cowpats on the road
During its initial tour in 2014 the play was seen by over 2,000 people in 24 performances, mostly sold out, in rural venues and city community centres across the UK.
In May 2015 it was revived for the Alchemy Festival at the Southbank Centre in London. Kali also took it to Wolverhampton and Smethwick Library.
Then in October/November 2016, with £63,351 from the Arts Council’s Strategic Touring Programme, it did a seven-and-a-half-week tour to 37 venues run by 11 Rural Touring Schemes (RTS), who came on board after Kali performed extracts of the show at a Rural Touring Conference.
The village halls we performed in varied in size and location. Several were in small hamlets with audience members travelling up to ten miles to see the show.
We visited Newhampton, Cheshire, Shropshire, rural towns in North Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Dorset, Wales, County Durham, Worcester, Nottingham and Shrewsbury...The demand was so great that we added an extra week so we could take it to Cornwall. We visited six more venues than originally proposed in our application, reaching a total audience of 3,031, nearly 40% larger than anticipated.
Site-specific
The production was a big event for some communities, most of whom only get one or two plays a year in their hall.
The show is site-specific and has only four members of cast, so the audience members became the wedding guests. The halls were decorated as wedding receptions. Local promoters provided tea and cakes or a curry, and many of the audience dressed up for a country wedding, wearing an array of hats, fascinators and wellies. This engaged audiences in a deeper experience and made the event even more special.
Great big appeal
Not surprisingly for predominately rural venues the audience was 84% white British. But we also took the show to a Hindu Cultural Centre in Cardiff where the audience was 94% Asian. One of the great strengths of this show was (and still is) that it appeals to both white rural audiences and urban South Asian ones.
26 of the 37 venues reported that new audiences had attended the show.
28 of the venues were completely sold out and had to put in extra chairs where they could.
31 of them reported that the show attracted the biggest turnout they had ever had.
An average of 38% of the audience surveyed did not count themselves regular theatregoers and approximately two-thirds of these were seeing their first play for a year, indicating that the show achieved one of its primary aims to attract new theatregoers.
Many specifically expressed their appreciation of the mixed cultures represented in the play and said they wanted more of that.
84% of our feedback forms rated the show 10 out of 10.
As well as the numbers, the audience feedback was astoundingly positive:
“This was brilliant. You just can’t believe that it’s four people, they were just so good. They really take you in… it’s mind blowing.”
“The play didn’t feel like a ‘play’, it felt like you were at a reception.”
“So good to have mixed race and non-white theatre, rural and country. Loved the variety of the characters touching on so many prejudices. Would love to see your thought provoking theatre again.”
“Great show! Not my usual material but I was thoroughly entertained. Great way to use the hall and space, thank you.”
This response from audiences and discussions with Regional Touring Scheme representatives after a presentation at the National Rural Touring Forum annual conference clearly indicated that there is great demand for this sort of work.
Beyond the Big Day
Inspired by the successful collaboration that created Cowpat, Kaliinstigated Collaborator Tea Partiesin various venues around the UK alongside the tour.
These were networking events: opportunities for rural touring schemes, promoters and key venues to meet local producers and theatre companies for a relaxed afternoon of tea, cake and conversationintended to encourage collaborations between rural touring schemes and local arts producers for more rural touring.
These were not the simplest events to arrange. Even though Kali covered all the costs and ran the event, there were difficulties with a lack of local support by some rural touring schemes. This was most often when the local RTS felt themselves stretched, or were worried that they would be seen as a producing company or grant giving organisation.
The other challenge was to bring together a diverse enough range of people for the tea party to be fruitful; not just ethnically or socially, but also diverse in terms ofthe areas of the industry represented. We struggled to reach out directly to local individual artists, as did our co-hosts and RTSs. Those are the people I would have most liked to get involved but who proved the most elusive to find.
The most successful events resulted from the local council, the RTS and the venue all coming together and enthusiastically and consistently promoting the event, ensuring a good turnout and inclusive atmosphere. Feedback from all the participants was really positive and it looked as through a couple of promising new collaborations will result.
Local stories for local people
A big part of the genesis of My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding were the stories that had come originally from town and country communities. They are also what made it so successful, as they rooted the play in reality, and connected it directly to its audience.
It was a natural progression, therefore to want to base the next rural project on the stories that derived from the communities it would serve.
During the Cowpat tour, we held Story Sharing sessions. Certain venues were selected and the audiences were informed beforehand that we would be chatting to them after the show. This worked well and we found audiences were in a good mood, they had enjoyed the play and were more than willing to talk.
We wanted stories about different sorts of family gatherings, especially funerals and wakes. People were very generous and we got some lovely rich material. For some it was therapeutic, others had funny stories to tell and enjoyed making us laugh, some just wanted to talk about more weddings. All the interviewees were happy that their contribution might be an inspiration for the next play.
The material gathered from these sessions plus further research will form the basis for the next play for rural touring currently being commissioned by Kali from Sayan Kent.
What we learned
My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding is the most successful touring show Kali has ever produced. Its success was based on three things: local knowledge, real prior engagement with its target audience, and solid partnership working.
Getting the Regional Touring Schemes on board by performing extracts from the show at the annual RTS Forum was a vital. Having them involved at an early stage meant they could recommend the show to their rural venues with confidence despite the unprecedented nature of the piece. Plus, their local knowledge and networks were invaluable.
Working with Arts Alive and Black Country Touring gave us the benefit of their extensive experience of rural and urban community touring.
Kali managed to reach a whole new audience with this tour, introducing over three thousand new audience members to our work.
We forged new partnerships with four Rural Touring Schemes, and all seven of them said they would definitely book another Kali tour in the future. Some wanted to have Cowpat back next year.
------
The 2016 tour of My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding was supported with National Lottery funds through the Arts Council’s Strategic Touring Programme.
Find out more about the fund, future rounds and how to apply here.
1