By James Hadley in London

Spare Tyre are one of the leading community theatre companies in London, with a track record of over thirty years' practice. That's almost as long as community theatre's been around as a recognised genre of theatre, and it's impressive longevity for any theatre company.

Their current slogan is 'community theatre without prejudice'; and it's particularly apt for this company who work with marginalised groups.
 
As the company defines its mission, Spare Tyre 'uses theatre with voiceless communities to provide opportunities for people's life stories to be shared and celebrated, creating theatre that transforms lives and challenges social prejudice.' At this point in the company's history, the particular communities they are working with are reflected in their two performance ensembles. There's HotPots, a company of older actors (over the age of 60), and inc.Theatre Ensemble - group of performers with learning disabilities.
 
Over the last two years or so, both groups have presented work that reflects their experiences of life, presented both in community venues and in professional venues to a wider arts audience. HotPots presented the vaudeville-based revue 'Angina Monologues' last year, and inc.Theatre Ensemble toured their well regarded 'Dark Inc' cabaret show in the same year. This year, for the first time, the two ensembles were brought together to collaborate on a show called 'Feeble Minds'.
 
'Feeble Minds' was initially inspired by Shakespeare's little known play 'Timon of Athens', exploring its themes of aging, greed and lust more widely, through a blend of physical theatre, multimedia elements and spoken word. Directed by Spare Tyre's Artistic Director, Arti Prashar, the work was an ambitious project, and not only due to the practical challenges of working with two disparate groups with a variety of access needs. The work of Spare Tyre is only possible due to a team of volunteers who support such needs as wheelchair accessible transport to and from rehearsals, meaning the overall company working on the show was quite sizeable.
 
Someone trying to follow 'Feeble Minds' in terms of a traditional narrative through-line would find it frustrating. Equally, someone attending the show expecting a sweet and inspiring depiction of how older individuals and people with learning disabilities can triumph over adversity would come away disappointed and confused. This was a dark and prickly show, by turns macabre and bewildering, wandering in a dark landscape of abstract images. I don't know the plot of 'Timon of Athens', but I suspect it wouldn't have made much difference, as I'm told that was just a starting point. Fragments of Shakespeare's text bubble through, but they're from 'Hamlet' or 'Macbeth' as much as 'Timon'.
 
Two older women, dressed like 'Dragon's Den' entrepreneurs, lord it over the stage as gods provoking mortals to indulge their blinkered lust for money. A collection of grotesque characters fill the stage for a feast scene, dressed in tatters, they prepare food and seem to be surreptitiously cutting lumps out of each other in the process. The smell of frying flesh fills the theatre. One of the inc. Theatre Ensemble comes close to my seat and audibly snaps the neck of a real pheasant as part of the preparations. Then a glamorous woman is wheeled out on a sort of chariot, which has replaced the wheelchair the performer usually uses. She's idolised like a celebrity by the other characters onstage, dancing seductively in a spotlight, before the gods throw money at her, and a jealous woman shrieks that she wants to kill her. One of the cooks from the feast comes forwards with a meat cleaver, and killed she is, among her screams. Not exactly the tone one expects from community theatre!
 
I have to admit I was somewhat confused, and this show is certainly not to everyone's tastes. But on reflection, this abstract, sensorily redolent and image based piece of theatre is the product of its process, and much of the work's worth is in its process. Unlike much theatre work involving participants with learning disabilities, great effort seems to have been taken to leave the power with the participants through the process, rather than the vision and aesthetics of a director steam-rollering over the participants' creative ideas. If there's a lack of a cohesive narrative, perhaps that's a more truthful reflection of the way some of the participants experience life.
 
Similarly, world-weary words of bitterness and disillusion from some of the older characters within the piece may be unsympathetic compared to saccharine Disney grandparent representations, but perhaps the bewilderment of these characters is also a closer reflection of what it is to be a marginalised older person in our youth obsessed culture. It's not great entertainment, but it is the creative expression of rarely heard perspectives, and in a way which is less mediated than we perhaps expected. In such ways I'm starting to come around to more of an appreciation of the piece.
 
Of course, you still want a piece of theatre to facilitate a connection between the performers and audience, and perhaps that was a bit on the foggy side in this production. But there were moments of clear creative expression from these performers, and when you think about it, so many barriers are stacked up against such individuals being able to access professional theatre practice that this is a considerable achievement. Apparently it was in the question and answer sessions that the achievements of the production shone through most clearly. Within this session, performers defended the process of the work, and spoke eloquently of their sense of ownership over the material. Anyone who's been through a devising process with a large and disparate group will know how challenging it is to achieve something which everyone's happy with and which feels truly owned by all the company, so that's a clear achievement of the project.