Who are We
Mark and Joni discuss their backgrounds and the development of their collaboration before they starting working on Pluck.
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TRANSCRIPT
Joni
Hi Mark,
Mark
Hi Joni, how are you?
Joni
I'm doing very well. Thank you very much! How are you?
Mark
Yeah, not bad.
Joni
And hi people who are hopefully listening to this. This is Mark and Joni from Pluck, which is a project to bring puppetry and harp performances to children in hospital.
We decided that we would just chat about our process basically, and hopefully it'll be interesting for you. Hopefully be interesting for us.
Mark
It’s a nice way to talk through our evaluation stuff, actually. It's a nice way to cement it in our own minds, I think.
Joni
Yes, so just sort of because, it's been… we started in May?
Mark
In May
Joni
Although it's sort of started before then. And it's now October, so there's lots to, sort of, remember and to get through.
Mark
Yeah it's crazy!
Joni
We're going to take you through that journey, and you're just going to listen to us having a little chat, with a cup of tea.
Mark
So, Joni, who are you?
Joni
Who am I as an individual? So I'm a puppeteer and a theatre maker, and I've been doing that for a long, long time. (Dread to think how long I've been doing it for!) Mostly doing workshops as well, doing a lot of facilitation, sort of, just doing what you can do as a performer and a theatre maker. And it was in 2019 that I did a project with the Little Angel Theatre. They did a show called, If Not Here… Where? which was, sort of, done in in association (maybe is the word) with Great Ormond Street (hospital) to create a show for children in paediatrics. That was really lovely. It had augmented reality, it had choices. It very much came from the ideas from the Great Ormond Street Youth Forum. And took that all over the country in 2020, in February, 2020 if you can believe it! I still can’t! Went to Edinburgh, went to Liverpool, went to Leeds, went to London with this show, and it just completely, sort of, changed my, my practice and what I wanted to do.
And I decided I wanted to do more in Arts and Health. And very luckily, there was a call out at Chelsea and Westminster hospital - or through their charity, CW+ to do - to be part of their Arts for All Program. Luckily, that had been a hospital that I'd visited on my tour. It was the last one, actually, it was the last hospital we visited. And so I went in and said, This is who I am, and they're really excited. And then I did a shadowing session, sort of, get used to the hospital, which is where I met Mark.
Mark
Yes, that's where you met me!
Mark
So I'm Mark. I'm a harpist. I'm actually a self taught musician. Originally, I was a bass player many years ago, in lots of sweaty pub bands. And then me and a friend were in a music shop, where they had guitars downstairs and they had the more sort of folky, weird instruments upstairs. That's where I had a little go on the harp. And I remember we started working out with rift to “Sweet Child of Mine”, and I thought, “Wow! Wouldn't it be funny to play like modern songs and a harp,” this was about 20 odd years ago, before the world of Tiktok or whatever was happening. And I thought it was funny. We both laughed. And then that's now my job.
And then over some time, really got into it, got became obsessed with playing harp, learning lots of songs. Somehow found my way doing some work in hospitals, which became a huge part of my work. Been lucky to play on quite a lot of programs, mostly around London. Being resident with various hospitals and different projects have come and gone over the years. Did a lot of work with GOSH, so a lot of work in paediatrics. That side of thing was a lot more, how to help the children get involved, playing the harp, making music together, that sort of thing. And then I started working with CW+, I've been with them, I think around 10 years, maybe a little bit more for one of our resident artists. Again, we're playing lots in paediatrics, but also playing in adult wards and older persons units. So playing a wide variety, yeah, of patient environments. It's all about, sort of, bringing relaxing music for staff as well as for patients, getting people involved with music and helping the, sort of, clinical environment, sort of, be softened a bit with some nice music. And the harp is great because it's not too loud as well. You don't go in, and people can still do their work. People can still ignore it if they want. But it's also quite nice
Joni
So what sort of harp, is it?
Mark
So this nice harp is a 29 string Celtic style harp. So it's like a little Irish harp. It's all like the Guinness harps. It's got levers rather than pedals. So a lot of big concert harps have pedals, but that's not -that’s not mine. Mine's just a little folky one. And like I said, I'm self taught, so everything I've learned, I've arranged myself. I've probably got a whole lot of bad habits. I remember being in a harp shop, and - when I needed to get a new string, the guy just looked at me and said, “Are you self taught?”, when I was playing one. And I said, “Oh, does it show” He said, “No, it sounds lovely, but you're holding it the wrong way around.” It's because I'm left handed. So I just sort of, I leave - I put it on my left shoulder and I put it on the other shoulder. And he just thought it was really funny, because he said that if I had a lesson, it would have just been teaching me how to play it in a way that doesn't feel natural, whereas I just, sort of, did it naturally. So I'm no like classical boffin in any way I don't pretend to be. It's just, I think, actually, in a hospital environment, that's come out quite well, because it's, it's very it's very personable, it's very one to one, and it's just chatting, so turning up and just being a bit more chilled about everything, sort of, I think it helps sometimes.
Joni
I think it was, there was a - there was a great moment early when we were working together, where you just suddenly started playing Nirvana. And it was just like, “oh! that's how it sounds like on the harp.” But it's just that, that surprise, which -
Mark
I remember that session because, yeah, it was funny. It was that he was like, kinda, he was a young teenager, so he was like “I like lots of 90s music. You probably won't know - heard of anything…”
Joni
He was trying to challenge you.
Mark
And I was like, you know what, mate? This is my world. So yeah, we had a bit of a 90s break. I did a bit of Nirvana, and I think a bit of Oasis and stuff.
But then, yes, Joni, you came to shadow one session, and quite literally shadow, because you got some shadow puppets. And we just, sort of, collaborated, and it just worked!
Joni
Yeah, I just remember, and I think we made, there might be even a picture of this somewhere, of me. I had a seal shadow puppet that I had, I had made during lockdown. So I made a little, I wouldn't call it a film, very - the shortest film that you could that you can have - about a seal just, sort of, swimming in the sea, meeting lots of different UK wildlife as just as something to do during lockdown, basically. And so I brought that with me, and was just projecting the shadow onto the, onto the walls, onto the curtains. While, you, I think you maybe even playing Disney songs.
Mark
Usually, like paediatrics tends to be lots of Disney. Lots of “Let It Go”. I've been playing “Let It Go” for about 15 years!
Joni
And you'll be doing that until the end of time! And I think we just kind of went, “Oooh, that's - this is interesting. This really works.” And I think almost immediately we, sort of, emailed and said, “Can we collaborate?” Because that was one of the things - especially, I think when I was talking to CW+ at the start was, you know, they want to develop the artists on their programs creatively. They want to encourage collaboration. So, kind of, just leapt at the chance to do something. And they were very gracious to let us because -
Mark
No, that was great. But I think because - I remember I had some people, it was Abbie from the office who was there, and I think she just saw straight away that actually it worked really well. I think the medium, I think the fact that the softness of the harp music, along with - even just the shadow on the wall, it just sort of worked. It didn’t - both, sort of like inspired each other a little bit,
Joni
Yeah, and I think that’s, sort of, what has happened going, “Oh, you can play that, right? I'll bring this in.” Or you did a, sort of, a series of poems and harp music called Harp Tales. And I remember reading one of those, and that sort of inspired lots of the space things, because I, sort of, knew that you had that spacey music. I made some sort of planet shadow puppets and a rocket, and that’s, sort of, where we started. So we have very much just been, sort of, going back and forth with, “ooh, I can do that,” or “oooh, I can make this” and bringing stuff in and trying things out. And so with Pluck, which is our project now, all we really desperately wanted was time to rehearse, time to devise, time to do things together.
Mark
Because that's a thing. And all in the first two and a half years, almost over time, every session was no rehearsal. It was just improvised. It was like you say, so you'd have a new puppet, and we'd do something with it. Sometimes it was a princess, so it'd be a Disney princess. On other times, it'd be a planet and it'd be more space. But everything was just pretty much improvised as part of a performance. And things over time, things were we've realized some things worked well, so they became part of it. Other things didn’t. But we did realize that it's quite limiting, not being able to actually sit in a room and properly work out - especially because - not only working out in our minds, but also you've got to build all the puppets. And -
Joni
I mean, what was, what's good about the shadow puppets is they are really easy to make. So sometimes it would be - I would spend an afternoon creating the puppets and then bringing them in. It might have been, you know, “oh, you could play the Little Mermaid. Let me make a little mermaid and a fish and a crab.” And so it was, sort of, building up. But yeah, we, sort of, just knew that we were only scratching the surface with this, you know. it was nursery rhymes, Disney songs, and every so often, something a little bit… a little bit original
Mark
Yeah a little bit different
Joni
But, you know, our sessions were like two hours, and most of that time is with patients. So, we really didn't have a lot of time chatting with, you know, to create things together.
Mark
it was very nice, it was good, but it's just not - what it was just, there's a lot of potential there, but, you know,
Joni
Exactly yeah, and so that's, that's where we started. And then we were very lucky to get funding. It was took a while to get there.
Mark
It did
Joni
And that's how we got to Pluck.