A little background noise

There's always something that can disrupt a workshop in a school. The arrival of the lunch team who need to set up tables in the hall half an hour before you were told you needed to finish. The constant passage across the space of scowling staff who could do a lovely creative two hours themselves if they could then stroll out of the premises afterwards. Rattling radiators, rooms full of inappropriate furniture, fire drills... I've seen it all.

Until the gun battle outside.

I was chatting away to a lovely group of nine to eleven year olds at the house of theatre company Nós do Morro (We of the Hills?) - the company with whom Paul Heritage had put us in touch. I was explaining that we were making a play out of Journey to the River Sea and just taking the book out of my bag when there was a sort of loud rattle in the streets outside. Which was answered. And so it continued.

For those who, like me, haven't been near sustained heavy gunfire before, it doesn't sound like it does on the telly. It's more, well, loud. But there's none of that pingy ricochet sound. At least there wasn't today - I'm not intending to make any more detailed study of that soundscape.

So what do you do when gunfire erupts outside during your workshop? (This weblog is nothing if not practically informative...)

I was scared enough once I heard the shooting. But I got more scared when I saw how scared the children were. It's a bit feeble of me, but I rather hoped that they would be coolly sophisticated about the whole thing: 'Guns? Oh please, they're so yesterday. Let's do more drama exercises.' But they were really frightened. So I was too.

It was reassuring to be moved to the other half of the room, although it was full of musical equipment, since that had stone, rather than wooden walls. Although it wasn't that reassuring of course, since the implication about how much we needed protection was clear.

So, crouched among the drum kits in a windowless alcove, I conducted the worst drama workshop ever given. It failed on all counts - hastily improvised, meandering, failing to hold its participants' concentration and dwindling into aimless, time-filling chit-chat. My hunch was that it was better for us all to keep talking than just sit and listen to the bangs. We couldn't watch the video as that was in the half of the room with only a wooden screen between us and the bullets. I forgot all of Michael's notes from the Gayhurst workshop and everything I'd prepared as well. We just talked.

We talked about snow. And whether there were icicles in England. Whether I liked hip-hop (I promised there would be children at Gayhurst who did). About a Brazilian children's character with back-to-front feet. About anything. I asked what they would like to ask the children back in London - you can see the questions on the video. Although when one of the girls asked 'do you have war in England?' I did feel myself getting a bit weepy which maybe wouldn't have been good for morale.

The shooting subsided. The door opened and anxious parents came to collect anxious children. School was over for the day. Everyone smiled bravely. I felt like I'd been taken to the limit of what I ever want to cope with. These children, their families and friends live there every day.

A bit of background, which we got from Zezé, the remarkable Director of Nós Do Morro. There's a war going on over drug trafficking between this favela (Vidigal) and its big neighbour, Rocinha. Paul had mentioned this in his e-mail, but I think I´d read it with an old-fashioned notion that war here was being used metaphorically. But no. So rival drug factions shoot at each other in the middle of the day in a residential area where people are trying to run theatre workshops. And live. Although never, speaking to Zezé, has running theatre workshops seemed less fey. The children we worked with, and the others at Nós do Morro are able there to do something extraordinary. It´s a chance to live - creatively, yes, but this living too isn't just a metaphor.

And where were the police during this gun battle? We've seen no shortage of uniformed and armed personnel over the last two weeks. There were police - at the bottom of the hill, outside the entrance to the favela. They don't come in. Their job is to protect the wealthy district just next door (and tourists like us on Copacabana beach). There is no 'law and order' for this community. No security, no safety.

Well, I was all ready for a life-changing experience. If nothing else I've discovered how my priorities polarise at the sound of gunfire. It´s perhaps my most authentic experience of the trip and I would happily have missed it for anything. Although that would have meant missing some extraordinary children, too.

So much for Friday the Thirteenth...