Most Thursday evenings for the past two years at 6 pm, the Manic Theatre group gathers at ArtHub to explore sound and performance at Zion Chapel in Bonymaen. Led by Glenn and Director Ashley Mansell, the sessions began conducting interviews and creating soundscape recordings. The workshops are designed to foster active listening, improve communication skills, and build confidence. Participants engage with techniques like playing, analyzing, and listening to their voices in high-quality recordings. New topics are explored through interviews with family and friends, and there are opportunities to share personal writings, poetry, and creative work. Examples below. 

an experimental performance work for voices and sound.

Artstation has been collaborating with Manic Productions for over two years, and *Ordinary People* marks our first Eastside Radio production, created in partnership with Theatre Director Philip Mackenzie. The journey began with the development of key ideas for *Copperoppolis*, an early script written for their inauguration by Rev. Chris Lewis.
Through a series of writing workshops and rapid-fire word games, the group generated fresh material, exploring personal and at times challenging life experiences. Philip expertly guided this process, demonstrating how a creative approach grounded in meaningful personal stories can resonate with authenticity and power. He then structured these fragments, using elements from *Copperoppolis* as a foundation for a new work.

The next challenge was for the group to adapt to performing this new, abstract, and complex form of verbal theatre. Glenn collaborated with the Manics to build a database of soundscape recordings and interviews. During group editing sessions, we co-created decisions about how to juxtapose these sounds with live performances, ensuring that the textures and qualities of sound would provide context for the evolving themes. The results are abstract, poetic, and at times, surprisingly experimental. It’s been a fascinating process, and we hope it resonates with others as much as it has with us.

The culmination of this collaboration is *Ordinary People*, our very first arts radio production, its a binaural recording best listened to with headphones.