PRODUCTION NEWS
We - along with Stellar Quines Theatre Company of Edinburgh - are delighted to inform you of an exciting event designed to develop Square Peg’s latest new play by Anna Carlisle: The Chelsea Belladonna on the life of eighteenth-century Stellar Quines Theatre Company - which specialises in theatre that is creatively driven by women - and its director Muriel Romanes, have offered Square Peg a public rehearsed reading of its current work-in-progress at one of their renowned Rehearsal Room events, on: 25 January at the Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge Street, Rehearsal Room is a resource to develop commissions and showcase projects to possible co-producers and promoters; it is also an audience development initiative, building an audience for the eventual production of the project. The Chelsea Belladonna has already been approved by Scotland’s Gardens to tour to five Scottish gardens in July/August 2012: to place Aberdonian Elizabeth Blackwell firmly onto the historical map of Scotland and reaffirm her important place in women’s world history – in addition, to shed light and even pass comment upon her less-than-orthodox marriage and private life; and to look warmly upon her developing friendship with mentor and source of inspiration, Sir Hans Sloane of Chelsea. The evening event - to which we hope you will come - will continue the work done during a workshop, on the same day, with actors, director and writer. Far from attending a polished reading of a finished piece, the audience will become observers and participants: involved in a work-in-progress and given the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback during the evening.
|
|
Audience members from the performances of Woven in the Fabric will be delighted to know that the rag rug - with which they assisted in the making on the day they attended the play - is now complete and currently on exhibition at the Bankfield Museum in Halifax. Not only that, but their signatures - recorded on the day of the performance they attended - have now been compiled into a beautiful commemorative book, decorated and bound by the members of the Calderdale Calligraphers and which is also on display, alongside the rug, as testament to all those who helped to weave it. The rug, created by Jane Scargill, traced the image on the publicity poster for the production: three women’s heads in silhouette against a background of hills and mills. The commemorative book follows the style of the Book of Signatures given in 1877 to John Crossley (son of Martha) on his retirement from Dean Clough mills – and which featured the signatures of over 3,000 of his workpeople. At the ceremony to launch the exhibition, almost 30 people were in attendance, amongst whom was a member of the Crossley family, Square Peg actors, custodian of the Crossley archives Rose Taylor, Halifax Festival Co-ordinator Lucy Burnett, historian Dr Jill Liddington, members of the Calderdale Calligraphers and the Bankfield Museum staff and, of course, members of the audiences from Woven in the Fabric itself. Most excitingly, the launch at Bankfield coincided almost exactly with the re-laying at Square Chapel of the gravestones of Martha and John Crossley which had been mislaid for several decades (following the closure of Dean Clough mills in 1982) and only re-discovered in August 2010 – also, curiously, coinciding almost exactly with the production of Woven in the Fabric. The stones have been returned to the safe keeping of surviving members of the Crossley family and now re-laid where they would have originally been: close to the south door of the Square Chapel.
|
|
