News
Cass Tercentenary Year Launched
The 300th anniversary year of Sir John Cass’s FoundationPrimary School got off to a spectacular start between snowfalls in January. Sir John Cass, his wife Elizabeth and their coachman Henry (played by Mark Huckett, Vic Bryson and Will Birch respectively) arrived by horse-drawn carriage and spent the day on a tour of inspection. The 21st-century head teacher took on the role of his 1710 predecessor as his school was subjected to an early eighteenth century equivalent of OFSTED. The children knitted, sewed, sketched, showed off their deportment, conversed in French, applied for apprenticeships and ended by treating the visitors to a musical entertainment and showing off their newly-acquired uniforms. We will be working with them through the year on projects from maypole dancing to beginning an oral history project.
Continuing City: Arts in Education at All Hallows by the Tower
All Hallows by the Tower has been part of the City of London landscape for thirteen hundred years, and people have lived and worked there for far longer. Clio’s Company and the community of All Hallows have been working together since 2001 on a series of arts in education projects, some also involving the Company of Watermen and Lightermen. In the current series, we use a combination of known historical and imagined but possible events to stage a series of site-specific plays and complementary workshops for primary school children to bring to life the rich and complex history of the church in its context.
In November 2009 London primary school children took part in “Ultima Britannia”, a project focusing on London 2,000 years ago when it was a raw, new, dangerous town on the edge of the known world and All Hallows was a building site where a Roman villa was being constructed.
March 2010 saw another successful production of "Baited Hooks" an interactive theatre project and workshop set in Tudor London. Children became London apprentices of 1533, and were caught up in the controversies and dangers of the months when Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn was only a rumour.
The Fields Beneath
Summer 2009 saw another successful run of our outdoor production in Greenwich Park. Set in 1896, The Fields Beneath involves its young participants in the tensions between Londoners’ sometimes conflicting needs for open spaces and for new housing, all in the months leading up to Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Children take on the roles of a Victorian school group on a nature walk, and are asked to make their own judgement about some topical questions.
Hackney Tudors
Local children are building up their own picture of their home town as it was five centuries ago in this unique project, which uses Hackney’s buildings and streets, new research and participants’ imaginations to produce high quality drama and artwork. This year the children made connections between the village of Hackney and its neighbours, walking a Tudor road in Essex to Ingatestone Hall to make discoveries about life and work in a great house. They used their discoveries to devise their own piece of musical theatre, which was staged in the historic rooms of Sutton House.
Next year we plan to involve more schools in this project, and to publish a series of booklets that will support the learning of other London children.
Children’s work from previous stages of the project can be seen on www.hackneytudors.co.uk, and we will be adding this year’s work and reports soon.
Smash hits revived
A new venture this year is an occasional series of readings of plays that were hugely popular in past centuries, but which are now largely forgotten. “The Merry Devil of Edmonton” was a staple of the London stage for a hundred years; it proved to be fast-paced comedy featuring a sly heroine, shrewd rustics, unlikely disguises, assorted corrupt clerics and an inn keeper with a strong resemblance to Falstaff.
In October there will be semi-staged reading at Sutton House of Aphra Behn’s “The Emperor of the Moon”, in its time so popular that it was regularly revived ion Friday 13th and to boost flagging audience figures, and only falling out of favour when its author, the first professional woman playwright, began to be felt to be too disreputable for Victorian theatre goers.
For further information on any of these projects and events, please contact us by email.