Ripon residents are being given the opportunity to play a part in an innovative community project being created for the city’s first theatre festival.
At the Workhouse Museum on Allhallowgate between 11am-1.30pm today, would-be actors, scriptwriters, set designers and props handlers are invited to find out more.
The aim is to recruit people who would like to have a role in Jubilee at the Workhouse — a living history project by Fell Foss Theatre Company, under the direction of Mark Cronfield.
Participants will develop scripts with the museum’s volunteer research group alongside local writers and specialist script writer Simon Kirk of Time will Tell theatre company, long-time collaborators with English Heritage.
The finished production will reflect on previous royal celebrations in Ripon, such as Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, which was marked a year later, when the clock tower at the junction of Palace Road, North Street and Princess Road, was officially opened in front of a huge crowd.
Performances will take place on the final afternoon of the festival (Sunday June 26) when a promenade of colourful characters, will interact with the audience, as they make their way through the museum’s historic spaces.
The theatrical venture is being made possible through a collaboration between Ripon City Festival Trust and Ripon Museum Trust.
Festival co-director Katie Scott, said:
“This is our inaugural year and we are so pleased that we have been able to include this project in our plans.
“The festival aims to celebrate the unique city of Ripon through live performance and our ambition has always been to programme original and site-specific work alongside visiting companies. This is a creative and thought-provoking way to begin”.
Dr Laura Allan, community curator at Ripon Museum Trust, added:
“The historic spaces of the Workhouse Museum will be transformed into a stage with volunteers and the local community at the centre of the story. We are asking the local community to give it a go and get involved with this special jubilee performance”.
The festival runs from June 23 to 26, with a wide variety of performances from street theatre and puppetry to dance, storytelling and open-air Shakespeare
Tickets go on sale next month.
