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Review From The Community Magazine, July 2006
THE best community plays tap into a deeper level than mere entertainment. They reach into our sense of who we are and where we come from. Through the process of the play - if it is really working well - we discover something about our place, our history, maybe our part in the bigger picture. This area is particularly fortunate in the strength of its community theatre scene -Dorchester, South Petherton, Shaftesbury... Wimborne. The plays, devised by the local participants, usually in collaboration with an experienced community theatre writer, are site-specific - they are created for a location, to explore the history, the legends and myths, culture, and lives of the people.This year marks the 15th year of site-specific theatre in East Dorset by Wimborne Community Theatre, which has taken amateur actors and musicians, working with arts professionals Gill and Tony Horitz, into familiar and unfamiliar locations around the district, including the woods at Holt Common, Wimborne Minster, and Allendale House. The 2006 production was an exploration of Pamphill, with its famous woodland-edged common on the edge of the Kingston Lacy estate.
Earlier this year, WCT invited Pamphill residents to a meeting in the pretty old village school. People talked about Pamphill now and 30 or more years ago. They described the long history of their families who have lived in the area for centuries, and recalled the sense of freedom they felt as children playing in the woods and around the common.
They also talked about the changes since the death of the last "squire," Ralph Bankes, who bequeathed the estate to the National Trust in 1982. The theme of the play evolved from these discussions, focusing on the idea of the land - who owns it, whose responsibility it is, how it is to be managed for the benefit of local people and for the enjoyment of the many people who now visit Pamphill and Kingston Lacy. All these threads were drawn together in The Lie of the Land, which opened on the grass in front of the school, where the storyteller (Tony Horitz) gathered everyone together. The story was told at locations around the common, by people of all generations, from old Doris and Joan (Kenlis Horitz and Barbara Thomas) to the impish youngsters (Alice Courtauld, Lily Courtauld, Elly Dowdle, Yolanda Harding, Kathryn Richmond and Adam Small). Much of the continuity and atmosphere was provided by the musicians, Peter Aston and James Emberley. It began in the present with bored children and teenagers hanging around a burned out car. Then it moved backwards dipping into the pre-historic past, with its seasonal rituals, through the dark ages of serfdom and starvation, to the first Queen Elizabeth. Then forward again to the 20th century, with memories of an idyllic rural childhood, the controversy of the pylon which dominates the common, and the death of the squire. The final scene moved from the eerily dramatic architecture of the pylon down into the wood, lit by candles in jars swinging from the trees, magical, mysterious and slightly spooky. Here three women (Chris Dowdle, Barbara Hart and Tuppy Hill) remembered childhood games in their little house in the woods. And with the light fading fast, a little tragedy from Victorian times played out around them, as Elsie, a housemaid (Katherine Courtauld), hid with her baby from the squire's men who will find her at dawn. Gradually other ghosts of Pamphill past come through the woods, evoking the spirit of this beautiful, special place.
Fanny Charles
Reproduced with the kind permission of The Community Magazine.
The Lie of the Land Flier/Poster
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