Ages and Stages: Exploring a
theatre archive to generate
creativity across generations
community impacts produced between Keele and
Staffordshire Universities and the New Victoria Theatre,
North Staffordshire
Jill Rezzano (New Vic Education)
Romy Cheeseman (Victoria Theatre Archive)
David Amigoni (Keele University)
Context
• Victoria Theatre Archive, North Staffordshire (‘New Vic’ from 1986)
• Uniqueness: records artistic output of Britain’s first purpose built
theatre in the round; but it is also a rich social history archive of
Peter Cheeseman’s vision of community involvement, a pioneer of
community theatre from the 1960s-1990s.
• Lives and experiences of local people: carefully and systematically
recorded as oral history (1000 recordings across eleven
documentary plays), presenting local history, from key industries
(coal, potteries, railways, steel), community campaigns and wartime
experiences.
• When the archive was located to Staffordshire University in 2001-2,
the drama department designed a module on documentary theatre
based on the archival resources and practices of research and
theatre making.
The Social Documentaries*
11 documentaries produced between 1964 and 1994, focused on local history and contemporary
events.
Based on interviews and documentary research conducted by actors, resident playwright and
director – often drawing from the narratives of older people.
Inspired by Cheeseman’s desire to ‘bridge the cultural gap which separates the artist from the
majority of the community’ and to produce a form of theatre ‘that springs from our contact with
this community’. Influenced by Brecht, German and American documentary theatre, and Joan
Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop.
* Images from the Victoria Theatre Archive by permission of Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire Theatre Trust Ltd
Stimulus resources from
the Victoria Theatre Archive
Transcript of interview with a
source for The Knotty (1966)
Former engine driver Harry Sharratt (c.) contributing to rehearsal
of documentary play The Knotty with (l.) actor Edward Clayton
and (r.) director Peter Cheeseman (1966)
How do we use the archive? (1)
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Ages and Stages, Keele University’s funded New Dynamics of Ageing project: to
explore how ageing has been constructed culturally through representations. On
stage, in documentaries and documentary sources about working lives, community
relationships etc.
To research and inspire the making of new work with the community using the
practices that were crucial to the theatre’s original mission, as recorded in the
archive
What does this mean in practice? Our approach in discovering the impact that this
body of work had on its community in the most informative and creative way by
using it to make a new documentary about the relationship of local people to their
theatre (example, interview practices, recruitment).
The stories we heard in our interviews reflected experiences as audience
members, volunteers, employees, sources for the original documentaries; and how
these experiences intersected with people’s own lives. This explored ageing and
attitudes to ageing, intergenerational relationships, as reflected in the recorded
testimony of interviewees which were used in the final scripting.
How do we use the archive? (2)
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This not only gave us a rich variety of perspectives for theatre making, it also
brought together the community, as was originally envisioned and archived in
ways that only theatre and its rituals can; by uses of drama structures, games,
repetitions, often based on methods and text from the original archive, created a
shared experience of the work which the audience shared together.
A founding principle of the theatre was continuity and in making this piece we
were enabling the community to find and tell its own story; the methods that we
used reflected this.
The work, ‘Our Age, Our Stage’ was performed at the New Vic Theatre in July
2012 before a capacity audience of 600, comprising delegates attending the
annual international conference of the British Society for Gerontology (Keele) and
interviewees and members of the community; the play then went on tour to local
schools, colleges and older people’s residential homes.
In May-June 2012, the New Vic Theatre and Keele co-produced an exhibition,
displayed in the theatre’s exhibition space, celebrating fifty years of the Vic
Theatre (1962-2012) based on the personal ‘archives’ of members of the
community, collected at a ‘bringing in day’ and supplemented by material from the
theatre archive.
‘Our Age, Our Stage’ , rehearsals
Jill Rezzano (closest to the camera) leading rehearsals of the
intergenerational drama work, ‘Our Age, Our Stage’ (Spring, 2012)
Contact and further details
• Jill Rezzano
Head of Education, New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire
jrezzano@newvictheatre.org.uk
• Romy Cheeseman
Honorary Archivisit, Victoria Theatre Collection, Staffordshire University
R.Cheeseman@staffs.ac.uk
• David Amigoni
Professor of Victorian Literature, Keele University, Co-I, ‘Ages and Stages’,
d.amigoni@keele.ac.uk
http://www.keele.ac.uk/agesandstages/