The New Vic Theatre in North Staffordshire has a proud tradition of politically and socially engaged drama that reflects the lives of the communities it serves. Under its founding artistic director, Peter Cheeseman, the theatre has created a series of original productions which both documented and dramatised the industrial struggles of the area. The Knotty, their first documentary theatre production, traced the lives of railwaymen on line which served the 6 towns of the Potteries. Later documentary plays, employing what became known as the Stoke Method, sent the cast out into the community to interview people directly involved in the events being portrayed. I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire recorded the lives of the Roses of Swynnerton working in a local munitions factory in WW2. The Fight for Shelton Bar, perhaps the most innovative documentary, traced the battle between British Steel and the workers over the future of a steel works in the city as it happened, with updates from the unions committee at the end of each show. The struggles over the mining industry in the area were portrayed in Nice Girls, the account of 4 women occupying Trentham Colliery a decade after the strike of 1984. More recently, Maxine Peake’s Queens of the Coal Age dramatised similar events in the Lancashire coalfield.

The Vic’s current production is a stage version of the hit 1994 film, Brassed Off. A decade after the strike, the miners of Grimley face an existential threat to the their livelihoods and their community as the Coal Board offer them £23000 each to accept closure now, or take a lesser payout later on. At the same time, the colliery band are on the verge of their greatest achievement ever, with the chance to play in the National Finals at the Royal Albert Hall. But can you have a colliery band without a colliery? The play traces the effects of community divisions and poverty on real people in an environment that they can neither predict nor control, as well as the solidarity and identity that music and community can generate.

Director Conrad Nelson expertly blends the cast with the amazing TCTC brass band and community actors. The cast is so strong that its is impossible to pick one out for particular praise. I remember The Daily Mail describing the film as (something along the lines of) over-sentimental, anti-Thatcher propaganda – now that’s the sort of thing that gets an audience on their feet round here.

Staffs Uni English graduate, Ed Hilton, is launching his play, Pit Boy to Prime Minister, at the New Vic Theatre on May 25^th.

The play follows the life of Staffordshire miner, Joseph Cook, who left Silverdale for Australia in 1885. After working in mining there, he became involved in Labour Party politics and progressed from the New South Wales State Assembly to become Prime Minister of Australia in 1913.

Ed is seen here with Malcolm Henson from North Staffordshire Press and the script.

Ed graduated from Staffs in 2017 before going on to do a Masters at Keele. Once his play has been realised on the stage, Ed intends to go in to teaching where his background in both English and Creative Writing will help to enthuse a whole new generation of literature scholars.

Our warmest congratulations go to Ed.

English graduate, Jack Hawkins, recently met Bret Easton Ellis at the book tour to promote his new novel, White. Jack got his taste for BEE reading American Psycho on the Contemporary American Fiction module.

Jack writes: “I’m enjoying White. It’s part memoir, part diatribe against political correctness, safe spaces and the ‘cult of likability’. His perspectives on film and writing American Psycho are interesting, too. A lot of it has been taken from his Patreon podcast.

There’s a great article in The Guardian about the publication of the recent book. It’s interesteing to read about the circles Ellis was moving in during the 1980s. He knew Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City), Tama Janowitz (Slaves of New York) and Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn) – all great writers and books.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/28/bret-easton-ellis-millennials-white-interview

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Students from Stoke on Trent high schools visited the university to celebrate their entries to the Sentinel Big Read competition. All year 9 pupils in the city received a book of cartoons inspired by childhood reads, and the Big Read competition continued the theme.

Pupils visiting the uni for the presentation of prizes took part in Masterclasses from Comic Arts and Creative Writing. Thanks to 2nd year students Jordan and Romisa who helped the pupils create characters for new stories.

Congratulations to everyone who took part, was nominated or won a prize.

Read more here https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/meet-prize-winning-comic-strip-2745293

Students on the Victorian literature module visited the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton to learn about Dickensian working conditions and the pottery industry of Arnold Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns. A guided tour from one of the museum’s experts helped contextualise child labour, working conditions, labour organisation and how pottery workers were paid, along with many other things. This picture shows students outside one of the distinctive bottle ovens which feature across Stoke’s cityscape.

Northern Broadside’s Much Ado  About Nothing, which we saw last week as part of the Shakespeare module, transplants the action to WW2 England. Beatrice becomes a land girl, in wellies and sensible tweed, while Benedick is in the uniform of the RAF. Robin Simpson and Isobel Middleton in these roles absolutely steal the show, but they are wonderfully supported by a cast which brings the play to life. Alongside the verbal jousting between the will-they-won’t they central characters which characterises Shakepeare’s romantic comedies, there are delightful interludes of big band jazz, barber shop quartets, dancing and camp comedy.

The Guardian, in a 4 star (out of 5) review, describes how the company make ‘dynamic use of the in-the-round space and, for all the Dad’s Army daftness, venture boldly into the play’s darker corners of treachery and deceit’.

Listen! And I will tell you of the best of exhibitions that I saw in London yesterday…

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War at the British Library. This exhibition will end on February 19^th, so I urge you to go along as soon as you can – its like will never be seen again in your lifetime. Full price tickets are £16, concessions available, booking in advance of your trip is essential.  For bookings, visit: https://www.bl.uk/events/anglo-saxon-kingdoms

Allow around 2 hours to see this exhibition – its scope and breadth are unspeakable. This is the ‘greatest hits’ of the literary life of the British Isles between the withdrawal of Rome (early 400 CE) and the Battle of Hastings (1066). The hefty 424-page exhibition catalogue (pictured here, £40 hardback) has been essential in helping me to digest the experience as it was almost too overwhelming to absorb the detail of its 180 objects.

As you may expect, the bulk of the books assembled here are Latin texts created during Britain’s early ecclesiastical culture; these were copied by scribes on vellum and richly illustrated. Preservation rates are strong in these elements of the collection as these sacred texts were cared for and then often hidden in order that they survived the Reformation. These texts are numerous, but were written for the Church, in the language of the Church. Even if they had been permitted to see one of these books, the average inhabitant of these islands would not have understood them.

For me, the real high points of the exhibition were the displays of texts written in Anglo-Saxon English (or ‘Old English’) of which there are so very few in existence: not many were ever created as Anglo-Saxons were largely illiterate, yet this was the language of the ‘common folk’ of these lands, predominantly consisting of, or descending from, Scandinavian and Germanic people who had variously invaded and settled here. As the subject-matter of these books was often more secular in nature, this tiny portion of literature has not always benefitted from the protection of the Church in the way that their contemporary Latin books have. We owe a great debt of gratitude to figures such as Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), an antiquarian bibliophile who collected so many texts and documents in his personal library.  The best-laid plans, however, go oft astray – a fire destroyed and degraded many of his books in 1731, at which point his collection was already highly regarded as a national treasure.

One of the texts which was partially destroyed by this fire is known as Beowulf (named retrospectively for its protagonist hero as no title is given). The best estimation is that this text was written down around 1000 CE, but it contains a tale handed down for many generations before that via the oral tradition. This is the first known ‘story’ from the British Isles: it recounts a tale of Danes and Swedes combining forces to do battle with monsters and dragons. This type of story, brought to Britain by an immigrant culture, came to form the modern-day Fantasy genre via the work of Anglo-Saxon scholar, J.R.R. Tolkien in the mid-20th century.

The exhibition sees the return to these shores of some texts which have not been seen in Britain for quite some centuries, such as the Codex Amiatinus – a gigantic illustrated bible which takes several people and a wheelbarrow to shift (Northumbria, created before 716 CE). Also experiencing a homecoming is the Vercelli Book (c. 975 CE) which contains several of the most important and profound poems in Anglo-Saxon and has been housed in Italy since the early 1100’s: the supposition is that a Pilgrim took it from Britain to Rome and never brought it back – to be fair, it does look heavy…

It’s not just religion and secular poetry on display here: the early British understanding of astronomy and medicinal remedies is on offer here too, along with maps, letters, accounts of Far-Eastern exploration and a collection of early music. These scores are accompanied by a set of headphones so that you can hear recordings of the music, which pre-dates the development of the major-minor key systems – chillingly beautiful in its modal inflections.

Fittingly, the through-flow of the exhibition terminates with The Great Domesday Book (c. 1086) which marked the Norman conquest’s full comprehension of the territory they had colonised following the Battle of Hastings. This account of every house, pig and slave in Britain sits beneath a short but helpful video by leading historians who give the circumstances of the book’s creation.

If all this isn’t enough, the exhibition is liberally studded with Anglo-Saxon ‘bling’ which adorns the walls as you move from one set of book display-cases to the next. Precious treasure from the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the Staffordshire Hoard is displayed for context – the Potteries Museum of Stoke-on-Trent is given a thankful acknowledgement as a lender to the exhibition.

The British Library has been planning this exhibition for around 7 years – it has taken this long to carefully coordinate and curate this event which has gathered together precious British books from as far afield as New York and Florence, as well as the prestigious UK collections such as are housed in the University libraries of Oxford and Cambridge – and, of course, the British Library’s own Treasures Collection. The international effort behind this exhibition corresponds with a genuine sense of the pan-European character of early Britain, and serves as a timely reminder of the fruitful nature of cultural exchange and integration – be that though the spread of Christianity from Ireland and Rome, or the multiple immigrant cultures from Northern Europe. The exhibition shows that the deeper we look into Britain’s past, the more it seems to be composed of a fascinating collage of many cultural voices.

If you like books – you really must go. If you don’t like books…. well, you really must go and see a special Doctor about that.

Photos: the front-cover of the exhibition catalogue, and its double-page spread of the richly illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels (Northumbria, c.700 CE).

Melanie Ebdon.

I recently had the pleasant though difficult task of judging the Heritage category at the Three Counties Open Art Exhibition administered by Keele University at the Burslem School of Art.  Heritage, of course, has many aspects, encompassing the built environment and remnants of the industrial past as well as less tangible manifestations.

The Exhibition features many such – from a museum interior, to images of Stoke-on-Trent’s steelworks and potbanks (Francis Proudlove), to the cultural heritage of football and pubs (Geoffrey Wynne), with their undeniable emotional resonance.  Any one of these would have been a worthy winner.  Upstairs in the Arthur Berry room is a concurrent exhibition, ‘Common Ground’ by Ian Mood, inspired by the artist’s close family history as well as Stoke-on-Trent’s urban landscape.The work chosen for the Heritage prize, after no small degree of agonising and with the help of sponsor Ford Green Hall’s Neil Dawson, was a small collage in the upstairs gallery, Rising.   Created by Stoke-on-Trent’s Sheena Kelly, it is a stitched collage in ‘mixed media’ depicting a smoking kiln, factory building and canal.  Fragments of text: ‘we love locally’, ‘in small batches’ etc. also suggest pottery production – a particularly artisanal industry.  The slightly naïve execution references Stoke-on-Trent’s industrial heritage, but also comprises a witty commentary on the current state of the city along with the global problem of waste production and disposal.

The term ‘mixed-media’ can hide a multitude – Rising is made of refuse, bits of old packaging.  One connotation is the waste of the pottery industry and its workers.  But there is a positive spin – not least in the title: just as rubbish is recycled into art, the industrial heritage buildings depicted here are being turned to new use.  Middleport Pottery, still successfully producing Burleigh ware, is currently hosting the Weeping Windows ceramic poppies installation.  This is expected to generate a significant influx of cultural tourism in Burslem and beyond.  Empty shops are hosting pop-up art events and all over the city heritage buildings are being turned to new uses.

Enquiry to a delighted Sheena revealed that much of the material was provided by a packet of Kettle chips.  In the service of research I purchased two packets myself – Sea Salt & Crushed Black Peppercorns and ‘Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar of Modena’. These are marketed as proper posh crisps: ‘hand cooked’, ‘absolutely nothing artificial’ – their credentials to authenticity and the artisanal are loudly trumpeted.

A quick visit to the kettlebrand.com website reveals reassuring information on the company’s sustainability practices: ‘Sustainability comes first’, we are told; ‘our natural promise extends beyond the ingredients’.  The tone is mildly patronising, puns aside: ‘We’re chipping in to live in harmony with the environment around us . . . .   The truth is, we all need to care for the planet.‘  However, they sorrowfully admit, it has not yet been possible to find an environmentally friendly form of packaging which would protect ‘the quality and freshiness of our product all the way to your favorite chip bowl’.  Hence, at the moment, each packet bears what we might dub the mark of McCain, also incorporated in Rising: ‘Sorry, this package is not currently recyclable.’  I suspect the truth of the matter is that they haven’t been able to find an environmentally friendly form of packaging that would not impact negatively on the bottom line.  Kettle is not the only brand to feature in Rising: a bird (dove?) flying upwards across the middle ground is made of a San Pellegrino ‘Eco-lid’ – 100% recyclable, apparently, but pretty much redundant and serving rather to confirm the pretensions of this pricey Euro-pop.  (Parent company Nestle scandalously promoted powdered baby milk in developing countries back in the day.)

Kettle chips, in common with most successful brands, has been subject in its short history to multiple merger and takeovers.  At one point it shared a stable (Kellog’s) with its polar opposite in crisp terms, the reformed and apparently pre-masticated aberration of a potato snack that is Pringles – “once you pop you can’t stop”.  It is currently owned by Campbells Soup, whose flagship product spawned perhaps the most iconic food art of the twentieth century – Andy Warhol’s pop-art Campbell Soup Cans (1962, MoMA).Ironically, given the mass-produced subject and advertising by which Warhol was inspired, the medium here is painted canvas – a separate painting for each of the 32 flavors.

Rising, then, is part of a now rather august tradition commenting on consumer culture.  We are all aware of the gaps between rhetoric and reality generated by organisations in their marketing and PR.  Kelly has cleverly recycled this rubbish while speaking gently of the Potteries industrial past and its pain and looking optimistically to the future.

The New Vic’s recent show, Table, was first staged at the National in 2013 and had its regional debut here.

It was one of the best evenings of theatre I have been privileged to be part of in some time. The table of the title is made by a carpenter in Lichfield at the end of the 19^th century to mark his marriage. The table is then a mute centre-piece and witness to the joys, clashes and changing social and moral shifts in the family over the next 6 generations. There is humour and lust, as well as crisis and despair in Tanya Ronder’s script. The enduring message is that we are shaped and fight against both our family and the invisible social forces which seek to regulate our behaviour – moral codes, religion, the previous generation. The narrative is not linear, and the play is carefully choreographed to slip backwards and forwards in time and between Lichfield, London, Herefordshire and Africa.

The cast were excellent and the energy they put in to their performances deserved a fuller house. It is disappointing that more interesting and challenging theatre at the Vic does not receive the attention it deserves from an otherwise loyal audience.

In contrast to the intense seriousness of Table is the current production, Astley’s Astounding Adventures. Staged to mark the 250^th anniversary of the founder of the modern circus, Newcastle Under Lyme’s own Philip Astley (he was the originator of the 42 foot ring with clowns, jugglers, acrobats and trick riders we know today), it is part of a programme of events and circuses around the area (my favourite so far was Circolumbia – South American hip-hop circus!).

This production is a joyous celebration of a working-class lad’s rise through the military ranks to become a circus impresario. The entertainment moves at a breathless pace. The central characters live, love and perform amazing circus stunts while maintaining excellent North Staffs accents (I’ve lived here 25 years and I still can’t do it) – sometimes while upside down. There is juggling, acrobatics, trapeze and that dangling from curtains thing. The circus in this play is genuine circus, not the faint impression of circus that theatre usually resorts to. I won’t tell you how they convey the horses and trick riding – you’ll have to find out for yourselves. The whole thing is accompanied by a little orchestra.

Astley’s is not exactly Beckett, but it is a great night out.

So, two contrasting but equally rewarding evenings.

The autumn season at the Vic has many promising productions, which we will be organising trips to.

images courtesy of the New Vic theatre