New Vic productions celebrating Staffordshire through the years!
New Vic productions celebrating Staffordshire through the years!
1st May 2020
Today is Staffordshire Day, and here at the New Vic we are enormously proud to call this wonderful county ‘home’. In fact, recently we’ve been getting all nostalgic about our many productions through the years which have shone a spotlight on Staffordshire. How many do you remember?
Community has been at the heart of the New Vic from the start. Local experiences have been informing the New Vic’s work since the inception of the ‘old Vic’ in Hartshill, creating a sense of solidarity between the theatre and the people of Staffordshire. The ‘Vic company’ first earned an international reputation under the leadership of founding director, the late Peter Cheeseman, thanks to its radical verbatim, musical documentary productions including The Jolly Potters (1964), Fight for Shelton Bar! (1974), Miner Dig the Coal (1981) and Nice Girls (1993), which all focused on real-life experiences of the North Staffordshire community and its historic industries of ceramics, coal and steel. Fight for Shelton Bar! was actually staged while workers battled British Steel’s plan to close a nearby factory employing thousands of local people.
It seems fitting that in 1983, it was the Hem Heath miners who made the first donation to the appeal for the ‘new’ Vic building – the one we continue to perform and produce shows in today – followed by over 50 other local companies.
The first production in the current building on Etruria Road was the Potteries-inspired St George of Scotia Road, by local writer Arthur Berry.
To this day, we design, build, direct and present genuinely homegrown productions ‘made in Staffordshire’, and often the stories we tell continue to be directly inspired by the area too.
Now, looking back over the past decade, there are so many memorable New Vic productions featuring Staffordshire that spring to mind.
In celebration of the New Vic’s 25th anniversary celebrations, we commissioned writer Alecky Blythe to create a new documentary, which became Where Have I Been All My Life? (2012). Directed by Theresa Heskins, this production examined the dreams of real North Staffordshire people – from the charity shop worker, to the young mum, to the boy from Bentilee – using word-for-word accounts of them preparing for their ‘15 minutes of fame’.
Following from that, the legendary I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire! took to the stage in 2014, written with the help of the Roses of Swynnerton – the brave women who worked at a Staffordshire munitions factory in WW2.
Local writer and actor Deborah McAndrew brought the play Ugly Duck – about a Burslem man who becomes an artist’s life model – to the New Vic, alongside director Conrad Nelson, in 2014.
Arguably one of our most exciting explorations of the area through theatre came with the Staffordshire Hoard Festival in the summer of 2015. Theatre-makers from all over the country worked alongside us and local museums to find out about the fascinating history of the Hoard and create pieces inspired by it. New Vic Artistic Director Theresa Heskins created a verbatim production about its significance in Staffordshire for the festival – collecting hours of audio clips with metal detectorists, re-enactors and weapons makers, as well as the man who found the Hoard, the archaeologists who were first on the scene, and the general public.
Then, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Stoke-on-Trent literary legend Arnold Bennett, in 2017 we welcomed Deborah McAndrew and Conrad Nelson back to collaborate on Bennett’s most beloved novel, Anna of the Five Towns. Anna of the Five Towns was an absorbing love story of a spirited young woman set against the backdrop of life in the Potteries.
In a regional premiere, after first being produced at the National Theatre, the New Vic presented Tanya Ronder’s Table (2018), the story of six generations, set around the same handcrafted dining table, which began its life at the Best family’s home in Lichfield.
During the 250th anniversary celebrations of the birth of the modern circus in 2018, the New Vic presented one of its most ambitious productions ever. Astley’s Astounding Adventures told the story of Philip Astley, starting from his humble beginnings in Newcastle-under-Lyme, to his status as an international impresario who invented circus as we know it, and conquered the world.
Most recently, earlier this year we welcomed Talke Pits-born director Ruth Carney to direct Jim Cartwright’s Two, a tragi-comedy which she adapted to be set in a Potteries pub. Burslem-based Titanic Brewery even helped us to create a real working bar onstage for the production!
Most exciting of all, Marvellous, the incredible true story of local hero Neil Baldwin – based on the book by Malcolm Clarke and Neil Baldwin, adapted and directed for the stage by Theresa Heskins – will be staged at the New Vic this autumn. In February we undertook some great R&D (research and development) for the project, and we can’t wait to bring this heart-warming local story to life on the stage. We think it’s something our audiences will really love.
Are there any local productions we’ve missed off this article? Let us know. We’d love for you to share your memories with us on social media to celebrate Staffordshire Day.