30 Years of Wimborne Community Theatre
08 May 2024
The story and atmosphere of a place have been at the heart of the many original performances developed by local group Wimborne Community Theatre (WCT) which celebrates thirty years of original site-specific theatre in East Dorset and surrounding areas. The group’s first production in 1991 of ‘Voyages’ set in the grounds of Kingston Lacy had a cast of nearly two hundred people of all ages. Since then, the group has produced over twenty-six plays in partnership with local groups, artists and heritage organisations, involving hundreds of participants and audiences of several thousands. WCT was set up by a group of East Dorset-based teachers and arts professionals to involve people in developing a kind of community theatre which would capture the voices and stories of people living in a particular place and the history we discover in our landscape. During the development of that first production, Gladys Dukes, former under-housemaid at Kingston Lacy in the 1920s, met school children to tell them about her time employed by the former owner, Ralph Bankes. She said, ‘Most of the children’s questions were about what sort of cars they had. They couldn’t believe me when I said they had none until 1920. And they couldn’t understand it when I told them we were on call 12 hours a day and we obeyed orders without question.’ Time travel is of course always possible through the magic of theatre. The story of Voyages begins in 1907 when Henrietta Bankes, her young children, Viola, Daphne and Ralph, and staff were preparing for King Edward VII’s visit to Kingston Lacy for tea, an event recalled in Pamela Watkins’ book A Kingston Lacy Childhood – Reminiscences of Viola Bankes. This historical event became the stimulus for the creation of a new legend about a healing stone passed down through the generations from the Duotriges (the Celtic tribe in Wessex) through the hands of local woman Alicia Payntere, in 1232 AD, to a servant in the last century A fictional journey was brought to life as the audience followed in the footsteps around the parkland, of Viola Bankes, privileged daughter, and her favourite nursery maid, Alice Maud Baker, That first production was one of the most complex (involving four local schools and taking place over a large area of landscape) and was made possible by collaborating with partners who were generous and spirited, and willing to try new approaches to how the public engage with historical landscapes. (In this case, the generous support was from Howard Webber, House Manager at Kingston Lacy, and Barbara Webber, Education Officer, at the National Trust, David Smith, Estate Warden, and Alan Wilson, Director of East Dorset Heritage Trust). Two further productions in the grounds of Kingston Lacy took place in subsequent years, and many other locations, including Holt Forest, Hambledon Hill, Wimborne town centre, Sturminster Mill, Wimborne’s Pump House, Knowlton Rings, and BytheWay, Colehill. Gathering stories from local people has always been the hallmark of WCT productions. In 2006, when we began developing The Lie of the Land, we invited local people to a meeting in Pamphill; they talked about the history of their families going back hundreds of years and about the sense of play and freedom they remembered as children, and the special atmosphere of the place. Some residents had mixed feelings about changes that had taken place when Ralph Bankes bequeathed his estate of farms and cottages to the National Trust in 1982, and the growing influx of visitors to walk in the Pamphill area. WCT’s performances are occasions when a new temporary community is formed, of actors and audience together in a special place, experiencing an atmosphere and energy, brought into being by the collaging of ideas about history, memory and story. One person said after watching Voyages, ‘I felt privileged to watch your performance. The use of the settings was marvellous, but most special for me was that it was an original work created by a community co-operating.’ As part of Wimborne’s commemoration of the First World War, WCT produced What They Left Behind in 2016, a play exploring the legacy of objects and memories and their effect on people in Wimborne during the First World War and how they connect with our lives today. Set in several town centre locations, the audience, divided into three groups, moved simultaneously to different locations: the Cornmarket, the Coles’ shop (in Priest’s House Museum), the museum garden, and Church House before finally returning to the Minster Green. Afterwards, audience members talked about the issues raised in the production. One person said, ‘The best part was to be make contact with the era, the First World War, brought vividly alive and made relevant to Wimborne.’ Another person said, ‘It took my emotions up, down and side to side. I’m not normally a great fan of ‘serious’ theatre but this has certainly changed my views.’