In the Beginning
As we moved into the 100th anniversary of The First World War we felt it appropriate to mark it with an exhibition to reflect on how we view life during the decade 1910-1919 from the perspective of where we are in this decade 2010-2019. Shadow of War and Peace asks how do we connect to the people who lived through the second decade of the 20th century. How do we view them today, and can we get closer to understanding them and what motivated them. Is this trend to look back at the first world war with cynicism blinded by our gift of hindsight? Do have the right to judge, not only against our own morality (Britain has been permanently at war somewhere in the world for the hundred years since) but by how much do we really know. How much of what we think is real is imagined, or what we see is illusion, or what we think we know is misinformed?
The first exhibit was at St Barnabas School as part of the national heritage week on 12th -14th September. Now that have trialled the exhibit we will arrange further outings. It will of course change according to what each community and visitor puts into it. Visitors will be invited to interact with the exhibits in a number of ways, including adding to unfinished works, creating new works, giving the artwork a titles. Contemporary visitors will encounter characters in role who will have traveled from as far away as a hundred years. Looking back is far is like looking into the shadows, but we hope visitors will have their preconceptions challenged. Empathy and implicating the audience in the drama has always been at the heart of community plays and we hope the same can be said of The Shadow of War and Peace. This will be the first exhibition in The Empty Gallery; our goal is that it succeeds to the extent that it won't be the last.
The first exhibit was at St Barnabas School as part of the national heritage week on 12th -14th September. Now that have trialled the exhibit we will arrange further outings. It will of course change according to what each community and visitor puts into it. Visitors will be invited to interact with the exhibits in a number of ways, including adding to unfinished works, creating new works, giving the artwork a titles. Contemporary visitors will encounter characters in role who will have traveled from as far away as a hundred years. Looking back is far is like looking into the shadows, but we hope visitors will have their preconceptions challenged. Empathy and implicating the audience in the drama has always been at the heart of community plays and we hope the same can be said of The Shadow of War and Peace. This will be the first exhibition in The Empty Gallery; our goal is that it succeeds to the extent that it won't be the last.
How it Began
Much has come out of the 2009 production of The Vanishing Elephant - Camden Road the Musical, not least CREATE (Camden Road Education, Arts and Theatre Enterprises) a voluntary group that, five years on, is still creating, promoting and supporting community arts activities and sustaining a 60 strong Choir, an annual lantern parade, Nose in a Book Nights, an improvisation group and an educational programme called The Imaginarium.
Jon Oram, had resisted doing a play in his hometown for 29 years; but then, to mark 30 years of Colway and Claque Theatre, he was persuaded to do a play for Camden Road, in Tunbridge Wells. Camden road was a somewhat neglected, though very individual street of largely small independent shops, restaurants, take-ways, and pubs. To prepare for the play two things were essential, knowing more about the place, and getting the whole community behind it; a heritage project called Camden Road in Camera gave us the means to do both.
Camden Road in Camera set out to present an outside exhibition along Camden Road and neighbouring streets using old local family photographs. The photographs, over 500, gathered from family albums, local collectors and historians, showed faces and places in and around Camden Road over the past hundred years and more. 50 photographs were selected and displayed in large poster formats on shop fronts, walls, in windows and gardens. The photographs were sited where they were taken. Seeing the photograph, you felt something in common with the people in the photograph, simply because you both had experienced standing in that place; it made you feel connected. The photographs were further personalised because they all came with stories; they in turn became the subjects of The Vanishing Elephant. The play was set in the years leading up to and through the First World War. Every character in the play was based on a real person. The effect on the cast was especially profound, representing someone made them instantly feel a huge responsibility and developed in them deeper sense of empathy.
Jon Oram, had resisted doing a play in his hometown for 29 years; but then, to mark 30 years of Colway and Claque Theatre, he was persuaded to do a play for Camden Road, in Tunbridge Wells. Camden road was a somewhat neglected, though very individual street of largely small independent shops, restaurants, take-ways, and pubs. To prepare for the play two things were essential, knowing more about the place, and getting the whole community behind it; a heritage project called Camden Road in Camera gave us the means to do both.
Camden Road in Camera set out to present an outside exhibition along Camden Road and neighbouring streets using old local family photographs. The photographs, over 500, gathered from family albums, local collectors and historians, showed faces and places in and around Camden Road over the past hundred years and more. 50 photographs were selected and displayed in large poster formats on shop fronts, walls, in windows and gardens. The photographs were sited where they were taken. Seeing the photograph, you felt something in common with the people in the photograph, simply because you both had experienced standing in that place; it made you feel connected. The photographs were further personalised because they all came with stories; they in turn became the subjects of The Vanishing Elephant. The play was set in the years leading up to and through the First World War. Every character in the play was based on a real person. The effect on the cast was especially profound, representing someone made them instantly feel a huge responsibility and developed in them deeper sense of empathy.
