This meeting brings together local historians, and writer and director Ingrid Jones of the Bedminster based acta Community Theatre. We will discuss the process from the seed of an idea, to research, devising, scripting, rehearsal and performance. We will also consider the difficulties of doing 'history from below', researching periods beyond living memory, where to find the voices of people and how to create a script and theatre piece from this. This will be an open discussion with plenty of […]
Ingrid Jones has worked for acta community theatre for the past thirty years. Over this time she has devised and directed numerous community plays many of which had a local history focus, including: 1963, Gas Girls, Clippies, Ladies Mile, Sailor’s Tales, Lost not Forgotten and more recently Welcome to the Hippodrome. In this presentation Ingrid will be talking about acta’s method of digging out local stories and the process of developing them into theatre performances. Time will be given for any […]
In a tribute to the community theatre group acta based in Gladstone Street, Bedminster and their 2014 play Gas Girls, Christine Townsend examines the exposure of a piece of lost Bristolian history that has international repercussions to this day. Acta's research helped to publicise the top secret production of mustard gas in Avonmouth factories during World War 1, and the lives of the women who carried out this dangerous work. Come and hear about the brilliant research conducted by Acta and the […]
