This project was initiated by Oxfordshire Touring Theatre Company, whose aim was to bring together and empower communities by discovering and releasing their creative energies. The village school was the base for meetings to develop and shape ideas and to research and rehearse. The development of the railway through Hooky became the focal point.
People worked in small groups to generate scripts based on news and events. I remember reading some articles from old editions of the Banbury Guardian and histories of the development of the railway. One fact which emerged was that a request to stop the daily long-distance Cardiff to Newcastle train at Hook Norton for a passenger to get off or on required two weeks’ notice to be given. I wrote a scene to make that point but created a scenario in which the station master hatched a plan to thwart the visit of his mother-in-law. The names and domestic arrangements were all fictitious.
I think this mixture of fact and fiction was true of most scenes. My wife, Min, a teacher at the school, wrote the scene based on the reception of evacuee children from London in the Second World War. It is true that evacuees arrived in Hook Norton but the particular histories of the individuals were fictitious. Both Min and my daughter, Anna, then aged 7, acted in that scene, which was undoubtedly stolen by Olwen Goodwin’s bossy performance.
The scenes were shaped into a processional drama in which the audience walked the line of the track along the nature reserve to the tunnel. The audience was led from the Youth Club, adjacent to the village library. The “guide” was a professional actor from OTTC, Neil Gore, who provided the link between the scenes. There were, as I recall, two late afternoon/early evening performances in July.
I had two acting parts: the station master in the opening scene, and the doctor who attended the scene of the murder which took place in The Bell (set under the Swerford Road bridge). During research, it was discovered that at the building of the Hook Norton section of the railway – the embankments, cuttings, piers, bridges and tunnel – five thousand navvies and camp followers were encamped in Hooky. One can imagine the atmosphere. Saturday night must have been fun!
Each scene was concluded by a verse from a traditional folk song. Min had a wonderful singing voice and was chosen to sing the last verse from inside the tunnel. A machine pumped out smoke. Together, the smoke and the echo of Min’s voice rising high into the dusky evening created a moving, atmospheric finale.
© Pat Groome
25 February 2017
