Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre is to stage a five-week festival of new work inspired by the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard.
The hoard is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found anywhere in the world. Terry Herbert made the discovery with a metal detector in a field near Lichfield, Staffordshire in 2009.
The New Vic put in a successful bid for £198,000 from Arts Council England’s exceptional award scheme to produce the festival which will feature 19 new commissions and 22 plays.
For 18 months, the New Vic was an affiliate company of the National Theatre Studio which helped to develop the festival.
New Vic artistic director Theresa Heskins said, “I’d been adamant that I wanted to do something around the Staffordshire Hoard ever since its discovery. Staffordshire is a county with a real vision for economic growth but there’s no doubt that alongside our city, Stoke-on-Trent, it’s faced some tough challenges.
“So when, in the summer of 2009, a man who was down on his luck and out of work came across the hoard, it felt like winning the lottery. Suddenly Staffordshire was splashed all over the world news.
“The National Theatre Studio affiliation included six development weeks and the idea grew from a play about the Staffordshire Hoard into a festival.
“Two years and hundreds of hours later, I’m confident I have a new story which works artistically and also includes a scoop or two around the discovery of the hoard and the latest thinking on what the hoard actually is. We also have 21 other plays from an assortment of the most exciting voices in UK theatre—established voices, local voices, new voices.”
Laura Collier, head of the National Theatre Studio, added, “for the New Vic to have brought together such a talented group of artists, with such diverse approaches to creating live performance, is hugely exciting. And for those artists to be presenting work so perfectly tailored to the theatre and its local community is a special joy.”
On the New Vic’s main stage, there will be two double bills. Theresa Heskins will be writer and director of Unearthed, based on 80 hours of original interviews she conducted from 2013 to 2015. It pieces together the story of the hoard direct from the mouths of those who found it and those who have been trying to understand it ever since. It includes the words of Terry Herbert who found the hoard: Kevin Colls, one of the first archaeologists on the scene, historian Michael Wood and the conservationists and experts who try to unravel its meanings.
Unearthed will be teamed with The Gift by Jemma Kennedy, “an epic of romance and adventure”.
The second double bill comprises The Throne by Staffordshire-born playwright Frazer Flintham and Larksong by Chris Bush, winner of the 2014 Perfect Pitch Award.
The ensemble cast for the festival is Suzanne Ahmet, Romayne Andrews, Jemma Churchill, Crystal Condie, David Crellin, Elizabeth Elvin, Paula James, David Kirkbride, Gwawr Loader, Perry Moore, Adam Morris, David Nellist, Bryonie Pritchard, David Semark and Johnson Willis.
In the Studio there will be two new plays, Tranklements, a “funny, inspiring solo performance about underdogs and Midlands spirit” written and performed by Caroline Horton; and a “sideways look at the metal that cannot be destroyed”, Gold, written and performed by Birmingham-based Francesca Millican-Slater.
The festival will feature 12 “table plays”, five-minute monologues by new and established writers including Stoke-born April De Angelis, comedian Isy Suttie, Lemn Sissay MBE, novelist Alan Garner, Staffordshire Poet Laureate Gary Longden, comedian Sara Pascoe and Tom Wells.
The festival runs from Saturday 20 June until Saturday 25 July. The full programme is available at the New Vic’s hoard festival web site.