Production notes for "Timelords of Tacket Street"
Welcome to our thirteenth Christmas show at the Sir John Mills Theatre.
This year’s show welds together a number of ideas that have been circulating in my head since the 1970s. The year I went off to study Drama was the year Ipswich won the FA Cup. So despite assiduously collecting coupons in the previous years and despite heart-breaking trips to Villa Park (and a hitch-hike home when the car broke down) and to Stamford Bridge in previous cup-runs, I never went to the Final. The Premiership promotion celebrations reminded me of this, especially as I’d had all the local reports of the Cup Final celebrations sent to me in Bristol. It was in Bristol too that I first started researching the character of Henry Tooley, as part of a dissertation on the Ipswich Corpus Christi play and its early demise. (My tutor for that was Oliver Neville, who some may remember as the Artistic Director of the old Arts Theatre some ten years earlier than that!) Tooley had come back into my mind recently due to the recent 500th anniversary of his arrival in Ipswich (1499) and the 450th anniversary of his death (1550). Unfortunately both occasions have been somewhat overshadowed by the Millennium and Ipswich’s own 800th birthday celebrations. This then is our small contribution to them all.
Earlier in the year we said goodbye to Rebecca and now it’s the turn of Andrew Burton to leave us for pastures new, except for him it is just up the road. We wish him every success as the new Marketing Manager at the New Wolsey Theatre and are sure we will see a lot more of him yet.
It’s been a funny old year what with changes of staff, the van accident and a long wait for the decision on our lottery application. Bit of a roller coaster. However, two stunningly successful shows, In the Bleak Midwinter and Margaret Catchpole, and a visit from Sir John Mills, have brightened up the year and we have just heard that our capital bid for new seating, truck, box-office computers and phone system has been successful. This should speed up all our ticket bookings and give you something more comfortable to sit on. We need to raise matching funding of £14,000 and hope that you, our patrons, will contribute towards this great project. Fingers crossed, with your help we could have new seats here by next year! It opens up a very exciting future for Eastern Angles.
It is all the more satisfying then to report a new sponsor for the company. Ensors, who fittingly occupy Cardinal’s House, are sponsoring our Christmas show for the first time and we thank them for their support.
Ivan Cutting - Artistic Director
