Production notes for "Tithe War!"
Welcome to our autumn 2001 production of Tithe War! Of all our shows, and like its subject, tithe, this has had the longest gestation.
Like so many people my first response to the word tithe was to think of medieval peasants donating their tenth carrot, sheaf or lamb to the church. All this produce, except the lamb presumably, would have been stored in the majestic tithe barns we still see dotted around the region. The idea that it persisted into this century seemed incredible. You are about to be astounded.
It was seventeen years ago it happened to me. I was sent to interview a Mrs Rash in Diss. I was collecting material about farming before the Second World War for our original production of The Reapers Year (RY). I turned up at a bungalow in the back streets of Diss and was confronted by a woman, then nearing 90, but with a blazing light in her eyes and a tale ready on her lips. She thrust a novel she had written under the name Doreen Wallace called So Long To Learn into my hands and proceeded to regale me with the history of what she called the tithe war. It was then 1984, the year of the miners’ strike, but her story of the goings-on in Wortham fifty years before presented a haunting parallel. The details of massive police presence and closing off roads to allow the Bailiffs in seemed very contemporary. I went away on a high.
However, it was all too much. Although I was fascinated, it was clearly a subject much bigger than RY could accommodate, and, more importantly, really concerned the farmers themselves more than the farmworkers, which RY would be foregrounding. I put the novel on the shelf. Six years later in 1990 I took it down. It was good and it turned out to describe many of the events you are about to see in a fictionalised form. I started thinking about it as a production for us and researched the subject. The story got more amazing as it embraced farmers, clergy, MPs, Commissioners, farmworkers, police, Blackshirts, auctioneers and judges, but it seemed to demand too many characters. After The Wuffings I looked at it again, this time with the aim of mounting it in similar style and possibly as a community play, but the success of The Wuffings meant we had to offer more than the 10 or so performances that local performers can usually offer. I was back to our traditional touring shows. It was too large for spring, but we were now finding additional resources for our autumn production. And the focus had shifted. With the advent of the Countryside Alliance and the protests in London everything seemed even more prescient, and the recent debates about the role of agriculture made the details of tithe less relevant but the actions of the principal characters of even greater interest. Two more women came on the scene, always good for making us look at the human beings involved rather than the arcane history. Carol Twinch was researching for her own book on Tithe War (see p. ) and had acquired the archives, including many press cuttings, of A.G. Mobbs, the movement’s Chairman. She pointed to pictures and offered instant thumbnail portraits of the main contenders, often libellous, but gold dust to a playwright. At the same time June Shepherd produced a biography of Doreen Wallace (see p. ), which included explorations of the protagonists’ relationships and domestic details of Wortham Manor such as the bell rope incident. It was at this point really that the whole thing became a musical. To cap it all Radio Suffolk unearthed a BBC archive film on the whole business including interviews with all our participants. UEA brought it down to show the actors who watched live models of their characters speaking on film.
However I must intervene here and remind everyone that this is only based on the events. As always in this kind of drama we have invented, exaggerated, combined and cut short many incidents and characters in order to make a story that bears retelling for this day and age. Nor have we attempted to defend tithe. Our drama comes from inside one camp. If you want the facts, go to our two ladies’ books above, and to Doreen Wallace’s own book on Tithe War. What we hope to portray is an emotional truth, a feeling of what it was like, what it meant and what it means now, and what it tells us about the natural human urge to protest against what we see as injustice.
Finally, we much thank our sponsors, Anglia Railways, who have upped their Sponsorship to include the whole tour. So just as their trains travel from Cromer to Stratford, so does our tour. At whatever point you meet up with us on that line, we hope you enjoy the service, and please tell us what you thought of it.
Ivan Cutting - Artistic Director