Production notes for "When the Boats Came In"
A piece of documentary theatre like 'When the Boats Came In' takes a long time to research and compile, for in producing it we have deliberately restricted ourselves to authentic documented material in order that the events described should be encountered as fresh as they were to the eye-witnesses themselves, who have provided us with our story.
We started 8 months before opening, and during that time we have investigated all manner of evidence: Company Minute books, old directories of Lowestoft and Suffolk, local and county newspapers, Parliamentary Reports and Debates, employment insurance documents, besides numerous magazines and books.
As well as researching in libraries and talking to historians of the subject, however, we have taken along a tape-recorder and listened to the very people that did the work. Skippers, deckhands, beatsters, Scots fish girls have all described to us their various skills and crafts in great detail, and their oral testimony has become the backbone of the latter half of the show.
Consequently, the only material that has been specially 'written' for the show is the words and music for the songs, although we have drawn upon traditional songs for their authentic flavour. In short, no characters have been created, no speeches have been composed. We may have changed the old tense here and there, or inserted a question to elucidate a documented response, but nothing of any substance has been 'made up' by us.
Lowestoft is unique in its ability to hold and cherish its past, and in taking this production around East Anglia we hope that others will be able to share in that respect for our 'useable past'. And it is important that the ways of working of any former industy, as, alas, the herring industry has become, are not only recorded and preserved in some form before they are lost to the community, but also celebrated. We offer this show as a tribute to the men and women who were the Great Lowestoft Herring Fishing Industry.
Ivan Cutting