Today we re pleased to announce the first four offerings of our 2019 season, each supported by Lincs Inspire and presented in The Albert Room at Cleethorpes Library.
We open with two scratch nights that make up our writing competition "Rough Cuts and Scratches". Actors will perform new works for the stage, script in hand, and the audience will vote for the winners who will receive one of a series of great prizes, including two commissions to write and produce further work with Breakwater Theatre Company.
The first scratch night is being held on Friday February 22nd 2019. Tickets cost £5 and will be available exclusively from Cleethorpes Library or on the door subject to availability.
This will be followed by Round Two of our competition on Friday 29th March 2019 with the same arrangements for tickets.
In April, we see a premiere commissioned by Lincs Inspire written by our own Andy Evans. We present a remarkable story of courage and perseverance in a one-woman show "Indomitable" inspired by the writing of Elisabeth Sheppard-Jones. Elisabeth was working in publishing at the outbreak of WW2 and volunteered to serve as an officer. One Sunday, whilst attending church, a bomb dropped destroying the chapel, killing many of the worshipers and leaving Elisabeth as a paraplegic. Undeterred by this condition Elisabeth became a successful children's author publishing several books, was a regular on Woman's Hour and lived a fiercely independent life that became an inspiration to those who knew her. Her three-wheeled, invalid carriage became the scourge of pedestrians and road users alike as she sped round her home town. Come and discover what made this remarkable woman... indomitable.
Our fourth offering of the year is the premiere of another new piece of work by Andy Evans. Ruhleben, near Spandau, just outside Berlin, Germany housed a civilian internment camp for the duration of the First World War. Any civilians present in Germany at the outbreak of hostilities were rounded up and interned. Among the civilians were bankers, lawyers, professional sportsmen, concert musicians, composers, writers, professors and the crews of seventeen ships from Grimsby who had the misfortune to have been located in German waters.
The camp remained in operation throughout the entire war and housed around 5000 men. These men strove to create a world that reminded them of home, of what made them British and how to remain strong and proud in the face of the enemy. Funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund and in co-operation with the Library Service,a project has been established to discover the history of the camp through research and the testimony of families whose relatives were held there. This play will be the culmination of that work and written by the author of two other local history plays "Pro Patria Mori" for the Caxton Players and "The Grimsby Chums" a radio play for Compass FM. It promises to be an exciting, eye-opening play rooted in local history.
Tickets for all our plays will be available through Cleethorpes Library and on the door at the event, subject to availability.