The Commotion Time is one of those productions that reminds you of just how magical and impactful theatre can be. Writer Sarah Dickenson guides audiences through the local history of the siege of Exeter in 1547 and relates the stories of the regular people involved. The play focuses on community and family and the critical role women played in this moment of history. I sincerely hope that the play tours around the Southwest so that many more people get the chance to see it.
The play is set in Poundstock, a small, close-knit parish in the north of Cornwall. The people in the village are looking forward to the opening of their new Gildhouse which they have spent years fundraising and saving for. However, the excitement is soon overshadowed by the death of Henry VIII and the religious reforms that follow.
Towns all over the country are ordered to rid themselves of religious imagery in order to adopt ‘the new faith’. The villagers are told to abandon their catholic beliefs, traditions and way of worship and are demanded to hand over any silver belonging to the church so that it may go to the crown. For a community so tied to its catholic faith, the changes are incredibly painful and disorienting. When it is later discovered that they had been hiding religious statues and kept the silver with which they were to pay off the Gildhouse from the authorities, their beloved priest (played by the brilliant Ben Callon) is publicly humiliated and the keys to the Guildhouse are taken away.
As the village men prepare to march to Exeter to demand their rights, playwright Sarah Dickenson shifts her focus on the lives of the women left behind. Three women in particular tell their story of how the siege of Exeter impacted them. It was these three women: Elaine Claxton, Chloe Endean and Lizzy Watts – whose acting stood out to us the most. Dickenson explains that Philippa Gregory’s book ‘Normal Women,’ which discusses how little we know about the historical lives of women, inspired her most to write about these forgotten histories.
On her website, she elaborates on the choice for female protagonists: “What interests me across all my work as both a dramaturg and a playwright is how we not only tell women’s stories but how we interrogate with rigour who is telling that story, what stories are feeding into them and the angle from which a story is being told.”
Throughout history, women have often been presented as standing on the sidelines, but The Commotion Time brings them back to centre stage. Dickenson shows us their bravery, opinions and influence and shows us how their lives were indefinitely affected by these changes: “my story represents [the women] as individuals fully engaged in the protection of their community institutions and the protests against their repression: the patriarchy existed and women’s lives were policed by it, but the variety of female experience, resilience, power and roles within society was not only wide but potent, active and impactful.”
…the patriarchy existed and women’s lives were policed by it, but the variety of female experience, resilience, power and roles within society was not only wide but potent, active and impactful.
Sarah Dickenson
The play, which quite literally blew my socks off, has been twenty years in the making. The cast was brilliantly numerous, as it included 7 main actors, a choir, an ensemble and live music. The stage felt alive, and the emotions portrayed were incredibly infectious. The set design incorporated the audience by having seating on stage and the scene beautifully converted from a church to a Christmas party or theatre hall. The portrayal of Cornish traditions was incredible to see and showed the audience just how much research went into the creation of the play. Director Martin Berry’s vision for the story made it feel incredibly real and left audiences in a standing ovation that lasted minutes.
After the show, a speech by the Northcott’s creative director taught us that every single person involved with the play had ties with the Southwest – actors, singers, costume designers, light and sound engineers, even the people who made the set.
Sarah Dickenson adds that the many hands involved wit the making of the show are similar to the communal efforts portrayed by the villagers in the show: “this is a great, collective act, of story making – a collaboration between hundreds of women – and people of all genders – harnessing their skills and passion and faith, to tell a story that has been all but forgotten from perspectives that have all been forgotten too.”
“The Commotion Time isn’t about my individual role as a playwright,” she says. “It is about the power of that collectivism and the challenge to us all in times of the polarisation of centralised change, of rebuilding our stories together.”
It is about the power of that collectivism and the challenge to us all in times of the polarisation of centralised change, of rebuilding our stories together.
Sarah Dickenson
