Blog

Welcome to the Claque blog. Here you will find a collection of our latest thoughts, stories, news or anything that we think you'd be interested to know about the world of Claque

Development Grant

Today the Arts Council have awarded Claque two years funding so we can reorganise the company, appoint a manager, and realise an ambitious five year programme of work including seven community plays and a collaborative European Play for 2012. This is the culmination of almost two years of planning by myself and the board and allows us to develop the process and art of community plays. I feel very optomistic for the company's future.

Talk about six degrees of separation. 

About 18 years ago my wife Becca and I were visiting Caroline (Lady) Salt in Shillingstone House in Dorset. Caroline was, at the time, on the board of the Colway Theatre Trust. Conversation led to Becca and Caroline discovering they were related, quite closely as it happened- they both shared the same great grandfather and were both descended from the Kindersley family. As I research the East Grinstead play I become intrigued by Archibald McIndoe the plastic surgeon who repaired burnt pilots during the second world war. He set up a now famous unit at the Queen Victoria hospital in East Grinstead. I soon discover that Lord Robert Kindersley, Caroline's grandfather and brother to Becca's grandfather, brought the land for the Queen Victoria Hospital to be built on. Then, further into the research, I come across another familiar name, Edward 'Blackie' Blacksell. He worked closely with MacIndoe and was chiefly responsible for the rehabilitation of the men, helping with their training, fighting for their pension rights, creating activities to build their confidence, that kind of thing. But I knew Edward Blacksell because his signature appears on the company's articles of association, he was on the original board of Colway Theatre which is now Claque. His son Simon was later to join the board. So here are two past company board members closely linked to the work of Archibald MacIndoe. Another bizarre coincident is that Edward Blacksell was later to set up the English Stage company with a group of friends in the West country. In looking for a home for the company they found the Royal Court in Sloan Square, London and moved in; the rest, they say, is history. But remarkably, Ann Jellicoe began her career as a writer at the Royal Court, and was, for some years its literary manager. Then she moved to the west country, where the Court was born, and started the community play movement and Colway Theatre Trust.