Our week at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

Last week we were invited to spend some time with students from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School developing the latest script for The Chocolate Plant. During the week we explored our personal chocolate stories as well as the stories of industrial chocolate production in Britain using memories, historical sources, music, dance and a trusty old overhead projector. 

It was a fruitful and fascinating week! We’d like to extend our warmest thanks to all at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school but particularly to Jamie, Alec, Nina, Juliet, Jen, Darren, Charlie, Abby and Lindsey - not forgetting, of course, our lovely assistant director, Lisa, for their playfulness, talent and creativity. 

Thanks also to Jenny Stephens, Artistic Director of BOVTS, Phillippa Haynes, freelance producer, and Carrie Rhys-Davis,  TF+ Officer for coming to see our show and share at the end of the week.

Playing with projections and images

Our chocolate loving actors! 

Sunday on the Bandstand!

We'd like to a say a big thank you to the lovely people of Keynsham for welcoming us so warmly to their bandstand yesterday!

Anna and I had a lovely time chatting chocolate in the former home of Fry's where everyone seems to have a interesting chocolate tale to tell. We learnt how chocolate tastes different in Ireland, that it's medically advisable to eat Thornton's and that some people who shall remain anonymous cheat on their Easter egg hunts....never fear; your secret's safe with us.

And since it was so sunny, we even took a few snaps!

Keynsham Bandstand

The Chocolate Plant - Chocolate Story Sharing Activity 

Keynsham Bandstand

Sunday 9th September, 2.30 - 4pm

As part of our chocolate story journey this week finds us at the Keynsham Bandstand where we'll be talking all things chocolate - and what a place to do so! With Keynsham's remarkable chocolate history we can't wait to find out more.

Join us this sunny Sunday for a delve into the tempting selection box of chocolate stories; from the Aztec Emperor Montezuma to the creation of the world's first ever chocolate bar by Fry's in Bristol in 1847, chocolate has been on a remarkable journey changing our tastes, our waistlines and the face of global trade forever.

So come along and share your favourite memories, recipes and thoughts or discover some of the fantastic tales we've gathered whilst developing our own chocolate story; The Chocolate Plant. We hope to see you there!

Now we've washed the mud off...

Well that was our first ever Larmer Tree Festival and what a stonker it was!

Thank you so much to everyone who came, munched, mused and shared Chocolate Stories with us last Friday and Saturday. It was a real pleasure to spend an hour away from the mud discussing our historical love affair with chocolate with some very game Larmer Tree festival goers!

We'll update with pictures soon and for those of you who took part in Chocolate Stories we'd love to hear your feedback so please do drop us a line.

We were lucky enough to hear some brilliant new chocolate stories to add to our ever growing repertoire; my personal favourites include finding out I'm not the only person to become homicidal with rage when people put the empty After Eight wrappers back in the box and learning that rodents of many species like chocolate - honestly chocolate really is the gift that keeps giving.

Bye for now!
Bea & Anna

Larmer Tree

The sun is (briefly) shining and Anna and I are happily packing up our Chocolate Plant and heading to the fabulous Larmer Tree Festival. 


In a new bespoke performance we'll be setting up our very own production line in the heart of the countryside and delving into some of the tastiest chocolate stories we've collected on our travels.


We'll be in the Theatre and Film tent:


Friday 13th July: 11 am - 11.45 am
&
Saturday 14th July: 3.30 pm - 4.15 pm


So if you're Larmer-ing this weekend then please do come along and join The Plant!

 Chocolate Stories presented by Harvest Films

Join us on the production line at this unique storytelling event led by professional heritage theatre artists Anna Farthing and Bea Roberts. You’ll be packing chocolates by hand, talking, tasting, sharing and sampling from the tempting selection box of Chocolate Stories past and present, personal and public, historic and hidden. Where did it come from and how has it shaped our tastes, our waistlines and the face of global trade? 

Happy Easter from Anna and Bea!

What a cracking start (sorry) to the easter weekend and a great first day of the Bristol Chocolate Festival! 


M Shed was packed with Easter egg doodling, some vintage films, sniffables, edibles and some wannabe Fry's Angels (see gallery below for our top picks!) A huge thanks must go to all the fantastic M Shed volunteers and to all at Frenchay Village Museum. Alan and his team bought along some egg-ceptional (sorry) treasures from the incredible Frenchay archives including vintage Fry's games, beautiful reproductions of the Easter egg catalogues from the 1930s and their wonderful replica of one of the oldest chocolate bars in existence - a block of Fry's chocolate from 1851. To see the real thing and for all things Fry then we couldn't recommend a visit to Frenchay Village Museum or a scroll through their online archives more highly and if all that chocolate history has piqued your interest as well as your taste buds than grab a copy of Alan's brilliant book. 





Whilst there were was stalls and music and the Easter bunny cycling about Bea was leading the Egg-strodinary Stories Walking Tour, through forgotten alleyways and Georgian streets we had a great day sharing some chocolate and chocolate history. Again, special thanks must go to Anne Colley and her husband Jack for joining us on the first walk; it's been a real treat to share the fantastic story of Anne's famous cousin, Elsie Griffin for which we have Anne to thank and a particular pleasure to blast out a bit of opera around the dank industrial streets of the Pithay! If you missed the tours today there are still spaces on the walks tomorrow at 11am and 2pm departing from the ticket office at No.1 the Harbourside, tours last approximately one hour, £5 adults, £3 for children, free for Fry's Angels! 


If you'd like to find out about booking your very own Chocolate Walk, have any bits of chocolate history you'd like to share or would like to send your thoughts about our Easter activities then please do email us.


Happy Easter everyone! 

Bristol; The Chocolate City

Come and see us over Easter at M Shed. 

We will be running some family friendly activities in the M Shed studio for Love Local Events and The Chocolate Festival. 

Share your favourite chocolaty thoughts, recipes, imaginings and memories, get messy with art and craft, see the development process from bean to bar, handle the raw materials, and watch fascinating archive film from the Bristol Records Office. We will also be offering a guided walk and talk around some of Bristol city centre’s chocolate related sites. 

Easter weekend, 7^th & 8^th April, M Shed. Bristol

http://mshed.org/

To see what else is happening at The Chocolate Festival

http://www.festivalchocolate.co.uk/festivals/bristol/whats-on/

Update on the creative development work.

Tobacco Factory, Prototype 

On Sunday 4th March we presented 15 minutes of material as part of the Tobacco Factory Theatre’s Prototype programme. Following previous feedback from audiences at Exeter Bikeshed and the international Challenging Histories conference (see below) we decided to focus on the emotional content of the piece.

The extracts we tested were quite deliberately a collage of styles. They included a ‘brand awareness’ game, verbatim text from interviews, life moments featuring chocolate from christenings to funerals, a micro media documentary, a song, and some physical/visual theatre.

Jack Price of Studiofilm filmed us rehearsing for his blog, Act Bristol, and asked us what it was all about. You can watch the film here.

http://studiofilm.co.uk/actbristol/2012/03/the-choclate-plant-protoype/

You can listen to the song, a Polish lullaby, here

http://katykaty.wrzuta.pl/audio/8SVm00xQF8g/

Is Chocolate a Challenging History?

On 25^th February we presented some work in progress to an international audience of over a hundred academics and heritage professionals attending The Challenging Histories Conference at The Tower of London.

We asked for feedback. Here are the questions, and just some of the many interesting responses.

What elements of the story speak to you?

I really enjoyed it moving backward and forward between small scale and large analysis. Paying attention to the value of chocolate – normally something you would ignore.

I found a parallel between Cadbury’s in UK and Bata in pre WW2 Czechoslovakia. Very concerned about the increasing contradiction between the global village on the one hand, and the lack of human relationships on the other

Good to see female industrial heritage and personal stories. Community and company relationships resonated with me, from personal experience. 

What is your most vivid chocolate memory or experience?

Waiting for real/really good West German chocolate being sent to us (by friends) in East Germany….

Chocolate Letters in Netherlands connected to Zwarte Piet (Epiphany).. Chocolate as a love food. Bed food.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Imaginative.  Ypres Battlefield tour with tourists that were only interested in buying chocolate

I remember photographs of my childhood covered in messy chocolate (but not the experience of it).  Opening Kinder Eggs with the toy!  Multi-layered Mum’s Chocolate Cake.

Thinking of Bridget Jones. Hearing from Grandfather about getting Fry’s chocolate and amazement of experience.  At a wedding with a chocolate fountain and grumpy ‘chocolate officer’. At Maison du Chocolat in Paris having a chocolate drink with spices – amazing.  

When I was a child I remember jellies in chocolate and I hated them. We always had them for Christmas. Also the Kinder Egg, we asked the shop assistant to weigh them so we could buy the heavy ones!  I remember I loved (larder?) bars, and when my parents were buying if for me, I was hiding them under my bed so my sister couldn’t find me

Draw your impression of what you see in our work. 

Really revealing! We’ll add the doodles to the blog when we have scanned them. 

"These are the boxes that single ladies get and the married ones dream of" 

Sweets for the Sweet narration, 1934

Yes our choco research has led us down a glorious British Pathé route which we thought was too wonderful to keep to ourselves. Now that the archives have all been digitised, anyone is free to search  Pathé and dig out some treats! I warn you though, subsequent link clicking may lead to spending several hours watching old adverts and giggling...

Sweets for the Sweet, 1934. A glimpse into the early Somerdale plant featuring some wonderful narration; "modern wrapping machines are amazingly clever; they handle the chocolate bars as dextrously as a conjuror and as gently as a woman"

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/sweets-for-the-sweet-1/query/chocolate 

And since we're nearing Easter a rare treat from 1931, Those Easter Eggs, showcasing the handmade decoration of Easter eggs which were invented in Bristol don't you know.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/those-easter-eggs/query/chocolate

"Now there are scenes of the greatest activity!" It's all go in the Nigerian Cocoa Trade in this busy little film from 1949.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/nigerian-cocoa-aka-nigerian-cocoa-trade

Enjoy!

Well things are steaming ahead with The Chocolate Plant after a brief hiatus for Christmas and Bea's play, And Then Come The Nightjars at the Bristol Old Vic (more details on her blog)

We're kicking off 2012 with our own session on the bill of the International Challenging History Conference on the 25th February, a  It's a great line up and we're looking forward to bringing chocolate to the discussion (perhaps literally but definitely metaphorically) and seeing what comes out.

The next stop after that will be a work in progress showing at the wonderful Tobacco Factory's Prototype season on March 4th. We'll see if we can get a flavour of all this chocolate research into our 15 minutes but I must admit, the more you delve the more fantastically rich detail emerges.

We are also delighted to be welcoming a new addition to our team, Beshley Bwye Turner. Currently studying for an MA in musicology at the University of Bristol, Beshley is a specialist in West Country music and has kindly volunteered her services in helping us dig out some authentic music for the show. I can't wait to see or rather hear what she retrieves from the archives.

Talk of which neatly brings us on to a very special mention; you may have read in the news that Elsie Griffin was commemorated with a blue plaque at St. Michael's On The Mount Primary School where she was a student in the early 1900s. If the name is unfamiliar you are sure to recognise her as "the voice of World War One"; Elsie was a Fry's Angel, an ordinary Bristolian factory girl who became an international opera singer and one of the greatest stars of her day. The beautiful soprano who made "Danny Boy" and "The Roses of Picardy" world famous is finally being recognised in her home city, not least due to the efforts of her cousin, Anne Colley, who has been kind enough to get in touch and tell us all about her family's remarkable story.

See, I told you there were fascinating stories in chocolate.