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.

Scratched!

The Chocolate Plant received its first proper public outing as part of a Scratch Night performance at Exeter Bikeshed Theatre on Sunday 27th November 2011.

On a clear and starry night, Anna and Bea headed down the M5 to present some work in progress to an audience of Devonian strangers, people who would not be too close or kind to tell us what they really thought, and people who were not immediately connected to what had been going on in Bristol over the last two hundred odd years. As well as getting feedback on which direction to take, we wanted to test how the show would go down if it toured.

An audience of over a hundred people, aged from 15 to 80, squeezed into the theatre bar to view and comment upon four pieces of work in progress. We were third on the bill, and offered a 20 minute multi-media stand up presentation with an overview of some of the content that we are working on. We were clear that we were not demonstrating the form of our show (which will be a much more theatrical drama documentary, performed by actors, with music and media) but that we needed help grappling with the story.

We asked for feedback addressing these questions: What resonates with you? Which bits of the story should we focus on?

We got many useful suggestions from those who came up to speak to us. We were happily surprised by the range of ideas it sparked for people and it gave us an excuse to crack open a tin of Roses, well, it is nearly Christmas.   


Below are some of the comments from the feedback forms.

Very interesting and a real eye opener – as it was meant to be 

A really nice mix of humour and passion. 

It was great. You are great. Do more. It really sparked a debate.

You could hear the audience recognising the contemporary relevance. Those bursts of oohs and aaghs, and the occasional gasp.

I found the break up of families and the social histories the most interesting part. Hostile takeovers of profitable companies are so damaging. This story needs to be told.

Consumers should be more informed, and can then dictate. Why is it cheap? Where does it come from? These connections matter.

It made me start thinking about the riots, about youth unemployment, about the loss of those family companies. It’s scary.

If you can bring something like that to the stage, that’s fantastic

Having just been made redundant after 39 years I felt for these workers.

Unexpected and quite brilliant. Provided no end of thinking about riots, banks, care, the camps.

Really interesting – fantastic delivery Very well developed – I look forward to seeing the next version. Do bring it back.

We hope that these comments, and conversations with those who have asked to stay in touch, will support our creative development. 

Thanks to the Exeter Bikeshed Theatre for hosting us, and for providing such a varied and dynamic audience.


Now if only we could find a way to do the research without eating too much chocolate...

Anna Farthing here. As Bea is going to be very busy over the next few weeks on other things, including a new draft of her play for January’s BOV Ferment, I will pick up the progress report.

There has been much squealing with delight in archives recently. We visited Alan Freke at the Frenchay Village Museum, who showed us a fine collection of objects, archives and ephemera relating to the Fry family and their connection to the area. There was even a box of Fry’s chocolate, well past its sell by date. It’s a great little place and highly recommended. As it is housed in the entrance lodge to Frenchay Hospital, you can even get a coffee from the lovely ladies of the WRVS.

http://www.frenchaymuseumarchives.co.uk/

Best before....

Alan’s book about the Fry’s has also been a great aide to our research. You can buy one following this link.

While in Frenchay we had our second session with Hugh Evans, former Hygiene Manager at Somerdale, who has been explaining modern manufacturing processes to us, and what Somerdale was really like to work in at the point at which it closed. His pride in the company and in his work shines through his stories, and we look forward to talking to more of his former colleagues soon.

Hugh Evans and Alan Freke with Bea in the wonderful Frenchay Village Museum

On Monday we took some students on the Bristol University MA Performance Research to the Bristol Record Office, where Graham and Sarah showed them how it all works using the Fry archive as an example. We found recipes and packaging labels from 1878 destined for Germany, France, Spain and South America, along with carbon copies of letters to and from customers all over the world, as well as competitors such as Rowntrees and Cadburys. 

The correspondence showed that this really was the first global trade, and the company was dealing with a wide range of dilemmas including corporate responsibility, fair trade and worker’s welfare from the outset. These dilemmas, and how they were approached, will provide us with plenty of drama. The students were stunned to discover that the manufacturing of eating chocolate was actually begun in Bristol, and that this was not well known. As they are an international bunch, we were heartened with their interest in the story. It backs up our feeling that this really is a story that can resonate around the world.

Graham lets us poke about in the archive; a Bristol charter from the 14th Century!

The students then explored Bristol city centre with old maps, and we got lost among the alleys and passageways, trying to work out where everything was before it was either bulldozed or blitzed. We tried to imagine the rumble of machinery, the smell of chocolate, and the sound of hymns being sung by Fry’s Angels. At St Nicholas’s Market, we looked at the small suppliers and independent producers who may be founding their own food dynasties. And we finished off, of course, with hot chocolate all round.

On the wall of what is now Subway in Broadmead

Recently we have also been reading the transcripts of the Select Committee and The Takeover Panel regarding the Kraft takeover of Cadburys. The verbatim dialogue gets unbelievably heated at times, verging on the surreal. Almost as surreal as the ‘life of a cocoa bean’ published in 1928 in the bicentennial works magazine....

From the Fry's Bi-Centennial Magazine, 1928

Characters, situations, songs and images are emerging...and will be developed through a number of workshops and scratch nights over the next few months. 

We are delighted to have won the support not only of Bristol Museums Galleries and Archives, but also The Tobacco Factory Theatre. We now know this project can reach a broad and diverse audience. The next step for us, is to raise the funds to make it happen.

In the meantime....Support your local archives! The call up system may be a bit like Argos, but it's free, the staff are much nicer and the stuff lasts much, much longer.