The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

Selection of Photographs - click a picture to enlarge

A Great success…..17 day tour / 12 performances / 2,250 miles

3^rd Nov – Columcille Centre in Edinburgh

5^th Nov – Newton Dee, Aberdeen

6^th Nov – Blair Drummond, Stirling

8^th Nov – Corbenic, Perthshire

9^th Nov – Loch Arthur, Dumfries

10^th Nov – Pennine Community

11^th Nov – Botton

12^th Nov– Croft, Malton

13^th Nov – Larchfield, Middlesborough

14^th Nov – Milton Keynes

15^th Nov – Delrow

17^th Nov – Mount, East Sussex

Article from Camphill Pages – Issue no.17 Summer 2004

A GROUP from the Camphill Grange Community in Gloucestershire is planning to go on tour this autumn with their performance of Oscar Wilde's comedy The Importance of being Earnest.

 The cast, all of whom are tenants at Grange Village, will play to audiences at Camphill Communities all around Britain. The tour is planned as a prelude to a more ambitious project next year which, it is hoped, will take a new and challenging play to arts festivals and events and, perhaps, even the Edinburgh Festival.

 The Grange actors have been developing their theatrical skills with Ying Yung Theatre, a group established in 2000 by former Camphill co-worker and drama therapist Teo Gwynne-­Evans. Teo set up Ying­-Yung specifically to work with adults with learning disabilities and teenagers to bring about healing and develop­ment through drama. Participants in produc­tions benefit through artistic growth, lan­guage development, improved self confi­dence, learning to work together as a group and in many other ways. The Community also benefits through capaci­ty building, which is about developing the skills and strengths of individuals and Communities to improve their abili­ty to meet the needs of those who are socially excluded.

 The Importance of Being Earnest was the second production with the Grange drama group. The first project, in 2001/02, was a Sherlock Holmes murder mystery with a cast of 35, with two performances at Grange Village.

 So far the Grange cast have performed their production of Earnest three times – two performances in January for parents, friends and the local community and a further one in June at the advocacy  project relationship conference at the Grange.

 “We worked on The Importance of being Earnest for a year”, Teo explained.  The cast worked with me to edit the script as the original one is quite complex. Oscar Wilde used quite 'flowery' words which we needed to change so that people could get their mouths around it. We also want­ed to cut it down to an hour, to take out the moralising and preaching of its era, and produce a script that flows nicely”.

"The performers are so totally them­selves that you can­not help but enjoy what they bring to the play. They brought their performances to a level where their dignity shines through".

The planned tour of Camphill centres this autumn is being used as a testbed for a more ambitious tour next year. Then the group plans to per­form The Choice, a new play written by Claire Luckham, sister of Grange resident Benedict Luckham. It deals with the diffi­cult decisions facing someone pregnant with a Down's Syndrome child.

"It's a wonderful script, and by touring to arts events and festivals, we hope to bring to the wider community some­thing of what Camphill can offer," said Teo. "It will provide a potent way of showing Camphill, the hopes of fears of people who live in the Communities, and something of where they live and work."

A small exhibition will tour with the play to show the public something of the lives of those involved in the performance and the programme notes too will explain the daily work of the cast at Grange, where they live and their hopes for the future.

Updated 1 July 2005