Production Notes for Bone Harvest

Welcome to Bone Harvest and our 21^st birthday season.

I could easily use the whole of this introduction to name and thank all the people who over the last 21 years have helped us to last the course and put us in a position that I hope will see us over a few more fences yet. Mostly people have given us their time or resources. Theatre is such a hugely labour-intensive business that without your partnership we could not survive. Paid and unpaid, male and female, young and old, Eastern Angles has been a community effort from start to finish.

I still vividly remember taking one of our very early pieces, Barters Green, which was supposed to be a comedy, to a small village in Norfolk. It was March time, cold, and the old heater gently smoked in the corner of a village hall I suspect the Americans left behind in ‘44. We came out on stage to about four rows of hardy souls who had ventured out on the promise of some entertainment and who now sat with their torches at their feet ready to return home through the dark once we had finished. One man sat on the front row with a face that could cut cheese. His features barely moved as we told our Jonsonian tale of bucolic mayhem and we were convinced that we had died the kind of death the Glasgow music halls were famous for. After desultory applause, our man approached us – did he want his money back? I was about to direct him toward the promoter. He looked me straight in the eye. “Thank you very much – I int enjoyed myself so much in a long time.” And with that he stumped off into the night.

I wish I could say the same thing to everyone who has torn a ticket, stuffed an envelope, found money in their budget, persuaded a harassed greengrocer to put up a poster, picked up a phone to persuade someone to give us something for free, driven a van, done a get-in, tried to learn a harmony, changed a sweaty costume in the blink of an eye, sold an ice-cream, tried to write something fresh about equal opportunities, driven miles to discuss a first quarter loss or simply sat in our audience. Even if I sometimes look ungrateful, I’ve had a great time – though I’m not quite ready to stump off into the night!

It hardly seems possible that it was only 21 years ago that we sat down together and drew up a list of the villages we might approach to try out our first show. But then that is the theme of Bone Harvest, the sense that there are times when the past seems to crowd in on us and its actions become contemporary with our feelings.

Bone Harvest is the third part of The Reapers Year but it is also just a play about our sense of the past and how it fits into our conception of the present and plans for the future. Like Days of Plenty, its predecessor, I kept thinking it was about farming but now find that farming barely figures in it. But then it is the story of a family whose links with the land and the seasons become more and more tenuous.

Ivan Cutting

Artistic Director