Production Notes for Boudicca's Babes

Welcome to Boudicca’s Babes.

However, that is not to say that Boudicca represents any kind of original island race, it’s just that our written history gives out at the Romans, and it’s still pretty shaky for the thousand years after that! The conventional view is that the Iceni were a Celtic people who probably came over during the 5^th Century BC. However, before that there were other peoples living here, notably what archaeologists call the Beaker people, and before that many more tribes, races, and cultures to link them to the humans that came out of Africa so many millions of years previously.

And not even the Celtic concept and name is certain. Some argue that the “Celtic cultural package” is dangerously misleading and an invention, like Boadicea of the 19^th century. Still others argue that the Celts represent not so much a particular body of tribes as a wave of culture of the European Iron Age that merely swept through the specific local identities to give them the common traits of the time. And these debates will only become more intense, more variegated and less resolved as time burns on, as more remains are unearthed and as our science learns more from them.

So perhaps you can see why we have not gone for a specifically period piece and not been afraid to interweave a modern sensibility into the show. For it is the modern parallels that most interested Greg and me when we started talking about the show. And we have taken some pretty modern liberties!  Ok, first the Scots accents – why? Well, it provides a sense of the Celtic, it distinguishes them from the Romans, and anyway I was fed up with not being able to include the variety of accents in these isles in our shows! The costumes? We neither have the resources for authentic weaponry nor the means, and besides, this is theatre! The Celts fought naked. Do you really want us to go the whole hog – we want you to listen to the story, not watch …well, you know what I mean. Boudicca’s hair? She’s no carrot top but it should work under the lights. And we’re still debating the modern sound effects – to augment the modern parallels. As for pronunciation of names, this is an even bigger minefield since so many of them were Latinised anyway by the historians.

Once again, many thanks to Anglia railways for sponsoring our autumn tour, the tenth anniversary of our association. It has a special resonance this year if we trace Boudicca’s route to the capital, via Colchester – it is almost exactly the Anglia mainline.

Ivan Cutting - Artistic Director