photo of Ann Jellicoe by Roger Mayne - Photos of “The Western Women” production available

Ann Jellicoe, 80, founder of the concept of Community plays, will read “The Western Women” in the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis.  In 1984 she wrote and directed this ground breaking play, that tells the amazing story of the role women played in the Siege of Lyme during the Civil War.

 “The Western Women”

Thursday 27 September at 7.30 pm

Tickets £7.00 from Hilary Highet, Broad Street, Lyme Regis tel 01297 443824

Tim Laycock accompanies her on the guitar.

Ann Jellicoe has always been an innovator. In the fifties she explored the Open (or Thrust) stage, common enough now but then hardly known. In the sixties she wrote The Sport of My Mad Mother slaughtered by the critics at the time but now recognised as one of the most important and innovatory plays of the period. In the seventies she discovered and developed Community Plays a quite new form: involving over a hundred or more local actors guided by a professional core of writer, director and designer: large scale productions in non theatre settings which dissolve

the usual boundaries between audience and performers.

            Now having just reached eighty but with energy unabated, Ann Jellicoe is turning to a fascinating experiment. Having   agreed to read her community play The Western Women  with no thought that it might lead to something fresh and new Ann Jellicoe now finds her self beginning to sense her way to what may be a could be  a different style of Theatre. The challenge of reading a play with a cast of a hundred and twenty is leading her to reassess the whole process and try to find a form which is something between story telling, play reading and basic theatre.

            One of the most important impulses encouraging Ann to undertake this work is the new and exciting role  of  Lyme’s  Marine  Theatre. Lyme has a rapidly developing, grass roots, artistic community and much credit for this is due to the Marine. Within the last two years the theatre has gained a bold and enthusiastic, professional Artistic Director, Margie Barbour, who is helping transform the town’s cultural profile: “It was Ann Jellicoe’s reputation as the creator of the extraordinary Community Plays here in the 1980s that encouraged me to think this small theatre could be a centre of excellence and help create an artistic community.  Ann Jellicoe’s role in showing how art may transform community life lives on in Lyme” says Margie. This is a rare opportunity for the current generation  to hear a living legend recreate this impressive work.

On Thursday 27th September Ann Jellicoe will be recreating her  production when she and musician  Tim Laycock present a reading of “The Western Women” at the Marine Theatre at 7.30 pm. The play tells the story of the amazing part played by women in the Siege of Lyme. 'The Western Women.', written and directed by Ann Jellicoe with a cast of 120 local people and many more helping to put it on, sold out for 11 performances. Hilary Highet will be selling the tickets at £7.00  for the reading with musical accompaniment, at her shop in Broad Street, Lyme Regis,  telephone  01297 443824. The performance is in aid of ArtsFest, the Town Mill and the Marine Theatre.