Sarah Dickenson is a writer and dramaturg with over two decades of experience developing new plays nationally and internationally. While building her illustrious career, Sarah has been working on The Commotion Time. The historical drama tells the true story which begins in Poundstock Gildhouse, the community building where Sarah spent much of her childhood and where our community readthrough of the play took place (pictured). It follows a popular revolt as it gathers momentum in Cornwall and Devon, bringing thousands of ordinary people marching on Exeter. Read on to discover how the play came to be, and what it means to its playwright.
What are your earliest memories of the theatre?
“Growing up in North Cornwall in the 80s, theatre either came to us, was made by us, or was a trip to Exeter Northcott or Plymouth Theatre Royal. My parents loved the theatre and my Dad had been an enthusiastic member of amateur dramatics, so they’d seek out performances whenever we were on holiday too. Like many others, I grew up with Kneehigh and the Orchard Theatre in Exeter.
One production that particularly sticks in my mind as influential was when a theatre company came into my classroom when I was about 7. They performed a version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and one of the actors magically changed from a beautiful lady to a dwarf! Afterwards they sat down and answered our questions, and I wanted to know how she had shrunk? She showed me how she’d shuffled on her knees under her long robe. That was it, I was hooked on what theatre could do.
Years later, when I was working with them as a dramaturg developing plays for a new generation of young people, I realised that the company had been Theatre Centre. It was a magical moment when I discovered I was working with the very people who had inspired me in the first place.”
How have your other roles – dramaturg, literary manager, educator – influenced your practice as a playwright?
“I have spent 25 years in the development of new stories for the stage and the support of those who tell them. As a result, I’ve been inspired by many different writers, artists and processes, I’ve learned the craft of theatremaking, I’ve learned about artists’ relationships with audiences, and how to work with creatives and communities to tell the stories that matter. It’s all interconnected and I keep learning with every new project I have the honour to work on.”
Photo by Gani Naylor
What have been your career highlights so far?
“I find these questions impossible to answer because I’ve had such an eclectic career working in so many different contexts with a wide range of artists and audiences. I’ve been so fortunate in that respect and it’s hard to pick just a few out.
But what I would say is that there has been as much thrill for me as a dramaturg working with someone like Alice Birch on her fantastic play Revolt She Said, Revolt Again at the RSC or Charlie Josephine on his groundbreaking I, Joan at the Globe, as there has been working with early career playwrights at the Minack, primary school playwrights on the Isle of Dogs or on a passionate community production All Change For Ashford with Sussex’s brilliant The Company.
I love storytelling and the people who tell and enjoy stories in all their forms. Yet I would be lying if I didn’t say that this production of The Commotion Time isn’t near the very top – a story I’ve yearned to tell for 20 years, being told with the people to whom it truly belongs. I am so lucky to be in service to it.”
The Commotion Time is based in Poundstock on the Cornwall/Devon border. How did your experience of growing up there influence the stories you wanted to tell?
“I grew up in a farming community and my father was a Vicar. My childhood was held by that community and the rituals and celebrations of the village year – Christmas, Easter, Revels, Carnival, Fetes, Harvest Festivals – and that rhythm remains today. I highly valued the ways in which communities worked together around their common concerns: setting up community shops and post offices when they were threatened with closure; hosting regular weekly meals which offered elderly people the chance to meet with one another; holding a Lego club for small kids in the church.
The Gildhouse itself continues to be a place of community togetherness in much the same way as it was intended. I wanted to celebrate how incredible these people and communities are, tell their forgotten histories, and interrogate the workings of their power.”
Photo by Gani Naylor
Photo by Gani Naylor
Women’s voices are at heart of The Commotion Time. Why did you choose to foreground their perspectives?
“Why wouldn’t I? They’re 52% of the population! There’s plenty of plays which foreground the male perspective and that question is rarely asked of them. The very reason it feels significant is the same reason why it’s important to normalise telling history from the perspective of women, and ordinary women at that!
We have collective amnesia when it comes to the history of women, partly because our stories very rarely made the written record in the first place but also because even when they did, they were selected to be told. Writing from these perspectives is an act of justice: many women don’t even know our full histories, and that’s before you’ve even started with intersections of race, disability, class, sexuality and so on…
It offers up a challenge – we’re so used to defining power and action in certain ways – but it’s a challenge which yields dividends because women’s action is deft, resilient and (as the wonderful Philippa Gregory talks about in her important history Normal Women) full of everyday heroism.”
Is there anyone without whom The Commotion Time wouldn’t be what it is today?
“So many, impossible to name: my family; the community of Poundstock, Week St Mary and the wider North Cornish community I’ve been a part of; Sandy and Tim who first asked for the play; Graham, Liz and Jen who have kept asking for it; Linda who helped me with the language; historians Mark Stoyle, Sue Andrew, Ed Foxe, Eamon Duffy, Jo Mattingley, Joyce Youings, Frances Rose-Troupe, Philippa Gregory and countless others; the folk in our National Archives; my creative supporters along the way including Cathy Turner, Kaite O’Reilly, Jo McInnes, Pippa Hill, Jack Bradly, Sian Owen, Jane Upton, Zoe Curnow, John Brolly, Nadine Rennie, Tanuja Amarasuriya, Jenni Jackson, Paul Sirett, Jonathan Meth, Catriona Craig, Jane Pugh, Simon Harvey, Emily Williams, Hannah Mulder… and SO MANY others; Martin Berry and all the team at Exeter Northcott; and finally, Joanna Ingham, my dearest friend and collaborator who has journeyed with me every step of the way on this play and without whom it would not exist at all.”
Photo by Gani Naylor
How does it feel to see the play being brought to life by the cast and creative team?
“Extraordinary. It’s a play that has never belonged to me. I’ve always felt as though I am channelling a story that has long needed to be heard. Seeing it being brought alive by this community in Exeter alongside the community in Cornwall is so wonderful and I feel so grateful that people have come together in this way and used their own skills and creativity to bring it all alive.”
What do you hope audiences will take away from The Commotion Time?
“Firstly, a wonderful night in the theatre: some laughter, tears, meaning and collective joy. I also hope they’ll leave knowing more about our shared history; understanding themselves and their country a little more and perhaps reflecting on the challenge of our togetherness at times of polarising change when many of us will make different choices which threaten our communion with one another. How we meet these challenges and find our way back to one another is a life’s practice, but it’s one our foremothers met again and again to keep our community spaces – physical and emotional – alive. ‘Faith, Hope and Love, these three, but the greatest of these is Love.’”
What was the most surprising thing you learnt in your research for The Commotion Time?
“That this story had been forgotten.”
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