Baited Hooks - Week Three

Scholer: I’m going to tell you two stories that accompany this next item and I want you to tell me which one you think is true.

This is Mermaid’s Hair.


This was lost to me by a pirate captain in a gambling den in Turin. He got it from a sailor who was lured onto some rocks while at sea by the most beautiful singing he had ever heard. As he got closer he saw the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen stood right on the edge of the rocks. The waves were crashing all around her and the sailor decided that she needed rescuing. As he got close enough to pull her aboard the singing turned to screeching in his ears and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was gone, replaced by a bitter and twisted hag with pieces of her face falling away. She scratched at him with her claws, but he was quicker and he swiped at her with his cutlass. He meant to do her a serious injury but all he got was a lock of her hair.

Being a strange sort of a fellow he kept her hair as a memento and although he didn’t know it, it was a good luck charm. It made his life easier in ways he didn’t even realise, doors that would have been closed to him opened because of it. He took it to a wise old woman who clocked it straight away. “That’s Mermaid‘s hair” she said “a single strand of mermaid’s hair is an ingredient in the most potent of love potions”. Which is when he got greedy trying to make people fall in love with him. And that’s how he lost it to the pirate and how the pirate lost it to me.

The other story is that this is just a lock of hair I fought in a barbers in Paris, tied a ribbon round it and kept it in a bottle.

Which story do you think is more likely to be true? I’m not going to tell you. More importantly, which story do you think people will pay a higher price for?

So goes my tale of the mermaid's hair. It was slightly different everyday depending on the reactions of the children, but what do children learn from this little story about Henry VIII? Absolutely nothing, but it is sandwiched between me asking questions to try and discover what they already know (and if they reveal that it's not very much, supplying the answers myself) and inviting them to come up with stories themselves in order to help me sell the silks. It's an opportunity for them to relax and it gets them in the right frame of mind to contribute to the coming scenes.

After seeing the play, the children are treated to a workshop in which they write letters with quills to Henry VIII or Lady Knyvett, and then they sing a sixteenth century song, dance a couple of sixteenth century dances and play some sixteenth century musical instruments. Having seen the universal effect it has on children, I truly believe the harp is a magical instrument. I recommend that every school invest in one for the mollification of children.

If you were going to categorise a show like this you would probably call it Theatre In Education, but that conjures up a image that sells it short. What Clio's Company have achieved with this show is far better than a TIE show has any right to be. either we need to stop categorising theatre or we need a new category.

Hardest question to answer this week:
"If your silks are that good, why don't you wear them?"

Baited Hooks - Week Two

Last week we thought we'd seen it all. We had audiences of quiet children, we had audiences of noisy children and, thanks to a mix-up in school administration, we had an audience of absent children. This week we had a child obsessed with drunkeness, teachers talking throughout and another who was constantly on his mobile phone.

The audience is divided in half and both halves receive slightly different versions of the show. It's my job to take the children designated as 'Citizens', from the Dolphin pub and around the church in search of somewhere to set up a stall to sell my wares. Ensuring that the timing works out and that the two groups do not bump into each other is a bit of a juggling act.

We work our way down to an undergound chapel where I regale the children with tall tales of silks, spices and mermaid's hair until interrupted by Lady Helena Knyvett. The children and I attempt to sell her silks and she suggests we leave the chapel, thus leaving it vacant for the other group, the 'Apprentices'. They are still in the Dolphin and my group cannot visit there again until they leave. In one show this week I didn't notice that Will had taken the other group downstairs and waited and waited and waited for them to pass, stalling the 'Citizens' for as long as I could before admitting defeat and forging out for the Dolphin. By the time we reach the Dolphin we are into the final scene, the showdown between the various characters and their dilemmas, but not before I have eaten my all-important breakfast. It's my favourite practical prop.

The strangest discourse this week was a series of complete non sequiturs so here's the most insightful discourse instead:
Me: "Her ladyship wants to bring in foreign troops to control the king."
Child: "Like Iraq."

Baited Hooks - Week One

The year is 1533. England is rife with rumours. Henry VIII has sent his first wife Catherine of Aragon away and may well have already married Anne Boleyn in secret. The break with Rome and the Church of England are in their infancy. Is the Lady Anne going to be Queen? How far will the King's thirst for power go? Will his nephew Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor send in the troops to stop him? Is there a civil war on the cards?

Baited Hooks illustrates these elements of Tudor history for Key Stage 2 schools parties via characters with tangible dilemmas. Alice Carter, a barmaid who is learning to read and wishes to read illegal religious texts, Thomas Dacre, a man collecting money for the King who has lost a good deal of it while gambling, Lady Helena Knyvett, a member of the King's court who thinks it will foreign troops to keep the King in line but who also knows that he will not be the one to suffer and Geerhardt Schoeler, a merchant from overseas who simply wants to make a bit of cash and instead finds himself accused of stirring up all manner of trouble.

I'm playing Schoeler, the German merchant selling silks, spices, medicines, books and most bizarrely mermaid's hair. He's also carrying a provocative letter from within the Holy Roman Empire which is a reply to Lady Knyvett's call for troops from abroad.

The show involves a great deal of interraction with the children in the audience and dealing with some of the non sequiturs they throw back at you. Strangest discourse this week:

Child: "Did you know that Michael Jackson is dead?"
Me: "I'm not aware of the gentleman, but my thoughts are with his family."

Baited Hooks

I'm currently in rehearsal for a schools theatre project in London called Baited Hooks. I'm too busy to write about it in any real depth now. Normally I'd post details and links and the like, but the show has already sold out and you are probably not a school.

We open on Monday and the show runs for three weeks. I'll post something about it later.