Ages and Stages is a collaboration between Keele University and the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-Under-Lyme. We are exploring the role that Stoke-on-Trent’s Victoria Theatre (now the New Vic Theatre) has played in the lives of people living and working in the Potteries during the last fifty years. Through research at the Victoria Theatre archive, we have looked at the Vic’s ground-breaking social documentaries, pioneered by Peter Cheeseman, which included The Knotty, Fight for Shelton Bar!, The Dirty Hill and Nice Girls, examining their depiction of older people and their place in the history, culture and ongoing life of this unique industrial community. In addition, we have interviewed older people about their involvement with the theatre itself: as volunteers, as actors and employees, as audience members, and as people who were interviewed for the social documentaries.
We are now drawing the research together to create a new piece of documentary drama, which will be performed at the New Vic in July 2012.
Ages and Stages is funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing programme.
Please visit our website - www.keele.ac.uk/agesandstages
