“The Curse of Coddlesham” – Preview

In order to get us in the Christmas mood, the cast and crew of The Curse of Coddlesham have promised that there will be many treats in store for anyone who attends. Not only will each audience member be able to follow their own journey throughout the piece, but there are also many surprises and mysteries to uncover throughout, including “finding the wolf”. The fictional village of Coddlesham will take up instillation in The Band Factory, Leamington on the 3^rd December and is the brain-child of Co-directors Samuel Thorogood and Patrick Tobin, as well as being conceived in Alexander Webster’s set design, along with the help of Oscar Owen.

“There’s a witches workshop, a hidden room in a rubbish dump, and a church” says Webster, all of which he has created from scratch and will fill the many rooms of the Band Factory for audience members to explore. This location was selected by Thorogood after he worked in Theatre Uncut last year. “I liked the potential of the space” he says, “There is a large room which is central to the whole thing with little rooms which surround it. This is what became the basis for creating a village, for building this immersive world.” Becoming immersed in this crazy town is no option of course, because the curse (spoiler alert) forces you to stay, you cannot escape, although there is some confusion about why the curse came about in the opening minutes of the play.

When watching a run of these opening scenes, it is clear that a lot of time has been spent creating the wacky characters that make this village (and of possibly any other British village), in fact this was the starting point for Tobin and Thorogood. “In a comedy workshop last term we spent a lot of time doing exercises that helped us to physicalize and create characters. We started to find a few characters that Patrick and I thought would go well together, this inspired the wacky village and the rest is history.”

Throughout the creation of the piece, say cast members Lilith Wozniax, Lissy Stowell and Molly Eedle, these character exercises were central to beginning to shape the village and its residents. “We took some inspiration from animal physicality” says Wozniax, who plays Fleur, “My character started from looking at how giraffes bend their legs to drink water.” “Mine was inspired by a chicken” interjects Stowell, who runs the village pub. All of the cast members are freshers and as such are new to the devising and improvisational process, which, Thorogood says though unintentional, has made the creative process very new and exciting. “They are all open to trying new things and are great at suggesting ways in which to take the piece forward. The collaboration between crew and cast became more interesting because of this.”

The cast too, feel that they have a certain degree of creative ownership over the piece, “We feel that we own the space that we have created,” says Stowell. “The relaxed creative atmosphere would make me want to work with Codpiece again” Eedle tells the Boar. “We started off wanting to explore the interaction between the mundane and the insane,” says Thorogood, “and although those elements are still there, it has become a totally different piece to what it started off as.”

So what can you get up to in this temporary town? Well, the Coddleshamers have many activities in store for audiences to get involved with, including visits to the church and the pub, which are central to the village, as well as joining the am-dram society, visiting the bakery with its extra-special delicacies and visiting the lair of True, the local witch. Much as in any British town, there is madness, quaintness, window twitching and a touch of Jerusalem thrown in. The residents open their doors for one night only to whoever may wish to visit and uncover the secrets of Coddlesham.

Performances start at 6pm and 7.45pm at the Band Factory, Leamington on 3^rd December.