Precious Bane. Bryony Lavery

Lewis

      Hannah Litschmann

      Mariella Lloyd

      Kate MacDermott

      Phil Marsh

      Jill Mavrogordato

      Fiona McBride

      Anna McCann

      Mike McCartney

      Grace McCartney

      Bryony McCartney

      Judith Mennell

      Hollie Mennell

      Diane Monether

      Christopher Moore-Bridger

      Susie Newell

      Gill Oldaker

      Anthea Ollerton

      Susie Osborne

      Gill Otto

      Marilyn Owens

      Maggie Percy

      Harriet Pittam

      Pat Prettyman

      Jenny Price

      Rosie Price

      Megan Pritchard

      Rosie Read

      Liz Reeves

      Jean Richardson

      Katie Roberts

      Ali Robinson

      Poppy Robinson

      Sara Robinson

      Sara Robinson

      Jennifer Ross

      Monica Scott

      Liam Shaw

      Catherine Shaw

      Helen Shaw

      Quentin Shaw

      Sarah Smith

      Hilary Stephenson

      Jonathan Sterling

      Neil Stuttard

      Gerry Thurgut

      Joan Walley

      Mark Walmsley

      Ruth Walmsley

      Wendy-Jane Walton

      Ruth Walton

      Ruth Watson

      William Webb

      Peter Wilshaw

      Margaret Wood

      Bronte Woodruff

      Gemma Woodward

      This list is correct at time of going to press.

      Pentabus Theatre would like to thank everyone involved in this production.

      Pentabus Theater

      Pentabus Theatre is the national new writing company based in the West Midlands. The company was founded in 1974 to tour the five counties of the Midlands, and now tours to small and middle-scale venues throughout the country. The company also has a strong reputation for large-scale outdoor productions such as Precious Bane. Pentabus won a Fringe First award for Silent Engine in 2002 and an Arts Council of England New Writing Award in 2003, and has a thriving writers’ development programme and extensive education projects for all ages. For further details please visit www.pentabus.co.uk.

      Artistic Director Theresa Heskins Development Director John Moreton Associate Producer Louise Chantal Assistant Director Jo Cartell Administrator Pat Price

      Board of Trustees Richard Beaumond, Deborah Catesby, Ed Collier, Trina Jones, Robert Petty (chair), Simon Price, Kevin Shepherd, Kim Tanser, Mary Wells.

      Pentabus Theatre

      Bromfield

      Nr Ludlow

      Shropshire SY8 2JU

      Telephone [phone]

      Fax [phone]

      Email [email protected]

      Website www.pentabus.co.uk

      Pentabus Arts Limited

      Registered Charity no. 287909

      Company no. 0747169

      Pentabus Theatre is supported by:

      Arts Council England (West Midlands)

      Shropshire County Council

      South Shropshire District Council

      Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

      The Peggy Ramsay Foundation

      National Foundation for Youth Music

       The Mary Webb Society

      If you have enjoyed this production of Precious Bane and would like to find out more about The Mary Webb Society and their events please see the sociiety’s website on www.marywebb.2ya.com or contact the membership secretary on 01952 419078.

       ‘If music be the food of love, Get out your recorders’

       – Mr Snow, Headmaster

      Long, long ago, in The Mists of Time, when I was at school, our music teacher was the turbulent Mrs Waller, who was famous on two counts: one, she was reputed to own a dinner service which could accommodate a seating of twenty-one people, all with the same pattern on all their plates…and two, she always had to go to the staff room for ‘some notes’ halfway through every music lesson, returning ten minutes later, much calmer and smelling of cigarette smoke. At every Parents Evening, her first words to my parents were always, ‘You don’t really want me to tell you what Bryony’s like at music, do you?’, and my parents, who did know exactly what I was like at music from the many entertainments mounted by my sister and I in our kitchen, bedroom, back garden…would say, ‘No, of course not!’, and the talk would be of Other Matters. I thought the clef-carved doors to the World of Harmony, Finding the Note and Singing in Tune were forever closed to me. Then I started to write for a living and realised I could sneak in the back door as a Lyricist. What’s more, when you are adapting the work of a great, poetic wordsmith like Mary Webb, you can pretty much use all her wonderful words as the lyrics! So it is, this year, that I get to be a part of this exciting event…not only do I work with the peerless Theresa Heskins again, whose eight talented actors tell the fabulous story of Precious Bane, but I am also part of Mary Keith’s gorgeous, haunting music, sung by the fantastic choirs of Shropshire, Worcestershire, Somerset and Berkshire. For someone with a tin ear and Florence Foster Jenkins’ talent for rhythm…it doesn’t get any better than this! If there is a heaven on earth this summer, it is here, it is here, it is here.

      Now all I aspire to is that 21-person dinner set…

      Bryony Lavery

      June 2003

      The Planning of Precious Bane or how to make 200 new friends!

      Pentabus Theatre, the small touring company based in Ludlow which will celebrate their 30th anniversary this year, enjoys two quite distinguished and distinct reputations: one for nurturing and touring new plays, often with a theme that is resonant of the most rural county in the UK where the company flourishes, and the other for large-scale outdoor community plays in Shropshire which involve a vast cast of local people alongside the professional actors. Bryony Lavery’s SHOT THROUGH THE HEART was one of these big productions, produced in the atmospheric setting of Ludlow Castle in 2000.

      Bryony’s PRECIOUS BANE is neither one nor the other of these types of productions – it is both! That is, a world premiere script by an award-winning writer with a community choir involving up to 100 singers at every performance. Last year the production sold out in 4 counties throughout the UK – Shropshire,