Ages and Stages The Place of Theatre in Representations and Recollections of Ageing

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Welcome

Ages and Stages is a collaboration between Keele University and the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-Under-Lyme. We will explore 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 forty years. Through research at the Victoria Theatre archive, we will look 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 will interview 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. At the end of the project we will draw the research together in the creation of a new piece of documentary drama. Ages and Stages is funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing programme.

If you would like to take part in the Ages and Stages project, please contact Michelle Rickett , or telephone 01782 733846.

We now have our own blog! Please visit us here. If you have any suggestions or would like to add anything to the blog, please e-mail Michelle Rickett.