INTERVIEW


CHURCHILL By the Dart INTERVIEW


LINDA


Interview by Kate Cotton DARTMOUTH PLAYWRIGHT


drama group. She also directs and performs and is part of the group’s management team.


L She has written most of the summer


plays for the company since her first in 2007 – ‘The Perfect Man’, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘An Ideal Husband’. Linda turned the lengthy play into a musical with two acts. Norman Cork wrote the accompanying music. Dartmouth Players was established in 1929 by Cyril Maude, a former professional light comedy actor and has delivered more than 220 productions since.


Linda thoroughly enjoys writing scripts,


having resurrected a childhood love. She said: “I always thought I’d do something with writing when I was young. I used to enter competitions and win money for short stories in girl’s magazines such as Bunty and Jackie, and had poems printed in the letters pages too.


“Sadly, my father died when I was 15


and, as my brothers and sisters had left home, I stuck with my mum and went out to earn some money. “As the youngest I was brought up like a single child and had to make my own entertainment. I had a lovely dolls’ house which fired my imagination and was the backdrop to many of my created stories and scenes.”


This vivid imagination has clearly fuelled Linda’s passion for writing plays. Another interest is history and research


inda Churchill is a scriptwriter for the Dartmouth Players community


– she volunteers at Dartmouth Museum - and many of her scripts are adaptations of the lives of local historical figures. During research for her play ‘From Floods Defend’ about the life of Thomas Newcomen, she discovered a previously unheard of bond for money Newcomen had borrowed to build his famous engine. The play was performed as part of the Newcomen 300 year anniversary celebrations in July 2012. She said, “Most people concentrate on the engine but I wanted to look at the story of the man.


“As the youngest I was


brought up like a single child and had to make my own entertainment. I had a lovely dolls’ house which fired my imagination, and was the backdrop to many of my created stories and scenes”


“I started with what I already knew about him. I then found a bond for borrowed money and solicitors accusing him of not paying the money back. I included this breakthrough in the play, and one of his biographers in the audience said this was a fantastic, previously unheard of part of his story. “I really like to get beyond the story,


dig out the interesting details and see the whole person.”


Linda used the same approach in her 2008 play on John Hawley, ‘Blow The Wind Fair’, which begins with him in the Tower of London, on a questionable charge of his crew’s plundering of Spanish ships. Linda’s passion for drama was ignited when her daughter Lorna started attending Judy Lewthwaite’s Strolling Playhouse group. She said, “Judy wanted to do something


for the millennium and I suggested Dartmouth of 1,000 years. “In my first year here I must have read all the local history books from the library and I had so many stories of the town in my head.” Linda helped Judy edit the play’s scenes,


from Dartmouth’s beginnings in Townstal as a Saxon settlement to the present day. The play was performed at St Saviour’s Church.


With her enthusiasm firmly ignited, Linda joined the Dartmouth Players and studied how plays are created, with stage directions and contrasts of high and low scenes.


She said: “I started to watch plays more critically, analysing them and starting to think of scenes in my head. I felt that so many plays were too long, dated and gave things away too quickly.” Through the Dartmouth Players she met her partner Bill Hunt, who writes the company’s pantomimes. She has also performed as an extra in BBC’s The Mrs Bradley Mysteries.


93


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164