Treehouse Theatre
Interactive theatre and drama for the history curriculum,
plus story telling, pantomime, festival fun and more...
The Shaftesbury Tales: Summer 2024
The Stories
This is a tale-telling competition, as was Chaucers ‘The Canterbury Tales’.
Our storytelling competition enabled anyone of any age living in Dorset to have their pieces included in the touring work.
The winning Tales were collected together and published as a booklet-programme: 'The Shaftesbury Tales', with some adapted for performance in the touring show.
We ran creative writing workshops aimed at sharing writing skills and inspiration to empower new writers to enter the competition.
The workshops and competition were free and open to all ages and abilities.
The Shaftesbury Tales began with Creative Writing workshops, to inspire and inform people of all ages, to pick up a pen and get creative.
We visited the schools located along the route of St Edwards Way to tell children about the writing competition, and to run Creative Writing Workshops
to inspire and empower them to enter their stories.
We also held 'Open to all' workshops, generously hosted by Shaftesbury Arts Centre & Scribblers Writing Group, Wareham Library, and Sturminster Newton Library. These were free to attend.
The workshops were led by 3 industry professionals:
John Foster (BAFTA award winning founder of Doppelganger Dialogues)
Charmaine K (SISATA Open Air Theatre)
Ben Lindsey-Clark (Treehouse Theatre).
“I haven't written for years and feel like now I have a good place to start”
“I enjoyed ALL the exercises - brilliant - thank you so much”
“I enjoyed talking about how daily writing helps to provide inspiration”
“Ben was so full of energy and ideas”
“I thought the combination of writing tools and exercises, plus the explanation of the theatre production was great”
"Lovely session. Very enjoyable and interesting for everyone involved. Thanks very much for a fun afternoon"
Short Story Writing Competition
Inspired by Chaucer, ‘The Shaftesbury Tales’ is a collection of stories – both written and performed.
A huge thank you to everyone who wrote and submitted a story for ‘The Shaftesbury Tales’ Short Story Writing Competition. SISATA Director Charmaine K who sat on the judging panel said “We were blown away by the high quality and amazing variety of stories”.
The writing competition closed on 18th March - the date of Edwards murder (and now his feast day).
Just shy of 100 stories were read, enjoyed and deliberated over by our 4 strong judging panel.
Congratulations to all the Winners! They will enjoy a cash prize, performance tickets, and see their story published in our booklet-programme.
With grateful thanks to our Judges:
John Foster
(BAFTA award winning founder of Doppelganger Productions)
Dee Hughes
(Arts University Bournemouth & StoryWorks.org)
Charmaine K
(SISATA Open Air Theatre & Doppelganger Productions)
Ben Lindsey-Clark
(Creative Director Treehouse Theatre)
Listen again!
Alfred FM, 11th April edition, listen from 31:50
The interview features Ben Lindsey-Clark and two of our competition winners who both live in Shaftesbury, Anne and Stuart.
It's really interesting to hear them both reflect on their work, and the wealth of knowledge that underlaid their stories. As well as being wonderfully written, both stories offered interesting and slightly controversial view points of the accepted 'truth' - the kind of contradictions that make history so fascinating.
Read all the winning Tales here
Stuart Edwards:
“As a keen local historian, I knew quite a lot about the story of the murder of the boy King Edward and the power struggles that lay behind it. I was watching The Traitors TV series and that gave me the idea for the title and the dynamic between the two main characters, Ælfhere and Dunstan. I was particularly influenced by an episode with traitors and faithfuls walking behind the coffin of a murdered faithful in a baroque funeral cortege. I am pleased with my portrayal of the ambiguities and tensions in the relationship between Ælfhere and Dunstan.
I have never written fiction before. I am delighted and surprised to win, as are my family who did not know I was entering. I am curious as to whether and, if so, how my story will be incorporated into the play. I am looking forward to seeing the performance at Shaftesbury Abbey”
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Betsy Wragg:
“I chose to write from the point of view of Ethelred the Unready because it gave me a chance to explore interesting themes like unreadiness and being compared to a “more competent” sibling. My favourite part of my entry is the poetic rhythm and religious imagery in paragraph 3. I have enjoyed writing poems and fiction for as long as I can remember. I attend the Saturday Young Writers’ workshop at Poole Lighthouse. It has been a great way to meet people with similar interests to me and I find the instructors very engaging. I am proud to have won the competition and it has encouraged me to keep writing and entering competitions.”
Juno-Blake Cree:
“I've been watching a lot of The Witcher recently and reading Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, both of which inspired me. I've been writing since middle school and I'm currently studying creative writing at Arts University Bournemouth. It was fun to win this competition and it has boosted my confidence to apply for things”
Lyra Spencer:
“Before writing I did a bit of research on King Edward the Martyr but because it was so long ago I didn’t find much, which meant my story could go anywhere I wanted it to! My favourite part was the twist at the end which I think just made it all a bit more exciting and vague keeping the mystery alive but a bit more unpicked. I’ve always loved reading and writing. English has always been my best subject and I currently do
it now for A level so I’m always up for a writing competition!! Winning this one has definitely given me a boost of confidence. I’ll be sure to look out for more opportunities to show my writing skills and practice creative writing and storytelling as I think it’s a great skill, and of course always very entertaining.”
Giulia Rose Ceccolini:
“I started by thinking of a setting for my story and I put some characters in it. But I thought I would be able to make it better by adding different ideas. So I thought about lots of different things and combined them together into one whole idea. Then I started writing and redrafting it until I could do as much as I could. I am most pleased with the part where I used the idea of the luxury barn or else I would have not been able to write about the horse wearing Squish Mellow clothes.
I have been writing stories since I was about age 4. I have written a short story with 5 other friends during the lockdown when I was 4 yrs old. One of the mums published this book on Amazon. I go to a Junior Writers group at Poole Lighthouse once a week.
When I heard that I had won the competition I was really happy and proud of myself. Because I have more confidence I will start to write more and more stories and try and spread my imagination”
Jacob Wall:
“I chatted ideas with my mum, and as I love school and maths I wanted my character to yearn to be able to do it. My favourite bit of my story is when Kenric gets his new cloak.
I just like writing sometimes and I enjoyed doing this because me and my mum both spent time together writing and discussing ideas.
I’m really proud of winning - it made it all worth it! I’d like to try writing again - it’s always nice to have something to work towards with a topic. I can’t wait to go and watch the theatre show!”
Anne Philpott:
"I just thought, wow. Is this really the truth or is this something where she's been cast as a kind of wicked stepmother as it were, you know, like that classic cliche writing. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at YouTube videos and different sources and found that some people questioned that that might have been the case. That got me really intrigued. I really like the idea of looking back and then rewriting history from a different perspective or from, in this case, a more feminist humanist perspective, because you know, the history books, we read now are obviously written with a particular perspective on that time."
Highly Commended
We were blown away by the high quality and amazing variety of stories, and wanted to include as many as we could in our performance.
So our judges chose a further collection of Highly Commended stories, from which 18 were selected to include aspects of in the script.
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Aelfric's New Clothes – by Ben Biggs, Bournemouth
The Witness’s Tale – by Aline van den Broek, Child Okeford
The Blacksmith’s Tale – by John Browning, Dorchester
The Maiden’s Tale – by Jackie Burgoyne, Portland
The Clothier’s Tale – by Carl Davies, Shaftesbury
A Miracle Tale – by Elizabeth Foster, Shaftesbury
The Downfall of Kind Edward – by Sophia Goodwin, Corfe Castle
The Journeyman’s Tale – by Jules Horn, Gillingham
The Cook's Tale - by Rosalyn Huxley, Bridport
My Name is Ollan – by Peter Lawrence, Weymouth
The Widow's Tale – by Laila Lock, Bournemouth
Winfrid's Miracle – by Suzanne Newson, Weymouth
The Ward's Tale – by Angela Pawley, Blandford Forum
A Miraculous Tale – by Maggie Pierce, Shaftesbury
The Playmate’s Tale – by Lesley Upham, Sherborne
The Tale of Bones – by Clive Wallis, Christchurch
Amelina’s Walking Tale – by Carol Waterkeyn, Verwood
Julia Allen, Mystery Solver – by Iris Whiddon, Poole
Far from being a series of ‘talking heads’, our playwright Ben Lindsey-Clark has woven together characters, plot lines, perspectives, and themes from the 26 stories into the play that will tour in July.
It can only be described as a melting pot of characters and ideas from people all over Dorset!
All of the 26 stories we’ve drawn from (8 winners, and 18 highly commended) are published in full, in the booklet-programme which accompanies the project.
