TA-DAH! THEATRE CO
BIDDENDEN'S VERY OWN AMATEUR THEATRE GROUP
OUR STANLEY
AN ORIGINAL PLAY FOR BIDDENDEN
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David Waters and Geoff Down, co-founders of TaDah Theatre, have written a stage play especially for the TaDah team. The play is a 'comedy-drama' set in Biddenden during WW2.
David explains: “I wrote the basis for ‘Our Stanley’ many years ago for my previous group ‘Masquerade’. We had been working on ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ and I fell in love with Dennis Potter’s concept of adults in roles as children. So I copied it.
"I’ve always been interested in evacuees; they went through such a range of emotions and at a very young age. Imagine being sent away from everything you’ve ever known – your home, your friends and your parents. Shoved on a crowded train with hundreds of crying kids and sent off to the country to stay with strangers. In the countryside, surrounded by fields and farm animals. Some kids were put on ships and sent off to Canada. Imagine that!"
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​"Stanley is savvy; he knows all about our airmen and their short life expectancy – and young soldiers like his brother risking their lives. He’s seen the destruction of the Blitz in the East End of London, and lost close friends and relatives. He’s seen dead bodies. He knows the only way to stop the war was to kill Hitler."
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"So, although very young, he is full of mixed emotions, insecurity and anxiety, His evacuee friends and the villagers are at that age when hormones are rising, and they start to feel love and hate very strongly. It’s an age when you are still learning so much about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. And at times, the two get mixed up."
"Stanley sees the locals as ‘country bumpkins’ as his enemy. He decides he needs to kill their Leader and take over the gang – for him to become a new ‘leader’. A naive and foolish ambition, it’s true."
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​​​​Geoff joined in: "Time passes. Stanley is ambitious. He idolises his big brother and after the war, having lost their parents they work together, building a successful business. Like so many, the war and his experiences in the countryside affected him throughout his life.  The experiences he had as a kid never left him. The cheerful, cheeky cockney kid got left behind. And our Stanley grows up to be a very different character.”
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'Our Stanley' is at Biddenden Village Hall from 29th – 31st May at 7.30pm.