My favourite Q&A so far
Yesterday an appreciative George Eliot Fellowship audience heard our Joe’s story at the Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre. Afterwards at the end of a lively Q&A session a gentlemen raised his hand at the back of the room and said to Jon:
I’d just like to say that as a member of the Liggins family, I believed every word you said.
The comment brought the house down and was a lovely end to a really enjoyable afternoon.
ANOTHER CHANCE TO MEET OUR JOE
THE ORACLE OF THE TAPROOMS
by Vanessa Oakes
Joe in the archway of the George Eliot Hotel
If you missed Joe on his recent outings around Nuneaton you can hear his story once more at 3pm on Saturday 19th May 2012 at Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre in Nuneaton. The performance which last approximately 20 minutes is part of the George Eliot Weekend which is organised by the George Eliot Fellowship and is followed by a Q&A with the creative team. The performance is FREE to attend - donations welcomed (by anyone who is not attending the whole weekend event).
i needed to belong somewhere and those words anchored me… the truth is living like this… adrift… always alone with no comforts to speak of… it leaves one so full of longing…
After being asked to leave Cambridge, Joseph Liggins (1801–1872) struggled for years to make a living before being wrongly identified as the author of ‘Scenes of Clerical Life’ and ‘Adam Bede’. In 2010 while I was working with local teenagers who were photographing the George Eliot statue, a homeless gentleman who was bedding down for the night in Debenhams’ doorway called over to us with a warning, ‘don’t you go taking the p*** out of my George Eliot or she’ll come back and haunt you!’, he inspired me to write this short play.
In January, over two days, in five venues (10 performances) including outdoor spaces we witnessed a spellbinding performance by Jon Morris, directed by Mark Evans, of the new play by Vanessa Oakes. The play is a monologue by a now vagrant Joseph Liggins and it is brilliantly written and acted. Our congratulations to Vanessa and her team. John Burton
If you’d like to find out more about the whole weekend which includes talks by Dr. John Rignall (George Eliot and Europe), Professor Ken Newton (George Eliot and the Ethical), Dr. Valerie Fehlbaum (George Eliot and Geneva) and the unforgettable Charabanc Tour of George Eliot Country please contact John Burton jkburton@tiscali.co.uk Prices for the George Eliot Lecture Day on Saturday 19th May including lunch (£25 members £30 visitors), excluding lunch (£18 members £23 visitors). 1929 vintage Charabanc tour of George Eliot country Sunday 20th May 10am – 6pm including all refreshments and lunch £40 (includes a tour of Arbury Hall).
The Heritage Centre has a large free car park and is adjacent to the Craft Centre http://www.nuneatonandbedworth.gov.uk/leisure-culture/tourism-travel/visiting/craftcentre
I hope to see some of you loyal lurkers there!
Foleshill, Coventry
I grew up in Exhall (near Coventry) and have always loved the Foleshill Road, the route the number 20 bus took us into the city. While I regularly passed the end of George Eliot Road, I had never paid a visit to the house she lived in there with her father – if I’m honest I didn’t know it still existed until a few years ago. So on Wednesday I was more than a little excited to be visiting along with John and Viv from the George Eliot Fellowship.
George Eliot House, 9 George Eliot Road, Foleshill, Coventry (Bird Grove)
The outside certainly didn’t look too promising but the warm welcome we received from Kasem and other members of the Coventry Bangladesh Centre was wonderful. I’m sure George would have loved the fact that the building is helping so many people through its training activities, business start-up support, health awareness as well as advice and guidance.
Main staircase
Viv standing in what we think would have been George’s bedroom
Joe on You Tube
For all those people who have asked to see a recording of our Joe on the streets of Nuneaton – here he is (pop up performance number seven for actor Jon Morris) at the George Eliot Obelisk on Saturday 21st January 2012. Follow this link for part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSgKAm9wXCU and this for part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfrl14owcsU.
Joe will be popping up again in Nuneaton on Saturday 19th May 2012 as part of The Fellowship’s George Eliot Day – for more information contact John Burton jkburton@tiscali.co.uk
Still desperately seeking George
Although this is the end of my residency at the museum & art gallery in Nuneaton, it isn’t the end of my own search for George. While ‘The Oracle of the Taprooms’ was written specifically for Nuneaton audiences and local sites relating to George, I am also interested in her life in Coventry (1841 – 1849), and her relationship with both her father and her faith. I haven’t even started researching the new play yet but it does have a title (I can’t seem to start a play until I have a title) – ‘A Ploughed Heart’. Of course at this stage of the process there is no funding for the project or any partners in place so please don’t expect my blog posts to be as frequent in the future but do check in/subscribe for occasional updates.
Many thanks for joining me on the journey so far (5,788 views, 312 comments) and sharing what George means to you. I hope that it has inspired all you loyal ’lurkers’ out there to seek out George for yourself, to learn about her inspiring life story and read her incomparable novels.
everyone talked about her as a staggering genius…
Catherine Nisbet (Senior Museum Officer)
At the end of my residency with the museum & art gallery I asked Catherine if it had changed the way she now approached George.
i think it has… it’s always nice when someone is enthusiastic about the objects we care for… we think the collections here are really interesting…but because we felt there had been a lack of interest you start to think are we mad? these objects speak to people about her life story… all the objects point to this interest, particularly local interest… it has reignited an interest for me in the collection… i spent a lot of time trying to gauge people’s interest in her… the residency has clarified that people are not necessarily interested in reading her books… if it’s about her life… should she be a figure of inspiration or aspiration for local people… she being independently famous and wealthy from hard work… i think because she was a literary figure i wasn’t interpreting her as i would other things… there’s no point in me doing an exhibition if no one is interested… we know that there are people who are interested but what is it about her that they find so interesting and want to learn… having someone come in with different techniques has helped… what you interpret has to be interesting… it’s easy to see her as very different… you start to read her books for local connections… maybe i need to go back to her life and how she lived it and stop obsessing about whether there is a line in a book about this character that’s relevant to local history…her changes over religion… how do you deal with big moves… operate within a society different from the one you grew up in… the question i keep coming back to is why don’t we know the specifics of her life… no one is clear what she died of… these are not just my questions, they’re questions that a lot of people have… i need to stop worrying about the books and start concentrating on her and the journey she went on… i struggled for a while because everyone talked about her as a staggering genius… at what point is she not a person… it’s about explaining that… she’s starting to chime with the act of life film* where one of the people is talking about what they want… wealth, fame, she achieved all those things… within the social conventions of the time she carved out a radically different life for herself… a number of things that led to that were not conscious choices… she set out to write to support herself.
* An Act of Life (2008) written and directed by Vanessa Oakes and performed by students from King Edward’s College, is a short film which was originally commissioned for the exhibition ‘Fit for Heroes’ (Nov 08 – Feb 09), it is currently installed in the Local History Gallery at Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery.
Joe’s back in the papers (although this time it’s not The Times)
I finally got to see a copy of the press article in the Nuneaton News courtesy of Geoff at Corley Tai Chi
