This building was waiting

Wimborne Community Theatre approached me, theatre director Jonathan Petherbridge, and designer, Pip Nash, to run an exploratory workshop that might lead to some sort of site specific project at some point in the future. In December 2008. The first workshop explored the emotions stirred by the two rivers that surrounding the town. Out of the workshop came a poem.

All afternoon the sound of the river
Green grow the rushes along the river bank,
Ambling amiably through Wimbourne's green hinterland.
Rivers swirling under the bridges
Swollen and brown with yesterday's rain,
Bubbling dangerously near Julian's bridge where people end their lives.
The river is dark and fast flowing on this stormy winter's day.
At New Year's brink a young man drowns in the river Stour,
The Stour meanders through the centre.
There are rivers at every entrance to the town,
Flowing forever, changing all the time.

The project had no site, no deadline, no subject and no budget. But it did have a core of theatre makers who had a history of making imaginative community theatre. And now they had a poem.