Running Still

Playwright: Andrew Dickson
Performance venue: The Thomas Hardye School Hall
First performance: 11 November 1996
Play Office: I J Brown, 63 High West Street, Dorchester

Director: Andrew Dickson
Assistant director: Jane McKell
Designer: Alice Purcell
Costume designer: Tor Jarvis
Music director: Andrew Dickson
Lighting director: Peter Runeckles
Stage manager: Dave Codling
Play officer: Jennie Runeckles

Brief synopsis

The show concerns itself with time. A Dorchester family, out for an evening at a community play, find themselves swept into a bi-millennial mystery adventure covering four chunks of time each 2000 years apart. They are accompanied by two representatives of the Time business – an archaeologist and a seer. The focal and universal image which initiates the action is that of the 4000 year old skeleton of a young man, with a flint arrow head embedded in his spine, and with a baby excavated on the banks of a causeway enclosure near Maiden Castle. Whither was the young man fleeing and why was he carrying the child? Could he be the link between the Past, the Present and the Future?

We follow the rise and fall of a Celtic swineherd who becomes the first and last gladiator to fight in Maumbury Rings. This adventure in song, dialogue, rhythm and movement endeavours to re-create the powerful atmospheres and timeless magic of Maiden Castle, Maumbury Rings and Dorchester itself. It shows the life of ordinary folk set against the tumultuous tapestry of change wrought by the Second Legion Augusta, the Warrior/Priesthood of the early Bronze Age and even the late 20th century internet and beyond.

We begin in the present, travel back through time, glimpse the future and return to the present moment. Dorchester as it is, as it was and as it might be – no small challenge, but a thrilling and monumental journey.