Lost in time, mysterious Punch Porteous finds new home at Friargate Theatre

Punch Porteous writer Robert Powell and creative practitioner Ben Pugh

WRITER Robert Powell and creative practitioner Ben Pugh are reviving Punch Porteous – Lost In Time! at Friargate Theatre, York, from tomorrow to Saturday as part of York Literature Festival.

Originally commissioned by All Saints North Street for its October 2023 premiere with support from York Theatre Royal, Powell’s poetic multi-media experience depicts Punch Porteous, a mysterious and ordinary man with an extraordinary predicament, lost in time in York, where he is catapulted unpredictably into different eras from c.70 to c.2025 while the city shape-shifts around him.

“He keeps waking up at various points of the city’s past, dazed and confused, but also with a disturbing knowledge that he’s been there before,” says Canadian-born Robert.

Punch seems to remember Romans, Vikings, Saxons, seeing Henry VIII and meeting Dick Turpin. Now a prophecy says he is to appear at the site of an ancient Friary to find his lost wife Eve – and tell all in Powell and Pugh’s imaginative journey in words, music, film and sound featuring the recorded, “disembodied”  voice of York poet Kitty Greenbrown, as well as Powell as Narrator, Nicholas Naidu as Alistair and Imogen Wood as Beatrice.

Nicholas Naidu, as Alistair, and Imogen Wood, as Beatrice, in Punch Porteous – Lost In Time! Picture: Ben Pugh

Inspired by the history of York, Robert first recounted a story of Punch in his poem Punch Porteous Goes To York Races, with further poetic stories in his 2023 commission for York Civic Trust, Time Town, Some Poems Of York.

“We’re totally delighted to be bringing Punch back,” says Robert. “I thought Punch had some more breath left in him after All Saints and we had the sense that there was more of an audience to see it.

“Friargate Theatre is an artistic asset to York with new management, and what better place could we find to stage it: a theatre space, rather than a church, though it was the church [All Saints North Street] that commissioned it, and the church provided a rich, deeply resonant space.

Kitty Greenbrown: Lending her voice to this week’s performances of Punch Porteous – Lost In Time!

“We’re also delighted to be taking part in York Literature Festival, which I was part of for a long time. We talked to Friargate Theatre first, absolutely the right place for it, and then approached the festival about featuring a piece based on poetry, and they responded very positively, especially when you consider they don’t usually have plays.”

Robert has re-written his drama to take in the history of the Friargate Theatre site as a friary. “We now have Punch ‘predicting’ that it was friarage from the tenth century up until Henry VIII’s boys tore it apart, leaving only the wall along the river. We will now be reopening the Friarage, with Punch determined to get there from Baile Hill.”

How will the audience experience differ from the All Saints premiere? “I think that being in a theatre space, rather than a church, the audience will need to use their imagination more, and we will need to work their imagination more to imagine the historic buildings of York, whereas previously we had the incredible prop of the church building,” says Robert.

Robert Powell in his role as Narrator for Punch Porteous – Lost In Time! Picture: Ben Pugh

“Now we have to use our ‘prop’ box to bring to life this semi-visible everyman who had bumped into some famous people but mainly lived among the ordinary people of York, creating that sense of Punch being grounded and having a working man’s sensibilities.”

Describing Punch’s character, Robert says: “He’s comic but serious; he gets drunk but is very philosophical. He’s seen a lot and suffered a lot, as the people of York have.

“With Dick Turpin, for example, what happens is that he becomes like a fairytale figure, but in Punch Porteous, Punch remembers attending Turpin’s public execution, seeing the horror of his feet turning in the air, so I’ve tried to bring the harsh reality to folk tales. Turpin’s death would have been horrendous.

“In Punch Porteous, I’m conveying the friction between the heritage myth and the darker reality that people have had to live with in York over the centuries.

The poster for Punch Porteous – Lost In Time at Friargate Theatre, York

“It’s a story told in a somewhat different way from the historical, heritage way that the story of the city is so often told. So, in a sense, without being too heavy about it, I wanted to disrupt that norm, to think about history from the ‘ordinary’ perspective that most of us experience it from.

“Writers can bring an understanding of history where I think there’s a role for the imagination that runs parallel with the facts. It’s not enough to have the testimonies and the photographs. You need your imagination to bear witness. Hilary Mantel thought a lot about this, about the role of fiction to engage with people, as opposed to documentary evidence. Where documentary leaves off, the imagination takes over, but rooted in experience.”

Robert loves the experience of walking through York, “passing through veils, where one minute you are in the 21st century, and then in the past”. “As a Canadian boy, from an early age, I had a hunger for what York offered,” he says. “Here I am, this little kid in Ottawa, digging in the fields next door, hoping to find Roman remains, so I had to come to York to do that. It’s been a very personal journey for me, and York gives you that in a very intense way.

“What is a Canadian doing fooling around with York’s precious history? To me, from that perspective, as a writer, it’s a heavenly place to be, and as a writer, I’m fascinated by time. Punch Porteous is a great opportunity to have someone who slips and slides through York and time, and so though I’m not originally from York, I hope it has resonance for true Yorkists.”

The cover to Robert Powell’s latest poetry collection, Time Town, Some Poems of York

Punch Porteous may have further life beyond this week’s performances. “I’ve had this niggling thought that might bring a further bit of spark to the exercise,” says Robert. “Was Punch Porteous a real person?

“Since my tales of Punch were inspired by a story told to me about an actual York man called Punch Porteous in the 1920s, who won a small fortune at York Races, it would be fun to ask The Press readers if they’ve ever heard of such a person. I would love to hear from you and I can be reached at https://www.rjpowell.org/.

“I would love Punch Porteous to become one of the urban myths of York and hopefully we are moving in that direction.”

York Literature Festival presents Punch Porteous – Lost In Time!, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, tomorrow until Saturday, 7pm plus 2pm Saturday matinee. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk.

For Ben Pugh’s film trailer of Punch Porteous – Lost In Time!, head to:  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ky2ym8uovcqisjmyahpjt/Punch-Trailer-1.mov?rlkey=0twzzrbektny13v2tu3oe2hkz&dl=0

Robert Powell: Writer, curator and cultural consultant with background in the arts, place-making, photography and journalism. Picture: Owen Powell

Robert Powell: the back story

WRITER, curator, and cultural consultant with more than 40 years’ experience in the arts, built environment, community engagement and media in England, Scotland and his native Canada.

Director of Stills Gallery of Photography in Edinburgh from 1986 to 1989. Worked for Canada Council for the Arts from 1989 to 1997.

Director of Beam, arts, architecture and education charity in Wakefield, from 1997 to 2015, working with many leading artists, architects, and urban designers.

Established Wakefield Lit Fest, festival of reading & writing, in 2012. Made Honorary
Fellow of RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) in 2017.

Robert’s creative writing has been published widely in Canada and UK. Since 2007, produced five poetry collections, plus performances and film-poems inspired by buildings, rivers and other places.

In 2018, artist in residence with Kone Foundation at Saari, Finland. In 2019, undertook community-based artistic project on Irish border during Brexit negotiations.

In 2023-24, writer in residence with York Civic Trust. Wrote and performed in Punch Porteous – Lost In Time!, poetic drama inspired by history of York, at All Saints North Street.

Resident in York for ten years, based in South Bank. Latest publication, Time Town, Some Poems of York, features poetry about a Georgian museum and a man lost in time from his York Civic Trust residency.

The first knock-out Punch poem by Robert Powell: Punch Porteous Goes to York Races

ONE Saturday afternoon, in summer 1930,
at York Races, Punch won a fortune, £17,
tramped back into town, bought a tin hip bath
and took it to the Red Lion, where Uncle John’s wife Rose
was publican and the boatmen-gypsies supped;
required of John to fill it full with drink, then
helped him and two others lurch it, slopping
on cobbles in the early evening light,
to the tram stop, calling on all and sundry
Come take wine with me!
though in truth it was ale;
and cupping its contents for free
to drivers, passengers, passers-by;
and the bath, once emptied,
by a drunken Punch
tossed into the Foss.
Gaze down from the bridge, they say,
in certain light, on certain days,
in the shallows, in the depths,
you can still see it,
among the vagrant
shopping carts,
the swans.

© Robert Powell

York rogue Punch Porteous travels through time and the city in multi-media drama experience at All Saints North Street

Punch Porteous – Lost In Time writer Robert Powell with actors Nick Naidu and Imogen Wood

PUNCH Porteous is an ordinary man with an extraordinary predicament, lost in time in York.

While the city shape-shifts around him, he is catapulted unpredictably into different eras of its history from c.70 to c.2023.

Dazed and confused, Punch wakes to find himself among both famous and ordinary people in a “multi-media drama experience” conjured by York poet Robert Powell, creative practitioner Ben Pugh and producer John Beecroft, inspired by the city’s past and one of its most remarkable ancient churches, All Saints North Street.

York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster is supporting the production too, overseeing rehearsals, working with the creative team and actors Nick Naidu and Imogen Wood.

Running at All Saints from tomorrow (26/10/2023) to Saturday at 7pm nightly, the York-made Punch Porteous – Lost In Time Lost uses spoken word, film, sound and performance to draw imaginatively on York’s history to tell the tale of a sometimes comic, sometimes soulful, rogue: York’s very own legendary Punch Porteous, soldier, philosopher, worker (when absolutely unavoidable), husbandman and connoisseur of ale.

When Punch awakes, homeless and yet oddly at home, the city changes around him through Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Medieval, Georgian, Victorian and our own times and back again! Now Punch, suffused with sights and sounds from the past, will make an appearance in the unique setting of All Saints.

The project is the first of its kind at the church and aims to attract new audiences to appreciate this historic place of worship. This week’s performances follow a three-year restoration of All Saints North Street’s medieval painted and stained glass, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which attendees can view during the interval.

Robert Powell, York Civic Trust’s writer-in-residence, says: “It’s very exciting to be in the final run-up to the production, and to be working with All Saints and such a dynamic team of artists. The church has been a real inspiration to us, as I’m sure it will be to audiences.

“They will be able to hear about Punch’s eccentric adventures and the rich history of York – its rivers, streets, strays, and stories – in one of its most extraordinary sites. And of course we’re expecting the evasive Punch to turn up during each performance.”

Bishop Glyn Webster, priest-in-charge at All Saints North Street, says: “The church has a long history of commissioning works of art and – thanks to money raised by National Lottery players – we are delighted to be able to continue this tradition by commissioning a performance that celebrates our wonderful church, the city of York, and the people who have lived and worshipped here through the centuries.”

York Civic Trust’s “blue plaque” for legendary York character Punch Porteous

Writer Robert Powell discusses the York legend of ever evasive Punch Porteous with CharlesHutchPress

What is the story behind Punch Porteous?

“A few years back, a friend who was raised in York told me a story about someone called Punch Porteous – a story he’d heard from his father – who’d won some money at York Races, had a  tin hip-bath with beer at the Red Lion pub, and then offered it for free to passers-by at the tram stop on Market Street.

“I wrote a poem about that, but this character haunted me. I thought that if someone like that was floating in time like a sort of legend, it would be a great way of exploring York’s past in an unusual way. I began to write a series of poems, and the play has come from those.

“By the way, Charles, have you met this guy?” [Answer: No! Not knowingly. Still awaiting that knock-out Punch encounter.]

How did the multi-media structure of spoken word, film, sound, and performance come to fruition?

“It’s a way of combining skills and disciplines to create something that plays quite joyfully with different genres. Something a bit different for audiences too, something surprising. They say that the past is a different country, so to evoke it creatively, you need different tools! Working with Ben and John Beecroft has enabled this cross-disciplinary approach of sound and words and film.”

Have you worked with Ben Pugh previously?

“Yes. Ben and I made a film called The River Speaks in 2017, based around my poems about the rivers Ouse and Foss. Then, with Kitty Greenbrown, we made two short film-performances for York Theatre Royal as part of their post-Covid Love Bites and Green Shoots programmes. Ben is a terrific producer, but also a talented creative in his own right.”

How have you found the experience of working with actors Nick Naidu and Imogen Wood?

“For me, this was a great new adventure and pleasure. I’ve always liked to hear other voices read my poems, but in this case Nick and Imogen have created fully developed characters and brought the words and stories wonderfully to life. Through them, my characters surprised me, as if I was meeting them for the first time. The written page walks and talks – and also sings, as you’ll see!” 

Actors Nick Naidu and Imogen Wood rehearsing a scene from Punch Porteous – Lost In Time

How did Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster become involved?

“Juliet’s involvement has been an unexpected gift and asset for us. She is always hugely interested in York stories. She liked the work we’d done with the Theatre Royal previously and seems to really empathise with the poems and the story – or maybe just fallen in love with the elusive Punch Porteous! We could hardly have done the production without her experience and skills, and access to the Theatre Royal facilities.”

What led to All Saints North Street being the venue for Punch Porteous – Lost In Time?

“Ever since seeing the medieval windows at All Saints a few years ago, I felt an affinity with this church with its squint and spire and proximity to the river. In particular, the ‘Pricke of Conscience’ window, illustrating the last 15 days of Creation and containing lines from a 14th century poem, seemed to call to me as a writer.

“I was sure it could be the seed for a story about York’s deep past, and the threats of our times – Covid, climate change – and about the lives and loves and fears of ordinary people through the ages. I wondered what woud happen if Punch Porteous walked into the church – over the centuries and again now. So when the church offered this commission, we leapt at it.”

Punch Porteous – Lost In Time runs at All Saints North Street, York, October 26 to 28, 7pm. Tickets: yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/show/punch-porteous-lost-in-time/

ALL Saints North Street, York, is open daily for visitors from 10am to 4pm, with a Thursday lunchtime service at 12.30pm and Sung Mass at 5.30pm on Sunday evenings.

Did you know?

A SQUINT, also known as a leper-hole or hagioscope, is a viewing device in a medieval church. It takes the form of a small opening, cut through a chancel arch or wall, to enable worshippers in an aisle or side chapel to see and follow the ceremonies at the altar.

The poster for Punch Porteous – Lost In Time at All Saints North Street

REVIEW: Love Bites, The Love Season, York Theatre Royal, May 17 and 18

Send in the clown : James Lewis-Knight in his Love Bite, Staying Connected. Picture: Tom Arber

YORK Theatre Royal has reopened after 427 days. The longest, darkest hiatus since the Second World War at England’s longest-running theatre has ended with a declaration of love.

More precisely, 22 love letters to the power of theatre, a craving for freedom of movement, expression and identity and the need for human connection: a collective, anything-but-cautious hug that was as much a sigh of relief as a breath of fresh York air in the form of a fiesta of five-minute vignettes commissioned from 220 applicants.

Let’s repeat that. 22O applicants for £1,000 commissions from York’s diverse arts community that refuses to accept Rich Boy Risha Sunak’s slight that such talents are non-viable. A community that will laugh off the Beano comic’s laughable Hilarity Report finding that the average York resident laughs only 14 times a day, the second lowest in the country. Are you joking? Laugher aplenty could be heard on Monday night, alongside the joy, the sadness, the uncertainty but hope.

Indeed, The 22 would surely challenge York Mix e-letter writer John Wolfe’s scalding, agent-provocateur assertion that York is a city of “no real festivals or decent venues. No sports centres or entertainment for locals. No chance of change either. Why do you think all of the young people move away? Outside of its history it’s drab and bl**dy awful.”

Crying Wolfe? Well, John, in the city of the York Community Stadium, four state-of-the-art cinemas, myriad theatres, ever more restaurants, café bars, coffee houses, independent galleries and a rising tide of street art, perhaps you should go York Theatre Royal, one of the country’s great theatres, tonight (Tuesday) to see the spread of talent, both young and older.

Some were born in the city and are determined to stay here, when the arts are becoming less London-centric; others have been drawn to the city from, for example, Canada and Zimbabwe, and here they gathered under one rainbow umbrella to express their love for York and their place in it. 

Trouble is, John, you can’t buy a seat because, as with the first night, tonight’s Love Bites have sold out at the outset of a Love Season pulsing with life, vigour and, yes, love, topped off by Ralph Fiennes performing T S Eliot’s Four Quartets in late-July.

In the words of chief executive Tom Bird, Love Bites and The Love Season are a chance to “experience again the electric excitement that only live performance can bring. This spring and summer, we’re putting on a season of brave, bold love stories to celebrate the return of human connection. We’re doing it with passion, fervour and heart, as you’d expect.”

Monday night began with the much-loved veteran BBC broadcaster Harry Gration in host mode, toasting his 50-year love affair with the Theatre Royal before making way for the flurry of short pieces.

The screen backdrop could and probably should have been used for announcing each show title, writer and performer, especially as flicking through the e-programme on your phone in the dark would have been distracting for others, even in the socially distanced seating with the capacity reduced from 750 to 340.

Actor Toby Gordon’s hair has grown to Dave Grohl length in locks-down lockdown, but the golden tongue that delivered both Satan and later Jesus’s lines in the York Minster Mystery Plays now glistened anew in the questing, vexed poetry of W H Auden’s O Tell Me The Truth About Love.

Film would feature on several occasions through the night, first in a cinematic riparian soundscape by Ben Pugh to accompany the poetic ebb and flow of Robert Powell and Kitty Greenbrown’s The Angels Of Lendal Bridge, imagining those painted “angels” conversing above the Ouse, recalling so much water that has passed under their iron bridge amid a rising tide of love.

Luella Rebbeck, Jamie Marshall-White and Isla Bowles in The Art Of Losing. Picture: Tom Arber

CAPA College student trio Luella Rebbeck, Jamie Marshall-White and Isla Bowles, in glowing green and pink socks to suit the occasion, were nevertheless in contemplative mood in The Art Of Losing, tempo slow, bodies graceful, in what they emphasised were three “non-love stories”, but instead felt more like a lament; a year’s absence making the heart grow fonder for “what it means to have contact with one another”.

Playwright, poet and slam champ Hannah Davies’s tweets at @davieswords have charted her enervating health frustrations, but no York shaper of words captures a sense, meaning and memory of place so movingly, so evocatively, and what a joy it was to see back on a stage for Love Song To Spring.

Accompanied by Jack “Pascallion” Woods’s exploratory guitar paths, her lockdown love story journeyed through the freshly discovered joys of city walking and spring renewal in York’s myriad green spaces. Listen to Hannah, and you will step into spring with added spring in your step.

New discovery of the night was much-travelled Zimbabwean playwright Butshilo Nleya, who “wondered if my pockets are big enough to carry home with me” as he moved to York.

Explosive bursts of drumming and film imagery by Sunnie Hsia of Butshilo on York streets, stairways and in the dank Leeman Road tunnel formed a triptych with his soliloquy, Ekhaya, Love Them Both?, as he mulled over place, love and self, with humour rooted in observation of York’s idiosyncrasies, but a deeper wish to find his place, wherever he plays his drum, whatever life throws at him. One to watch, definitely.

For aeons, a Nightingale’s nocturnal song has had writers reaching for metaphors for love and beauty. Musician, performance writer and actor Tom Nightingale’s song, Elaine, is to “show everyone my gratitude to the only lady who has ever helped me”, his wife.

In its cautious yet unguarded way it was a song of love and beauty suffused with unshaven, wry, deadpan frankness, delivered in the spirit of John Otway and Jonathan Richman beneath Martin Stephenson’s cocked hat. Nightingale writes as a “therapeutic outlet”, to make sense of life; on Monday, it worked for your reviewer; hopefully it does for Elaine too.

The name in the Love Bites e-programme and in her Q&A answers to CharlesHutchPress is Erika Noda, but the Japanese-English actor and East 15 graduate born in York introduced herself on Monday as Aiaka, the name that a teacher found so difficult, she called her ‘Ai’ and banished her from the classroom for insubordination in challenging her.

So began the journey to Ai, Erika/Aiaka’s semi-autobiographical debut solo-writing work, examining her dual heritage and encounters with racist “microaggression”, growing up in York, (a city once so white it was dubbed “Persil Town”). On the evidence of Ai, this quest for identity remains unresolved, a bumpy ride with such familiar stones in the road as “no, but where are you really from?”.

Even the inventor of Zoom apparently has had enough of all those enervating Zoom-and-gloom meetings, but loveable York musical-comedy double act Fladam (pianist-singer Adam Sowter and funny face-puller and singer Florence Poskitt) found the funny side of this digital bridge to connecting in lockdown-separation in the tartly topical Love Bytes. Aptly, the cheeky, witty, melodious encounter was long-distance, Adam on stage, Flo online, filling the screen with a squelchy face as ripe for comedy as Thora Hird or Victoria Wood.

Surprise of the night? Seeing Paul Birch on stage and then wondering why he does not frequent this space more often. Maybe he is just too busy writing and directing, and running Out Of Character, the York company for artists with experiences of mental illness.

His twisting-and-turning five-minute gem, Lost For Words, was a mind-game in motion as the quicksilver Birch fought to save his most precious relationship in a race against time where a killjoy voice from beyond kept stripping him of the right to use letters from the alphabet, letter by letter. You found yourself joining him in his mental exercise, smugly spotting him still using a ‘V’ when barred from doing so, but cheering him on as he tried to keep his head above water as the wds rn t. Could this be a game show in the making?

All around is frown time, but clown time is never over for the red-nosed James Lewis-Knight, actor and artistic director of Clown Space, purveyor of comical pandemonium amid a pandemic. After a year as the Clown in Lockdown, wandering the busking streets of York turned silent, James unlocked his dusty case to make his mimed plea for Staying Connected. He kept saying “Picnic”, but where Birch was lost for words, James was a little lost for meaning, one punchline short of his Picnic having more bite.

If you heard Dora Rubinstein’s perkily assertive rendition of Gus Gowland’s The Streets Of York blind, you would swear it was from a musical. Sure enough, Gowland, latterly moved to York, is a musical theatre writer/composer with the award-winning Pieces Of String to his name. Gowland’s celebration of Gentleman Jack Anne Lister’s wedding vows in a York church will surely grow from a love letter to a full-blown show, a progression the Theatre Royal should encourage and activate.

Janet-Emily Bruce and Cassie Vallance in Story Craft Theatre’s She Can Go Anywhere. Picture: Tom Arber

In a night of storytelling, butter-rich with words, the shadow puppetry of children’s theatre company Story Craft Theatre silently spoke volumes to the accompaniment of Jonathan Glew’s beautiful score in She Can Go Anywhere. Who knew you could say so much with a sheet, folded and unfolded by Cassie Vallance and Janet-Emily Bruce as if a cotton version of origami, freeing imaginations when the pandemic has shrunk the world to the home, transforming life’s caterpillars into butterflies.

Hannah Wintie-Hawkins was a dancer at the double in her terpsichorean love letter In The Beginning, at once on stage and in digital artist Aaron Howell’s accompanying film, dancing with baby Mabel in her arms.  It was as though Hannah, like us, was watching in wonder at the joy of a new arrival: a beacon of hope amid the pandemic turbulence, only in her case it was moving her to break out into a dance. The dual focus, however, was not wholly satisfying, as she danced with herself, the one distracting from the other, rather than intertwining like mother and daughter on screen.

Richard Kay, actor, singer, pantomime writer and Zoom choir leader, asked his choir members two questions: how and why do you like singing? Whereupon he compiled the answers into the composition For The Love Of Singing, a song as nimble on its feet as Fred Astaire and wittily delivered in the crisply enunciated manner of a Richard Stilgoe, with digital choir backing and the projection of words dancing in and out of formation in David Todd’s playful animation. Clever, humorous, warm and briskly energetic, and tuneful to boot, it would sit well in a cabaret revue.

How did it feel to be back in the theatre after 427 days? Actor Maurice Crichton caught those feelings as he cast his net of observations in Where Are We Now, You And I?, and he looked in such a hurry to deliver his thoughts, it was as if he had come straight from a rehearsal room in tracksuit trousers and The Show Must Go On T-shirt, hair unkempt.

Not that he rushed through his sage counsel, instead understanding feelings of anger, advising a policy of gentleness with each other and not expecting too much too soon, while breathing in the wonder of theatre once more.  How right he was; how emotional too.

Canadian-born papercut artist Elena Skoreyko Wagner, countertenor and composer James Cave and libretto editor Bethan Ellis promised Magic and delivered it too in a four-minute mini-musical, set in a constantly evolving paper theatre that grew ever prettier under Elena’s delicate guidance.

Elena seeks to discover “magic and meaning in everyday, mundane experiences”, the transcendent magic rising through her imagery and the beauty of James’s singing, and in the stasis of the pandemic, a walk, birdsong, gardening, baking banana bread, have indeed taken on a heightened magical air.

On their Twitter account, non-binary, unapologetically autistic creator Ashleigh J Mills (they/them) calls themselves Angry Black Changeling. Identity and accessibility into theatre lay at the heart of In Progress, their spoken-word exploration of the “interplay between race, self-understanding and the shifting boundaries of gender over the span of a solitary year” when experiencing life on the margins.

Ashleigh has kept a Good Words List for four years, and on the screen behind them, the constant, measured flicking through a book revealed word after word standing proud from the text, each building a picture of Ashleigh’s questing, creative fascination with words.

Those words were knitted together to form their soliloquy, a still-evolving expression of Ashleigh as a work in progress in changing times, and only good words can be said of their poetic candour.

Of all the five minutes, nothing brought a broader smile than the sheer joy in dancing together of Alice Boddy and Leanne Hope, friends since Northern Ballet School days, who burst out of a restricted year of living-room creativity to revel in a Love Letter To Female Friendship on the dancefloor in the face of such trying times. They were so in their moment, they were in their own world, but one we all could recognise and wish to join in.

The title, Mise En Aby-Me, may have been baffling, but life model, milliner and costumier Claire Spooner made a fascinating body of work in her physical theatre piece that testified to her desire to tell a story through the human form, rather than words, in this case aided by Richard Stephenson’s artwork and LEMNIS’s music.

Claire turned herself into a Russian doll, peeling off layers, adding masks, revealing how she presented herself in relationships, love in different guises, until nothing could hide the constant persona within, beauty beyond the eye of the beholder.

Deaf director and “self-proclaimed proactive busy-body” Harri Marshall composed a semi-autobiographical love letter to oneself via cards and correspondence collected over the past year…and then handed over the task of interpreting them aloud to Sarah Huggett, accompanied by the exact wording on the screen behind.

I say “exact” because text and voice did not always say the same lines and you found yourself checking for differences as much as concentrating on Harri’s flow of meaning. What’s more, the rhythm of the language was broken too, screen and voice going in and out of synch. Hopefully, I Often Think Of You had a better second night.

Before Reverie came a nightmare, thankfully only briefly, as a flick of a switch belatedly awoke the somnambulant keyboard for composer, pianist and piano teacher Vanessa Simmons’s retelling of a dream in musical form. Ah, what peace, after the fizzing fireworks, as an unperturbed Vanessa rejoiced in “the beauty, sorrow and power of real love”.

Last, but anything but least and rightly chosen as the finale was 5 Minute Call, penned by esteemed York playwright Bridget Foreman, writer of 30 plays, both large and solo, with another, My Place, on the way.

Chief exec Tom Bird’s Irish-accented actor wife, Laura Pyper, took on the guise of a theatre “techie” five minutes before curtain-up, taking instruction on checking lighting for stage positions while capturing how the theatre itself felt about the return of life on its boards, warming up to the reunion with its lifeblood, both performers and audiences. The feeling of love was mutual, as the Pied Pyper led us back to our spiritual home.

These Love Bites left their mark, so much so, let’s hope York Theatre Royal can look to open further seasons with showcases for the city’s talents, £1,000 commissions et al.

Review written on May 18 with later additions

York poet Robert Powell’s new pamphlet to be launched at Explore York online event

Robert Powell’s new pamphlet, Notes From A Border

EXPLORE York is taking its events programme online, hosting the launch of York poet Robert Powell’s new pamphlet on Zoom on July 20 at 7pm.

Notes From A Border River was created as part of Voicing The Bridge, a collaborative arts project on the theme of freedom of movement that focused on the Northern Irish border during Brexit negotiations in 2019.

The project took place on the River Finn that forms part of the border and, in particular, the remarkable 17th century bridge that crosses the river at the village of Clady.

Robert will read from his pamphlet, with its creative mix of poetry, diary, research and photography, and will discuss how half-planned and accidental meetings, encounters, discoveries, walks and musings eventually assumed the form of finished poems.

Zoom launch: York poet Robert Powell

In addition, there will be a question-and-answer session and a showing of Voicing The Bridge, the film made as part of the border project by Jan-Erik Andersson.

The event is free, but you need to book online on York Explore’s Eventbrite page to receive a link to attend. To buy a copy of Notes From A Border River for £7.50, go to rjpowell.org/?page_id=303.

This pamphlet launch is the first in a series of online events planned by Explore York Libraries and Archives over the summer and into autumn and winter.