DARTMOOR’S FORGOTTEN PLAYWRIGHT
JOHN FORD’S STORY
created by MED Theatre’s Wild Nights Young Company
written by Teresa Hellyer, Amelia Young, Sam Crouch, Rachel
Caverhill, Sarah Stewart-Watson, Josh Levontine, Gemma Halliday, Harrie-Rae Collins, Kumar Chopra, Lucy Connolly, Lauren
Fabian-Miller,Vicki Gunning, Laura Stewart-Watson, Josie Garland, with input from the rest of Wild Nights Young Company
CAST
John (Jack) Ford Katherine (later his wife) Elizabeth Ford (his sister) Jane Ford (his youngest sister)
Bella (their maid)
John Elford
Mary Fitz, Lady Howard
Anne (her lady-in-waiting)
Sir Richard Grenville
Queen Henrietta Maria
Duke of Buckingham
Lizzie, Mary and Grenville’s child
Josh Levontine
Harrie-Rae Collins
Josie Garland
Rachel Caverhill
Alice Crouch
Kumar Chopra
Sarah Stewart-Watson
Laura Stewart-Watson
Sam Crouch
Chantelle Miller
Louie North
Ellie Head
Characters from Ford’s play Love’s Sacrifice
Bianca
Willa Faulkner
Fiormonda
Amber Pugh
Fernando
Sam Crouch
D’Avalos
Louie North
Musicians
Harry Avis, Amelia Young, Kumar Chopra
Film
Cast: Sarah Stewart-Watson, Laura Stewart-Watson, Amber
Pugh, Louie North, Willa Faulkner; Production: Teresa Hellyer,
Tori Ditchburn, Chantelle Miller, Markel Goikolea
The following also contributed to the creation of the production
Clare Hellyer, Evie Faulkner, Mollie Millward-Nicholls, Francesca
Aczel, Matt Briggs, Oli Strath, Zoe Lyne, Jo Watson
Reseach mentors
Context workshop leader
Script mentor
Music mentor
Music workshop leaders
Costume mentor
Mask-making mentor
Dance workshop leaders
Clown workshop leader
Lighting design
Production Manager
Company Development Officer
Education Officer
Artistic Director
Tom Greeves
Mark Beeson
Katie Shewen
Mark Beeson
Gillian Webster
Paul Wilson
Dave Faulkner
Fiona Avis
Kat Thomas
Rosalyn Maynard
Rohanna Eade
Vince Miles
David Stewart-Watson
Philippa Glanvill
Gillian Webster
Abby Stobart
Mark Beeson
With special thanks to:
Wren Music,Tony Walker, Jonathan Cummins, Penny Ruse, Emily
Cannon, Anthony Beard and all our volunteers.
John Ford, perhaps better known internationally than in his
native area of Dartmoor, was born in the village of Ilsington in
1586. Though he left when he was 14 to study law in Oxford
and London, a rhyme by one of his contemporaries - ‘Deep in
a dump Jack Ford was alone gat/ With folded arms and melancholy hat’ - suggests that he did not wholly leave his isolated
Dartmoor background behind him. Ford’s grandfather on his
father’s side was heavily involved in the Dartmoor tin industry
and the Dartmoor of Jack’s youth would have been full of the
pits and smoke of the tin industry. His major plays, written for
the London stage during the reign of Charles I, deal in depth
with forbidden or thwarted love. His best-known play - ’Tis
Pity’s She’s a Whore - is a study of love between a brother and a
sister, and along with The Broken Heart and Love’s Sacrifice forms
a triptych of tragedies in which the leading characters attempt
to keep faith with the promises they have made to each other
in the face of the most difficult circumstances.
Ford is believed to have returned to Devon around
the time of the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 when the
theatres were closed, and there is a tradition that at this time
he married and had children. His work shares a number of
features with that of Dartmoor’s first identifiable artist, John
Elford, of Sheepstor, including a love of mottos, anagrams and
acrostics. Elford, whose family was also involved in the tin
industry, lived for a time at Widecombe, a neighbouring parish
to Ilsington, and it is likely the two men knew each other well.
Elford supported the Parliamentarian side during the Civil War,
but eventually seems to have found Cromwell’s regime intolerable. There is a story that he hid from Cromwell’s troops in a
cave on Sheepstor and occupied himself by painting or drawing on the walls, which inspired the film that begins John Ford’s
Story.
Ford’s work shows an empathy for his female protagonists that seems modern, and far in advance of his time.
Interestingly another notable Dartmoor character from this
period was Mary Fitz, Lady Howard, of Fitzford House and
Walreddon, whose life could have come straight out of one
of Ford’s plays. A widow three times by the age of 26, reputedly one of the most beautiful and certainly one of the most
independently-minded women of her day, she became the first
female person in England to represent herself in suing successfully for a legal separation from her fourth husband, Sir Richard
Grenville. Since she was a part of the royal court circle around
Queen Henrietta Maria (wife of King Charles I) for whom Ford
wrote his later plays, Mary and Ford would have met there.
For a brief period, Platonic love - which features in Ford’s play
Love’s Sacrifice - was a fashionable subject at the English court,
promoted by the Queen.
The play begins around the year 1648, and moves
swiftly backwards twenty years to the time when Jack Ford
first meets Mary in the company of John Elford, who at Sheepstor would have been a neighbour of the Fitz family in Tavistock.
In the autumn of 1628 the Duke of Buckingham, the increasingly unpopular royal favourite, is assassinated, beginning a chain
of events that leads eventually to war. Unlike Mary and Elford,
who were on the parliamentarian side, and Sir Richard Grenville, who allied himself with the King, Ford seems to have had
no political allegiance.
Buckland Abbey was once owned by the Grenvilles
and then the family of Sir Francis Drake, into which the Elfords
married. As such, and with many of its 16th and 17th century
features still intact, the Abbey is an appropriate venue for this
production.