Eastern Angles' new site specific production, centring on the town of Eye, is a 100 per cent immersive experience designed to celebrate one of Suffolk’s greatest towns.
Part walking tour, part radio play, part history drama and part poetry recital, Streets Aloud! is the brain child of experienced Eastern Angles producer Karen Goddard, in collaboration with independent sound designer Jack Baxter. The project is part of a wider community engagement project, which sees the theatre company bringing interactive projects and performances to different towns and villages in Suffolk, and working with local residents to reflect the spirit of their town.
Producer Karen Goddard describes Streets Aloud! as a sensory experience; an audio accompaniment to a 25-minute walk around the centre of Eye, designed to reflect both the past, present and future of this historic north Suffolk town.
Although the final piece has been shaped and polished by Karen and Jack, the substance of the audio has been provided by the people who live there.
'Streets Aloud! is part of the Market Town Bound initiative,' says Karen. 'The idea is to go to a number of market towns in Babergh and Mid-Suffolk and devise various creative projects. The most important thing is that they are all co-creations. It’s all about getting the local community involved – inspiring their creativity and getting them talking about their lives and where they live.
'I chose Eye because it’s not a million miles away from me and I know it fairly well. But, it also fits in with Eastern Angles' other projects in Stowmarket, Hadleigh, and a new one in Sudbury featuring a decommissioned red telephone box, which again is about collecting people’s stories about life in their town.'
Karen says the inspiration for the walking tour audio drama came from an earlier project she staged in Ipswich after lockdown. The promenade performance told stories about the Suffragette movement in the town during the early 20th century. People heard dramatic recreations of events at the places where they happened.
'Jack and I had a conversation; we already knew each other and I invited him to do the sound design because he also lives nearby. I think it’s quite important to involve people who know the town and the area.'
To make sure they kept everything local Karen and Jack decided to collaborate with the Bank Arts Centre in Eye and were given permission to use it as their base. 'We immediately put a call out for stories about Eye, and for art work which will feature in an exhibition that will run alongside the walking tour experience,' says Karen.
By early spring the pair had received 46 varied contributions from people of all ages, which they whittled down to 16 to ensure the audio would be focused. 'We had a good mix of themes and ages. I edited them into a rough script, which I then handed to Jack and together we worked on them to create a sound collage.
'I wanted to have the people’s words read or performed by professional actors to make it a bit special and give the project that extra shine. I tried to cast it intelligently because it was important to get the accents right. For example, there’s a contributor called Chris Willoughby, who sent in some information about his work on renovating the castle. He came from Lancashire and I made sure that the actor knew this. I cast a lot of Eastern Angles actors because they work with the Suffolk accent all the time. It’s really annoying when film and TV get the accent wrong, so it was very important for us to get it right.'
Another example was local man Roger Lay, who very definitely had a Suffolk accent, says Karen. We needed to get his audio exactly right, so we drafted in Eastern Angles founder Ivan Cutting to voice him.' Other former and current Eastern Angles actors include Radhika Aggarwal, Sally Ann Burnett, Rosalind Burt, Seamore Nelson and Greg Wagland.
Once the dialogue and the vocal backgrounds were captured, Jack and Karen went out onto the streets of Eye to work out the best route for the walk, incorporating places mentioned in the recordings and timing it to match the stories to an average walking speed.
'At the start we deliberately didn’t have any structure,' says Jack. 'I told Karen that I had to throw all the elements at the canvas to see which ones stuck and weave the soundtrack around those. Once we had a rough version of the soundtrack we then walked the route again and timed it so we could get everything synchronised as best we could.'
For Karen it was important that the soundtrack worked as a piece of entertainment as well as an informative commentary. 'What we were after was a cross between a fact based museum tour and an abstract art piece. It had to capture the spirit of the town and its people as well as celebrating its history. We wanted to make it accessible for as many people as possible.
'We also wanted to create a full soundscape so you could listen to it either by walking the route or listening to it at home like a radio play. The soundscape will allow you to walk the route in your mind from the comfort of your armchair. If you know the layout of the town it will make the remote listening be even more effective.”
In designing the soundscape, Jack strove for a sense of the place. 'We wanted a bit of birdsong, some background traffic noise, but we also wanted the speech to be front and centre. In the section where we talk about the arrival of the swifts, there are elements of birdsong, dropped in and out, and there is a base layer of nature atmosphere, but nothing that is too intrusive. I worked on the individual sections and then blended them together with little bits of music so the whole thing flowed.'
He also enjoyed creating more abstract atmospheres for the poetry so they didn’t feel too sparse compared to the more naturalistic historical pieces. 'What I love about it is that we have got so many different tones and voices in there,' says Karen, 'and there are moments of real humour too, so it has a richness to it that a radio play would have, something that, perhaps, a dry museum commentary wouldn’t have.'
Karen says she's very happy with the way Streets Aloud! has turned out. The factual elements, such as the continued history of Eye Castle, are linked with people rather than simply dry pieces of information, impersonal dates and events. They're balanced with dashes of humour from the poetry and creative writing, along with some very perceptive contributions from the students at Hartismere High School.
'The historical portrait of the town comes right up to date with the owner of the hardware store talking about how the town’s shopkeepers managed to keep their heads above water during the Covid lockdown and a nervous aftermath.
Older voices celebrating Eye’s historic past are balanced with children from the local school looking to the future. 'We see that this classic Suffolk town may have its roots way back in the mists of time,' says Karen, 'but it is also continuing to evolve and develop with the children who will take it on into the future.'
You can access the Streets Aloud! Tour of Eye from your smartphone (use headphones/earbuds for the best experience) or you can experience it remotely from your laptop. Go to the Eastern Angles website easternangles.co.uk/streets-aloud-eye-town
