Update: The film of this performance is now on our Vimeo channel and free to watch at your leisure. You can find it here: https://vimeo.com/840443841
Online screening with Q&A
Friday 30th June 2023, 6pm to 8pm, Zoom
Join us on Zoom to watch the film of this wonderful performance that was recorded on the 3rd June in the Kennedy Hall at Cecil Sharp House, with a busy and vibrant audience. After the screening there will be a chance to discuss the film and performance in a Q and A session with Ewan and some of the project team.
Book a place now and we will send you a Zoom invitation nearer the time.
This musical verbatim theatre performance is set in a London folk club in the early 1960s and draws on twenty-five oral history interviews recently collected for Sweet Thames: The London Folk Club Heritage Project. The project was made possible through the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
It is written and performed by Ewan Wardrop; actor, dancer, multi-instrumentalist and musical comedian. Ewan began his career as a dancer for Matthew Bourne’s dance company, performing around the world, on Broadway and in the West End. As an actor he has appeared in productions for Shakespeare’s Globe, The RSC, The Old Vic, Kneehigh Theatre and Complicite amongst many others. In 2012 Ewan wrote and performed in a critically acclaimed one man show on the life of George Formby for the Edinburgh Festival. He is a member of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and step dances and plays banjo ukulele with The Servants Ball. He also created the experimental Morris side, The Bo Diddlers.
Over six months, Ewan has immersed himself in the Sweet Thames interview recordings and transcriptions to create this one-man one hour show. It is scripted almost entirely word-for-word from the actual interviews and all twenty five interviewees are represented in the performance. One extra interview, recorded on-line at a reminiscence event for the project is also included.
For more information about the project please take a look around this website. Also, our exhibition banners will give some idea of what we have collected and pdfs of them can be seen on the Access Folk website.
Sweet Thames: The London Folk Club Heritage Project is supported by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML), Camden People’s Theatre, Access Folk – University of Sheffield, Folk London and ten London Folk Clubs: The Cellar Upstairs Folk Club, Court Sessions, Croydon Folk Club, The Goose is Out, Islington Folk Club, Musical Traditions Club, Walthamstow Folk Club, Sharp’s Folk Club, Twickfolk and Uxbridge Folk Club.
Image credits to Sue Swift.
With enormous thanks to all of the above, our amazing volunteers and interviewees.
And a very special thanks to the National Lottery Players and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, who funded the project and made it all possible.
