Surprise, surprise…Littondale sheep farming village goes bonkers for the baa’d!
If you visit Littondale’s picturesque Arncliffe on Saturday (June 20th), you’re in for a big surprise! The village is best known as one of the locations of All Creatures Great and Small, but for one afternoon only, in a unique and unprecedented event, it transforms into the Dales’ own ‘Shakespeare World’, with characters from many of his plays ‘popping up’ and enacting a variety of extracts, speeches and songs at numerous sites around the village.
‘Mr Shakespeare’s Midsummer Madness’- described by organisers as a ‘pop-up solstice Shakespeare promenade’ - runs from 1.30pm until 4 pm.
Visitors are invited to ‘promenade’ around the village, enjoying the varied spectacle: defiant Macbeth prowling on the green, a chaotic wedding scene from Much Ado About Nothing unfolding in St Oswald’s Church, a dramatic scene from King Lear at the village stocks, even an unexpected tryst from Twelfth Night in someone’s back garden….and many more - all with a Yorkshire accent, of course!
This highly original event is the culmination of a number of years activity by a group (‘Discover Shakespeare’) dedicated to engaging local people actively in Shakespeare’s work. This extraordinary project has made our national playwright the surprising focus of enthusiastic community involvement and features participants aged 11 - 90 from across the region. As well as a core of ‘locals’, the group includes two professionals and several members of the Bradford Alhambra ‘Shakespeare Nation’ group who have themselves performed in Stratford with the RSC.
Everyone is welcome to come along and wander…..enjoying the wonderful variety and surprising contemporary/local resonance of so much of his work.
