Edward The Martyr - A Competition!

Saturday 3rd February

Juniors:

Today our competition was launched!

Local theatre company Treehouse are creating a touring play called ‘The Shaftesbury Tales’ based on the life and death of Edward The Martyr, a young king murdered outside of Corf Castle aged only 16.

The competition requires the writers to create fictional stories about characters adjacent to the young king and what their stories might have been.

I suggested the Junior Writers focus on - Edwards Horse, The Queen (who never wanted him to be king), His little brother known as ‘The Unready’ or the ghost of his Father.

The writers were super excited about this task and immediately had the most amazing ideas about potion makers, jealousy and (secretly talking) horse detectives!

Motivated by the amazing prize of £50, a story published in the script and tickets to the premier in a theatre near the castle. The writers wrote more than I’ve ever seen them produce in one session. I was extremely proud and am looking forward to helping them finish and submit the stories after half term.

Young Writers:

For our final session before half term, we took inspiration from a grisly Dorset story – that of the death of Edward the Martyr, who was murdered near modern-day Corfe Castle in 978AD. Treehouse Theatre have organised a wonderful writing competition as part of their upcoming ‘Shaftesbury Tales’ project, and our young writers were very interested in entering.

In order to immerse ourselves in short stories, we tried some different exercises to get our imaginations flying. We listened to three pieces of orchestral music, writing as much as possible during each track, with three different words as provocations – ‘Royal’, ‘Murder’, and ‘Revenge’. These helped our writers connect emotionally to the content of their stories. We also talked about what they already knew about the dark ages, and how this could relate to the competition.

After this, a lot of people already had brilliant ideas for their characters and situations, but we also imagined potential characters who could also narrate or appear in these tales. Could there be a prisoner? Or a spy? Or a random person called Geoff the Unlucky? How could these unique povs be captured on the page.

With our older group, we enjoyed an additional exercise, helping us to focus on what makes a brilliant short story. We watched the classic short film, ‘The Lunch Date’, about an older white woman misses her train in New York and ends up going to a café. As a group we analysed what the short film was about, its themes, and how it effectively took a simple premise and expanded it into something compelling and intriguing.

If you’re also interested in entering this competition, entry is open to everyone living in Dorset until 18th March. More information here: https://www.treehousetheatre.com/shaftesburytales

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Edward The Martyr - A Competition!