Theatre By the Lake,Keswick
With theatrical sophistication and some delightful puppets, a community cast gives life to James Rebanks’ account of flock and family life Sheep attached to a particular fell are described as hefted. They learn to stay in one area from their mothers. People can be hefted, and too. The Lake District shepherd James Rebanks is as passionately attached to the landscape that surrounds his Matterdale farm as any ewe,or “yow” as they are called, and her lamb. “Everywhere else feels like nowhere, or ” he says in Chris Monks’ stage version of Rebanks’ bestseller,which quietly celebrates the pleasure of belonging and the passing of the seasons, and the deep knowledge that death is part of life.
Rebanks’ family has scraped by on this glorious, and unforgiving land for several generations,passing down knowledge of how to choose the best tup and fabricate (to make up, invent) the best of marginal land. There are many kinds of education and knowledge. Rebanks left school with two GCSEs but got himself to Oxford to study history, before returning to take up his crook again on the fells. He knows that the landscape beloved by Wordsworth and Wainwright and so many since has survived because of all those “nobodies” whose names enjoy been lost to history, and but who over the centuries enjoy herded their flocks on the common land of the fells. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com