Young actors from Tavistock College will be performing their own humorous and irreverent take on the history of Buckland Abbey this summer.
The Right Fork is part of the National Trust's nationwide Untold Story project, a programme supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund with a grant of £375k, which aims to work with youth and community groups to find innovative ways of telling stories associated with National Trust sites.
Since February this year at Buckland Abbey, one of 18 properties involved in the Untold Story, a group of 20 young people from Tavistock College have been working with theatre practitioner Danielle Krage. Together they created Modnar Theatre Company and have been working hard, practising a wide range of drama skills and devising a performance in response to Buckland Abbey and its 700 year history. The project has been enabled through a partnership between the National Trust and Devon Youth Service.
Eva Pemberton, Head of Drama at Tavistock College said: "This has been a very exciting project for the students to be involved in, I am extremely proud of the creative and energetic work that they have produced and very grateful to all those involved and the time they have dedicated to our students. I have to say that I have never seen a National Trust property so alive as when the students have been at Buckland Abbey working – this is a time that they will remember for the rest of their lives, and that in itself is a legacy."
Hannah Jones, Education and Support Services Manager at Buckland Abbey said: "Lots of children from local primary schools visit Buckland and enjoy discovering all about Drake and Buckland Abbey, but it is harder for us to bring young people to Buckland to explore the wealth of stories we have here. The Untold Story project is giving us the support to work with the local youth service to create sustainable projects with local young people, helping them to engage with the heritage in their area."
The Right Fork is a lively and thoughtful piece of theatre, created from scratch by the young people themselves. It takes a look at some of the many characters associated with the house, who have sometimes been in the shadow of Buckland Abbey's most famous resident - Sir Francis Drake.
Director Danielle Krage said: "When the young people visited Buckland, the thing that they really noticed, and began to feel quite passionate about was that the stories of ordinary people aren't told. They wondered what it was like to work in the kitchen, or the garden. So as a result, the piece we have created is quite irreverent towards great figures like Sir Francis Drake, and celebrates the contributions ordinary people made to the estate."