Introduction • Research • The Process • Image Gallery

The Process

The process for The Children’s Castle began at a Wild Night’s Young Company meeting where we all discussed the possibilities of what we could do for the next project. We all agreed that we wished to do a promenade performance and a film in a black-and-white style. Our preferred location for this was at Castle Drogo, as there was a lot of information on the castle, because it was built in the last century. Our idea for a performance fitted well with the Heritage Lottery Fund Young Roots Programme as well.

After we knew the basis of the project, we started to research and had some visitors to talk to us who had knowledge of the area. Next, we had our first trip to the Castle, to get motivation for our story. At the next meeting, we discussed ideas for the story, and tried to piece them together as a whole play. Once we had the story of the play, we had to figure out what the content of the film would be, from the story.

Once we knew what the basic story was, we worked out the order of the scenes, and who would write them. Each of us went away to write our individual scenes. The filming took place at Castle Drogo afterwards, and the editing was done in workshops at the MED Studio.

Then we decided on our parts to play, and rehearsed at the Castle and the MED Studio occasionally, due to weather conditions. The performances took place in August 2007 over 2 days, with 3 performances in total. Most of the performance was recorded on camera by Mark Beeson. When the performances were over, we had some more meetings to evaluate the project and how it went.