| AdminHistory | 'The Maker and the Tool' was a multimedia theatre folk-ballad written and produced by Charles Parker for the Trades Union Festivals in Birmingham, Bristol, Hayes & Southall, Leicester, Nottingham and Wellingborough. The festivals were supported by Centre 42, an arts centre founded by Arnold Wesker, which aimed to bring quality art and entertainment to working people. The theme of 'The Maker and the Tool' was the relationship between people and technology, workers and their tools. It was performed by the Leaveners, a Birmingham group of singers, musicians and dancers. 'Lonesome Train' was performed at the same festival (see MS 4000/6/1/27).
'The Maker and the Tool' combined folk and classical music, pictures, film, dance, and recorded speech, aiming to experiment with intercutting different forms in order to create what Parker hoped would be a new kind of drama, which would use recorded speech and folk song in a similar way to the Radio Ballads. 'The Maker and the Tool' featured extracts from recorded interviews; folk songs based on these interviews written by Matt McGinn, Johnny Handle, and Ian Campbell; extracts from Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound'; extracts from training films produced by the Coal Board; historical photographs and photographs taken by local camera clubs; dance performed by a group of boys from Birmingham schools; and extracts from 'The Creation' by Joseph Haydn.
MS 4000/6/1/26/35, in which Parker gives a lecture about the project to a group of dockers from Bristol, and MS 4000/6/1/26/56, in which Parker introduces a performance of 'The Maker and the Tool' are particularly useful summaries of his aims. |