The Kings Head Theatre

Events at The Kings Head Theatre

• Caritas at The King's Head Theatre

  Opera

  21 May 2012 to 10 Jun 2012

  I was alerted to the story of Christine Carpenter by Professor Paul Levitt of theEnglish Department of the University of Colorado’. The story as he told it to me was about a young woman who became intoxicated by the idea of living a life so pure that she would be able to receive divine revelation. The church accepted her to live immured in a cell cut off from the mainstream of rural life. After three years of austere solitude Christine realised such a life was not for her, and asked the church authorities to release her from her vows. They refused, it would cuckold Christ they said. She was to remain in her cell for life! At the same time the three touring theatres of Scandinavia commissioned me to write a new play. The idea of a play about a vulnerable young woman who made a decision which ended up imprisoning her, grew in my consciousness as a powerful metaphor for the beliefs with which we all imprison ourselves: political or religious, vocational, matrimonial, self-images with which we fall in love. I couldn’t resist. I began researching. The historical Christine Carpenter became an anchoress in 1329. Documents came to light revealing that the original Christine was immured, broke out three years later and then seems to have been persuaded by the authorities to re-enter her cell. The questions of how she was able to leave her cell and why she wanted to return didn’t interest me. I claimed poetic licence and stuck to the simple story as I’d first heard it from Prof. Levitt: a young person had made a decision about her future life which she couldn’t relinquish, so deeply embedded had it become.

• Carmen at The King's Head Theatre

  Opera

  3 Apr 2012 to 11 May 2012

  A performance of Carmen.

• Charles Court Opera: Mikado at The King's Head Theatre

  Opera

  27 Nov 2011 to 4 Mar 2012

  Comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert.

• Denial at The King's Head Theatre

  Drama

  15 May 2012 to 9 Jun 2012

  The story behind Denial is this. One day someone from my past rang to tell me he had a story which he thought would made a good play: Something awful that had happened to his friends. I sighed. Writers are frequently confronted by people telling them they have good ideas for a play. Usually they are right, it is just that their stories are rarely stories that ‘speak’ to the writer approached. But within minutes of hearing what had happened to his friends I knew that this story was ‘speaking’ to me.