Voices of the Moorlands on the stage

BACK in the 1980s, actress Prunella Scales, pictured, read the diary of a Moorland Winter on BBC Radio 4, recording the wild world of a snowed-up hill farm.

The writer was Pam Brough (then known as Pam Sandiford), and the farm was a country mile from Flash in the Staffordshire Moorlands.

Now, Borderland

Voices and Northern International Theatre are to presents Moorlanders, a two-part performance entitled Poet and Peasant and We Live Here.

Commissioned by Borderland Voices, based in Leek, We Live Here uses actors to play back words gathered in present day conversations in and around the village.

Using only the finest local ingredients, it depicts the reality, humour and strengths of a small and scattered community in the high hills and dark moorlands just up the road from Leek.

The play Poet and Peasant portrays the same world back in the 1980s. Characters quite possibly familiar to the audience play out their lives within a framework of spring to harvest. A spokesperson said: “There’s comedy and sadness in equal measure, but it’s a million miles from the media idea of country living.

“This is a celebration of a way of life that is as real now as it was 20, 50, maybe a hundred years ago.”

Northern International Theatre team will consist of writer Pam Brough, director David Bell. actors Leo Atkin, Cilla Baynes, David Bowen, Jaqueline Redgwell, Michaela Warrilow, whose backgrounds span TV, radio and theatre.

The event will take place on Friday, November 9 at Flash Village Hall at 7.30pm. Tickets are £5 on the door.