The Canterbury Tales:

a new performance by in situ:

inspired by and using texts and narrative from

The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Performers:

The Reeve: Mark Sparrow

The Summoner: Martin Barrass/Boris Mayger
The Physician: Mags Clark
The Pardoner: Mark Dalgarno
The Miller: Steve Adams
The Friar: Brandon High
The Nun’s Priest: Chloe Copping
The Wife of Bath: Richard Spaul
The Shipman: Julie Kendall
The Franklin: Mila Ginsburskaya
The Canon’s Yeoman: Tim Penton

directed by: Richard Spaul

The Performance:

The Canterbury Tales is a multi-focal performance. This is still a fairly new concept in theatre and it means that you are invited
to walk around inside and outside the Chapel, watching whatever you like. The action happens in several different spaces
simultaneously and so you need to choose which bits you want to follow. You can’t watch all of it. Since this is a little unusual,
you may not be entirely sure what’s expected of you, so the following guidelines might help:

1. Please don’t talk during the performance, preferably not to each other and certainly not to the performers. In this respect,
despite the unusual setting, it’s an entirely conventional performance.
2. Please leave things as you find them and don’t touch or tamper with any of the performers’ stuff.
3. For your own safety and that of others, please move around at a slow pace and take care. The ground is uneven in places.
4. You are free to go where you like - there is no ‘wrong’ place for you to be. You’re welcome to sit on any chairs inside the
chapel and to sit down wherever you like outside. Please co-operate with the performers however - and be willing to move if a
performer appears to need the space you are occupying.
5. Please rest assured that there is no audience participation involved. You will not be exposed or embarrassed in any way
during the performance, although you will be addressed by the actors at quite close quarters. You’re not expected to join in, or do
anything other than move about where you wish and watch the performance.

The Tales:

The Canterbury Tales were written around 1380. They are mostly folk tales, collected and written down by Geoffrey Chaucer,
‘The Father of English Literature.’ As such they belong both to an oral tradition of storytelling and to a mainstream literary
tradition. This is reflected in our performance. The actors are for the most part telling the stories in their own words, as
storytellers do, but this is sometimes interspersed with Chaucer’s beautiful Middle English text, as you will hear.
The piece begins with the opening lines of the General Prologue, which is a description of Spring, and describes how the April
showers reinvigorate the dry earth and start producing new life; how flowers and crops start growing, how birds renew their
singing and people from all over the country start itching to go on pilgrimages.
That is the framework for The Tales. Chaucer meets up with a group of pilgrims, of many different professions and trades. They
decide to travel together to the shrine of St Thomas a Beckett in Canterbury. To make the long journey less tedious, it is agreed
that they will each tell a tale along the way.

ALCHEMY:

An important theme in this production is ALCHEMY.

Alchemy is a mixture of chemistry and mysticism, which reached its zenith in The Middle Ages and is described at length by
Chaucer in The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale.
Ostensibly its aim was to convert base metals into gold, and in this it enjoyed no success whatsoever, but its true significance
lies in the complex map it draws of the relationship between the world, the elements, the heavenly bodies and the human psyche.
As such it provides an illuminating way-in to the Medieval World and the world of The Canterbury Tales, in which the social
world is connected to the natural world in a way that might be hard for 21st Century Westerners to grasp.
In the performance you’re about to see, we have created a VOCAL SCORE, i.e. a texture of sounds, musical and otherwise,
that runs throughout the 90 minutes and is intended to evoke different moods and atmospheres. This vocal score is based on the
ALCHEMICAL PROCESS, so a brief explanation of what that process consists of might be helpful.

To do Alchemy, you need a vessel, known as an alembic, and a basic substance to start things going. This is known as THE
PRIMA MATERIA. No one knows what it is, except that it is everywhere and unvalued. It might be earth, base metal of some
kind, rubbish, dung, even human bodily waste. This PRIMA MATERIA then needs to be subjected to certain (al)chemical
processes, one of which is the GREEN LION. In chemical terms this is probably nitric acid, but in alchemy it is the force that
destroys, dissolves and corrodes, but at the same time starts a process of transformation.
At this point, gold and mercury are introduced. This is THE UNION OF THE SUN AND THE MOON, also known as the
ALCHYMICAL WEDDING. Gold represents the Sun, also the male principle (The King) . Mercury (quicksilver)) represents
the Moon, also the female principle (The Queen). The chemical reaction that follows is their wedding, and this is followed by
their DEATH (known as the NIGREDO (Blackening)). This is in keeping with Christian ideas about Death and Resurrection
and also with Medieval scientific thought, which held that fertilisation was followed by death, which in turn was followed by
new life. For example if one plants a seed, that seed ‘dies’ before a new plant can grow.
As in Nature, the resurrection of the dead King and Queen depends on WATER (in the form of rain or dew). Their SOULS
ascend (as in Christian eschatology) (this is known as DISTILLATION) and are TRANSFIGURED, often resulting in a multi-
coloured effect, known as THE PEACOCK’S TAIL.
If this process is carried out successfully, the RED STONE emerges, sometimes know as ‘our Gold’. This is not the same as
ordinary gold, but is a magical substance that can transmute other metals into gold.
Regrettably this substance has never been found.

THE SITE:

in situ: is very fortunate to be allowed access to this remarkable site. We are grateful to Janet Cornish and The Cambridge
Preservation Society for permission to perform here and also for all their help and support throughout the project.
Below are some details about the site and about C.P.S.

The Leper Chapel

The Barnwell Leper Chapel dates back to the 12th century and is reputedly the oldest complete
building in Cambridge. It has an intriguing history - built originally as the Chapel of an isolation
hospital for Lepers—the Chapel survived because of Stourbridge Fair— which became the largest
medieval fair in England, and still took place until the 1930s.

Today the Chapel is owned and cared for by the Cambridge Preservation Society. It is used for
worship, with a regular service at 9.00 am on the first Sunday of the month and for arts and cultural
events.

Cambridge Preservation Society is a registered charity which:

Owns and cares for green spaces
Works to secure protection of the City’s green spaces and the countryside around Cambridge
Rescues and looks after historic buildings
Promotes careful planning and urban design
Provides a focus for those who care about the character and amenities of Cambridge.
The Society owns Wandlebury Country Park on the Gog Magog Hills, which is open every day to the
public, as well as Hinxton Water Mill and Bourn Windmill. The Society is currently developing a new
green space, the Coton Countryside Reserve, with facilities for walkers, cyclists and horse riders,
together with enhanced habitats for wildlife on farmland we own at Coton, to the west of the City. To
find out more about our work or about becoming a member phone us or visit our website.

The ‘Friends of the Leper Chapel’, set up in 1999, works with the Preservation Society to promote
the use of the Chapel for educational purposes, cultural events and as a place of prayer.

For more information contact:

Cambridge Preservation Society: Wandlebury Ring, Gog Magog Hills, Babraham
Cambridge CB2 4AE Tel: 01223 243830 www.cpswandlebury.org
Friends of the Leper Chapel: c/o Garden Walk, Cambridge CB4 3EW Tel: 01223 565127

Thanks also to:

Bella Stewart
Pam Thornhill
Jane Yardley and the Ramsey Rural Museum for lending us their cartwheel.
Chloe Copping for bringing it here.
All our faithful front-of-house volunteers.

The performance lasts approximately 90 minutes. There is no interval.

Please switch off all mobile phones while the performance is in progress.
Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the building or grounds

The performers in this piece have all done in situ:’s Learn to Act courses.
These are open to all regardless of previous experience. If you’d like to know more about them, you can:
call us on: 01223 211451;
email us on: info@insitutheatre.co.uk
or write to us at: 23, Wycliffe Rd, Cambridge, CB1 3JD.