All about the taking part.
Carlisle Talks Pageants!
We are now catching up with all the folk in Cumbria who volunteered to be interviewed by a member of the Redress team. Fascinating insights are being revealed in these discussions. Many things that we as researchers take for granted about the collective experience of being part of a pageant, or simply haven’t considered, come to light once people start to talk about their memories of being either a pageant performer or organiser (and in some cases both!)
Carlisle’s pageants were large-scale affairs and the management of these presented huge organisational problems. Many ingenious means were used to tackle getting casts of thousands ready and into the right place at the right time. One of the commonest was to break the whole monumental task into more manageable units by making each episode semi-autonomous until the actual performance when it was the job of the producer to make the whole thing run together for the enjoyment of the audience.
As a result, an interesting fact that has emerged is that those people who immersed themselves in pageantry for months on end during rehearsals and turned up every day or night during performances to play their part, almost never got to witness other parts of the pageant in performance – well, you can’t be in two places at one time I suppose!
What is emerging from this personal testimony is that each episode, to some extent, operated independently from the whole. Interviewees often have extremely clear memories of ‘their episode’ and of the ‘all in it together’ feeling that was a part of this. The benefit of these recollections is the much more detailed picture we get of what it was really like to be immersed in the past in this way, albeit temporarily.
Many of our interviewees were young when they took on pageant roles and being part of this event is bound up in memory for them with formative parts of their early life. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking with Bonnie Prince Charlie AND the Duke of Cumberland! Better known as Mr Ken Ogilvie and Mr Bill Scott. These arch enemies from the past were both part of their school’s Scout troop and became involved with the 1951 pageant through this association. They are still good friends despite the parts they played! For them, the pageant came along when they were in their late teens and it was very clear in speaking with them how fondly they recalled all that was going on in their lives at this time. 1951 was a good year for these young men, and the pageant was a big part of that. It was a great pleasure for me to share their recollections.
Some of Ken and Bill’s memories will soon be available to listen to via our website and as a part of the pageant exhibition being held in Tullie House starting 22nd August.