We are delighted to announce our London premiere of WITCh - the show has just been confirmed by the Culture Bite festival. We will be performing at The Great Barn, Manor Farm Site, Bury Lane, Ruislip, HA4 7SU at 7.30pm on 30th October 2019. The Great Barn is a stunning venue and could not be more perfect - just look at the photo!

As if our London premiere wasn't exciting enough, it will also mark our 75th performance! The show continues to be as popular as ever and just when we think it has gone as far as it can, something else happens to extend the adventures of Margery, Latimer and Tyrell.

Ticketing for this performance will be managed by Culture Bite and we will share details as soon as they become available. In the meantime - please save the date!

We were recently invited back to the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle to bring the show to a group of students from Exeter University. We had a great post-performance discussion!

The Museum has asked us to bring WITCH back during the summer, so we will post the dates as soon as they are agreed. It is always wonderful to take the play back to its spiritual home, so we're really looking forward to it!

Photo by Marion Gibson: 

Circle of Spears are delighted to announce that WITCH has been accepted as a contributor at the Creative Histories conference in Bristol in July this year! This is a really exciting opportunity for us as it will help to bring WITCH to a wider audience, including academics and students. I'm very much looking forward to the post-performance Q&A, which promises to be extremely lively, varied and interesting, given the likely make-up of the audience! 

Have a look at the link below, which will take you to the Call for Papers I responded to. The overall line-up should be really fascinating - I can't wait to see what the other contributors bring to the table!

Tracey​

storyingthepast.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/creative-history-2017-call-for-contributions3.pdf

Things are coming together nicely for the WITCH 2017 tour. We have a number of dates already fixed in the diary and there are still a considerable number of venues to contact, thanks to the suggestions we've had from our audience members. The list below will be updated as further dates are added, so keep checking back for more information! - Tracey

Tracey Norman: "I graduated from the OU in 2015 with an Honours degree in History. I wanted to create a unique piece of theatre for Circle of Spears which also incorporated my love of history and came up with the idea of dramatizing actual witch trial transcripts. I approached the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic for help. They kindly provided me with copies of a variety of documents and once I had read through them, I realised that they would not translate well to the stage.

​Instead, I started researching English witch trials and, by using details from the papers from the museum and from my research, I created three fictional characters - the accused, her accuser and the local magistrate who deals with them. Social history has always held a fascination for me, so I wanted to focus on what actually gave rise to accusations of witchcraft. The three characters each bring different aspects of social history into the story, whilst illustrating how such an accusation could have arisen.

​In order to tell the story, I had to play fast and loose with the early Elizabethan legal system. What audiences see is the story unfolding in the setting of a sort of informal deposition in the magistrate's library, where the accuser is questioned and the accused (unusually!!) is given a voice and has the opportunity to offer rebuttal - which she does with great vigour.

​One of the key things for me was that the play should stimulate discussion. I didn't want to just create a linear story that progressed neatly from A to B with a woman who was clearly guilty as charged. I wanted to create something that would get audiences thinking - not only about the guilt/innocence of the accused, but also the definition of 'guilt' as it would have been interpreted back in the Elizabethan era, when the play is (loosely) set. Therefore, I worked hard to ensure that the accused's words and actions could be interpreted variously as innocence, guilt or misunderstanding. I soon realised that, in order to portray this as an actress, I would need to ensure that I myself had no clear view of her guilt or innocence, otherwise that would colour my performance.

​WITCH is the first piece of live theatre to be performed in the Museum library. Our summer season runs until the end of October 2016, after which we will be touring the show - more of this in due course.