Part of the Darke Visions Festival celebrating the life & works of Nick Darke, Cornwall’s finest playwright, the DARKE VISIONS SHOWCASES on Monday January 25th are presented by Kernow Education Arts Partnership, The Works (Dance & Theatre Cornwall) & Hall for Cornwall, with support from the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site – Cultural Programme, Arts Council England, Cornwall Council and The Seafood Restaurant, Padstow.

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Showcasing just some of the outcomes from the inspiring education programme – a central focus of the eighteen-month long Darke Visions Festival – the matinee and evening platforms on Monday 25th January are a celebration by over twenty Cornish secondary schools and youth groups who have used Nick’s work as starting points for the creation of drama and music.

Introduced by Nick Darke’s long-time collaborator, Mike Shepherd of Kneehigh Theatre, the Darke Visions Showcase matinee event includes songs from Brannel, Treviglas and Richard Lander Schools such as Kernow & The River, The Mighty Ocean & Chamber to the Grave, alongside a diversity of exciting dramatic works.

Youngsters from Pencalenick Special School will perform their own interpretation of ‘The Body’, while Looe Community School’s Gifted & Talented Drama Group will present ‘a VERY abridged version of The Riot’, and Mullion School are set to delight audiences with an improvised piece envisaging what it was like for Nick as a schoolboy some 50 years ago.

Poltair School have devised ‘Empty Swings’, a piece investigating issues from the play Hell’s Mouth which are still very relevant today, while Penair School will present a snapshot of their project on the life and work of Nick Darke and his Second Homeowners’ Wives.

Last but not least, Humphry Davy School have uncovered their school’s vital role in personally helping Nick Darke to research the wonderful ‘Laughing Gas’ during 2005, and have elected to perform the play’s opening scene focusing on the witty characters that Nick began to create and fellow Cornish writer Carl Grose completed after his death.

Pencalenick Special School students, performing in the Darke Visions Showcase Matinee, said: ‘We have been on a wonderful ‘Nick Darke Journey of Discovery’, we have thoroughly enjoyed finding out more about Nick’s work and about ourselves in the process.’

Exhibited in the Hall for Cornwall foyer and projected on to the stage during the showcases is artwork from a countywide project called ‘Journeys’. Art students from Looe, Tretherras, Wadebridge, St Joseph’s Launceston, Penrice, St Austell College, Poltair, Richard Lander, Camborne, Redruth, Bodmin, Helston, Falmouth and Saltash schools have taken the film ‘The Wrecking Season’ by Nick and Jane Darke and explored its ideas through drawing, painting, sculpture, textiles and animation, each undertaking their own individual creative journey having been inspired by the same rich source.

Nick’s widow, Jane Darke, said: ‘This festival is introducing Nick to another generation and my hope is that they will take him into the future.’

As well as the DARKE VISIONS SHOWCASE EVENING event on the same day, this is also the sister event to the DARKE NIGHTS dance showcase taking place on Sunday January 24th. For more information on this and the wider Darke Visions Festival please see www.nickdarke.net/darkvisions and follow links to the event on this site.

Image: HNTPhotography