The 2010 H & I Son et Lumiere – Fond Memories
by Geoffrey Smallwood
I moved to Histon from Shelford in 2007, so I’m really just an incomer. Shortly after arriving I was introduced to the History Group of the Village Society, so naturally I joined the Society. Around that time, I was helping with the sound effects and music of the Great Shelford Son et Lumiere, which went off well.
The thought then was, why can’t Histon and Impington put on one as well, the excuse being to mark 900 years of Ely Cathedral. It would take the form of a Sound and Light show telling the history of our villages from pre-historic times right up to the present day and, appropriately, be held in St Andrew’s Church, Histon. Remember, there was no Saint Andrew’s Centre then, that came later in 2014.
A core team took on the organising of this major undertaking, under the guidance of Jill Cowley, and I was invited to provide (again) all the sound effects, music, and pre-recorded dialogue. We had to decide that we would not have any live speaking in case anything went wrong. The draft script was professionally written in stages by Richard Peoples, advised by Eleanor Whitehead, and I tried to keep up with supplying the sounds for each scene as he wrote it – somehow!
As expected, there were several challenges to overcome. It proved difficult to find enough actors for all the parts. The best way to get around this was that 14 actors took multiple parts, spread over the ages – you could be a Roman in one scene, and a Tudor character in another or a WW2 soldier in yet another. So, rehearsals were very much as it happens occasions and if something worked, it went into the master script. We were lucky that family groups stepped up to the mark, for example, Ray and Barbara Parr, and Matt and Marianne Salmon and all three of their children.
Talking of children, we were able to involve village schoolchildren from the Histon Junior School (now Histon Brook) including 31 with the singing of suitable pieces of music, such as Pastime with Good Company written by Henry VIII to Run, Rabbit, Run (the Dad’s Army song) for later on during WW2.
Another challenge was that we could not have a show that ran for more than an hour and a quarter without an interval. At the first attempt at a complete run through, we found that we were way over this! Much head-scratching and trimming was required.
We had the raised acting area in St Andrew’s Church in front of the central arch, which meant putting up a temporary big wooden frame, suitably covered with curtains to act as the stage backing. This backdrop also included a large screen for the projection of images and pictures, and we could use the area behind, out of sight of the audience, for all the props and other kit, such as the sound and projection equipment, the latter operated by Will Russell. The nave of St Andrew’s is not large and has lots of big pillars. The result, only about 115 people at a time could have a seat and see everything going on. We sold out for all three nights performances!
I had to choose suitable music to match all the different scenes and to record the narrators who explained to the audience what was happening. The actors mimed just about everything. The sound came from two large loudspeakers at the front plus two more at the rear, so that the audience had the feeling of being there and surrounded by the atmosphere of the events.
The lighting for the show was handled by Steve Morris and Dick Lane, with everything sited at the back of the church and they managed lots of dramatic effects. We had to have the show in March when the evenings were still dark.
More challenging was providing realistic sound effects – in many cases recording my own. Everything had to be as authentic sounding as possible to help create the realism expected by the audience. Two examples: at the Battle of Hastings, King Harold is killed by an arrow in his eye. I had to build up this up in layers - general battle and fighting sounds, sounds of a flight of arrows from left to right, sound of arrows landing, loud cry from King Harold – all these were assembled in the right sequence, over laying each other to make it as vivid as possible.
When it came to WW2 and the dog fights during the Battle of Britain, I found enough sounds of planes, machine gun fire and aircraft diving. It was apparently so convincing that audience members were seen ducking!
For the sequence of a Roman legion marching, I managed to find the sound of a real Roman tromba and then there was a Royal Proclamation by Edward I, for which we recorded a real Town Crier. One of the musical items required a church choir to sing a hymn excruciatingly out of tune. Choir 2000 really enjoyed themselves recording that.
All very hard work, but we had fun doing it. Probably the most satisfying was being able to involve so many villagers with the story of their heritage, especially all the children.