Friday 28th March 7.30pm - Town Hall Voices

We were thrilled to be working with the super-skilled team at our much-loved community run theatre, the Hippodrome. “TAODS were delighted to be invited to take part in the Town Hall’s 150th celebrations. It was the perfect opportunity for us to revisit our much-lauded Voices of Todmorden competition which we first launched to celebrate our own centenary back in 2008. And it seemed fitting for these two iconic buildings, Grand Old Ladies of the town to collaborate for this impressive milestone”

 Writers were invited to submit a short script for up to 3 people with the Town Hall as inspiration.  These were judged and the seven best scripts performed on the night.  Two winners were announced, the audience favourite and the judges’ winner.  Due to the difficult acoustics in the Town Hall for spoken word, a small black box studio theatre was set up within the ballroom, which is the first time this has been done.  

The scripts were all outstanding, and referenced the heritage of the building in very different ways. One was based on a wedding, the Town Hall being a popular wedding venue, and another was set in the caretaker’s office with a meeting between the caretaker and the new Mayor.  One imagined the friendly rivalry between the two muses on the pediment of the building, representing Lancashire /cotton and Yorkshire / wool who came to life once humans had vanished from the street below. Another script imagined the Town Hall in a dystopian future, where societal collapse had happened just as the Todmorden Photographic Society held their annual exhibition and where the photos still stood, providing respite and reflection for the characters. Another referenced how the Town Hall stands proud and visible from all around the valley and was a meeting and dating place for young people, and a further developed this highlighting the regular Monday tea dances for older people. The one with the longest and weirdest title managed to bring together two very disparate bits of Todmorden’s heritage – UFOs and extra-terrestrials, and the Fielden family.

“Really engaging, a lovely display of talent from our humble little town that really showed the history of the Hall”