perform the bronte boy on Branwell's 200th birthday
Everybody knows this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Bronte. So I’m sure you’ve already considered plays about the Brontes.
But next year is also a big Bronte anniversary – the 200th birthday of Branwell (June 26, 1817).
Branwell is the most fascinating of the Bronte siblings – because he’s the failure in the family. Branwell as a boy ruled an imaginary world, dominating his talented sisters. But as a grown-up, he collapsed under the pressure of expectation. Having failed as a poet and painter, doomed in love and literature, he slipped down the road of drink and despair.
In 2010, Yorkshire playwright Michael Yates wrote The Bronte Boy, a full-length play for six actors. A year later it toured Bradford, Leeds and Halifax. Also chosen for that year’s Wakefield Drama Festival, it won Best Actor award for Warwick St John, who played Branwell.
Christine Went, in a review for The Bronte Society, wrote: “The Bronte Boy seeks to explore the spaces between the known facts through a sometimes melodramatic representation of Branwell’s fantasies and failures. Yates demonstrates his clear understanding of Branwell’s inability to function in a world in which the actual was not interlarded with the imagined.”
Two years later, the Society commissioned a new production of the play for its international AGM weekend.
After this performance, Bob Duckett wrote in Bronte Studies Volume 38: “What the play does brilliantly is the verbal interplay between the principal characters. One feels these are real people. Yates knows his Brontes well and the entire work is redolent with pithy exchanges and thoughtful, thought-provoking dialogue.”
Hundreds of Yorkshire people have seen The Bronte Boy, but that was five years ago. Next year’s anniversary would be a good time to remind them how good it is.
And the anniversary would also be a good time to bring the play to an even wider audience outside its home county.
Leeds Music & Performing Arts Library in Calverley Street, LS1 3AB, have a complete set of paperback copies of the play. You can phone them on 0113 247 6016 or click here
Meanwhile, why not read a sample of the play here
Paperback £6, ebook £2.32. Order here
Special offer to theatre groups: performance set (8 copies) for £35 (normal price £48)
Order from Nettle Books while stocks last!
[email protected]
But next year is also a big Bronte anniversary – the 200th birthday of Branwell (June 26, 1817).
Branwell is the most fascinating of the Bronte siblings – because he’s the failure in the family. Branwell as a boy ruled an imaginary world, dominating his talented sisters. But as a grown-up, he collapsed under the pressure of expectation. Having failed as a poet and painter, doomed in love and literature, he slipped down the road of drink and despair.
In 2010, Yorkshire playwright Michael Yates wrote The Bronte Boy, a full-length play for six actors. A year later it toured Bradford, Leeds and Halifax. Also chosen for that year’s Wakefield Drama Festival, it won Best Actor award for Warwick St John, who played Branwell.
Christine Went, in a review for The Bronte Society, wrote: “The Bronte Boy seeks to explore the spaces between the known facts through a sometimes melodramatic representation of Branwell’s fantasies and failures. Yates demonstrates his clear understanding of Branwell’s inability to function in a world in which the actual was not interlarded with the imagined.”
Two years later, the Society commissioned a new production of the play for its international AGM weekend.
After this performance, Bob Duckett wrote in Bronte Studies Volume 38: “What the play does brilliantly is the verbal interplay between the principal characters. One feels these are real people. Yates knows his Brontes well and the entire work is redolent with pithy exchanges and thoughtful, thought-provoking dialogue.”
Hundreds of Yorkshire people have seen The Bronte Boy, but that was five years ago. Next year’s anniversary would be a good time to remind them how good it is.
And the anniversary would also be a good time to bring the play to an even wider audience outside its home county.
Leeds Music & Performing Arts Library in Calverley Street, LS1 3AB, have a complete set of paperback copies of the play. You can phone them on 0113 247 6016 or click here
Meanwhile, why not read a sample of the play here
Paperback £6, ebook £2.32. Order here
Special offer to theatre groups: performance set (8 copies) for £35 (normal price £48)
Order from Nettle Books while stocks last!
[email protected]