Maxine Peake had
always been aware of the Pendle witch trials when she was growing up
in Bolton. The actress and star of television dramas such as Silk and
Shameless never expected, however, to be spending Halloween
performing a politically charged spoken-word reclamation of the
seventeenth century trials of nine women and one man from the north
of England who were executed for apparently murdering ten people
using unspecified powers of witchcraft.
Yet that's exactly
what Peake will be doing tonight at the Scottish National Gallery in
Edinburgh. As part of the gallery's latest after-hours event,
Halloween: By Night, Peake fronts experimental electronic pop
collective, The Eccentronic Research Council to perform Pendle-based
spoken-word suite, 1612 Underture.
“The
Pendle witches had always been part of the folklore when I was
growing up,” Peake says. “No one had ever explained to me their
story properly, so I just deducted there was a hill not too far away
where witches on broomsticks met to cause mayhem, which I thought was
just a fairytale.
It
was only in my teens when my mother told me there was a woman at her
place of work who was a descendant of the Pendle witch, Alice Nutter,
so I bought myself a book on the subject and started to read up."
Peake's
involvement in 1612 Underture came about after being contacted by
Adrian Flanagan, who, alongside former member of The All Seeing I,
Dean Honer, forms the backbone of ERC.
“We
had a brief conversation about our respective music tastes,” Peake
remembers, “and then he enquired if I would appear in his video,
which involved donning a rabbit suit and charging around Kersal Moor
in Salford. We stayed in touch, mainly because I was hoping to steal
the film footage from him while he was sleeping. Then the next thing
I know I'm embroiled in some Kraut, prog, psychedelic, electronic
fiasco.”
Flanagan
too was fascinated by the Pendle witch trials, and, following a road
trip the pair took to the villages around Pendle Hill, Flanagan wrote
1612 Underture just as the 2011 UK riots were taking place.
“You
read about these women,” he says, “and you see how horrifically
they we're treated, and how they were basically being used as
scapegoats by the government. Then you start seeing parallels with
what's going on now. It wont be long before this government will be
taking us all to Gallows Hill for having an opinion."
While 1612 Underture
was released as an album in 2012 to coincide with the 400th
anniversary of the trials, it was never meant to be performed live.
“I find the work with
The ERC extremely exposing,” Peake says. “In theatre you are to
include the audience under the guise that you're trying to get them
to believe you've forgotten they are there. Speaking directly to them
is very, very surreal for me. It is far more personal and far more
difficult. I think it takes a certain personality to be a great front
person, and I think I'm cut from a very different cloth. I wanted to
act to get far away from who I am.”
Despite Peake's
reservations, her collaboration with ERC remains ongoing. A new album
has been recorded, while a single, a homage to electronic music
pioneer and BBC Radiophonic Workshop stalwart Delia Derbyshire
entitled Maxine's Dream, has just been released. Peake has also
branched out further from acting, and, following her first radio
play, broadcast last year, a new work, about Anne Scargill's
occupation of Parkside Colliery in 1993, is broadcast on Radio 4 on
November 4th. As with1612 Underture, Peake is putting the
hidden history of women to the fore.
"Women are still
victimised for being different,” she says, “for not conforming.
We like to bandy the word 'mad' about when describing a woman who may
be being outspoken or passionate. If a woman has a strong sense of
her sexuality she's still labelled a slag or some such. I feel we
still have to battle to be heard to be taken seriously. If a woman
has an opinion she's described as feisty. This infuriates me. If a
woman is being strong-willed, outspoken, brave , emotional and
fearless then she is being a woman, nothing more, nothing less.”
Witch-hunts, in Peake's
opinion, are as prevalent as they ever were.
“There are woman in this country who are being murdered in honour killings,” she observes, “female babies being murdered because they are not male. The biggest witch hunt at the moment is the Tory party's demonisation of the working class, whipping middle England up into a frenzy with the myth of hoards of scroungers bleeding the taxpayer dry, of immigrants coming over to take their jobs and homes. The bedroom tax, the gagging law, the list goes on and on."
“There are woman in this country who are being murdered in honour killings,” she observes, “female babies being murdered because they are not male. The biggest witch hunt at the moment is the Tory party's demonisation of the working class, whipping middle England up into a frenzy with the myth of hoards of scroungers bleeding the taxpayer dry, of immigrants coming over to take their jobs and homes. The bedroom tax, the gagging law, the list goes on and on."
The
Eccentronic Research Council featuring Maxine Peake will perform 1612
Underture as part of Halloween: By Night, which also features a
performance by Blake Morrison, at the Scottish National Gallery,
Edinburgh, October 31st, 7.15-10pm. 1612 Underture and
Maxine's Dream are available now. Witches and Wicked Bodies runs at
the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until
November 3rd.
The Herald, October 31st 2013
ends
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