The Common Lot

You’ve no doubt heard tell of the huge success of The Common Lot’s free, outdoors performances last summer of 1549 Ketts Rebellion. Hilarious, educational, and most importantly a true story based in our own fine city, it was loved by all. The Common Lot, a collective of amateur Norwich actors have put together a brand new show, this time about the proud, 1000 year strong history of strangers in Norwich. With variety turns like Mr Noverre’s Famous Polka, Thomas Whall The Singing Mayor and Homage To Magdalen Street, all based on actual truths, seeing these fantastic show has to be on your list of things to do this month. I caught up with The Common Lot’s original creator, Simon Floyd to find out more.

What’s your own background in theatre, Simon?

I’ve always done it. I went to Paston Sixth Form College when it first opened and learned lots of good things there. I started Crude Apache with a couple of mates, and had a pub theatre in Heydon for a while.

How did The Common Lot start?

I came back into theatre as a sort of fresh start after some family issues, and set up The Common Lot to put on Boudicca: The Pantomime in 2014, and we’ve done various things since then. I’m quite good at persuading people to come and try doing something worthy, and I’m really good mates with The Nimmo Twins so I’ve got some experience and contacts in the city which helped.

Where did you get the name The Common Lot from?

The Common Lot just seemed like the right name for us. A lot can mean the situation we might be in, or a lot as in we have a lot of people in our shows, the lot that we stand on, because we are quite political, and the lot as everything that we share together.

What sort of people are a part of the collective?

Ha ha! People who can handle the pressure! We’ve got all sorts. We have three refugees in this show, and everyone from physiotherapists to teachers, to young, to retired people. It’s a real mixed church.

Can you tell me about your new show, Come Yew In?

We felt it was important to highlight Norwich’s history of welcoming incomers especially the massive influx of Dutch in the 1560’s which gave the city huge prosperity from the weaving trade. The story of immigration and migration into the city through history is an important one to tell given the current climate, so that’s why we’re doing it. It’s a variety show spanning a thousand years of history. 

Did you have to do a lot of research for it?

Yeah we hooked up with Anglia Ruskin University and we worked with a woman called Jeanette Baxter. She led 12 of us at the beginning of the year into researching the history of it. We all researched different things, I commissioned three writers from the Creative Writing course at UEA and we wrote it together. It’s been funded by the Town Close Estate Charity as part of the Norwich Freemen’s 700 year celebrations. Norwich has actually been named The City Of Welcome as the civic theme of the year.

Have you spoken to anyone who has come into Norwich as a ‘stranger’?

We have actually got three refugees in this show who have experienced integrating into Norwich first hand. Two of the guys have been made homeless during the course of the show through no fault of their own, and it’s been genuinely awful. We’ve had to really step up as a company and find out what you can do about something like that, not just to help him but to help others. We’re not just standing up there saying “everyone’s welcome in our city” whilst one of our cast is homeless. It’s real and current and pretty bloody serious. We’ve talked to Refugees At Home who have been helpful, and also New Routes.

Can you tell me about who the ‘strangers’ were who Strangers Hall is named after?

The Dutch and Flemish were called ‘strangers’. 30 families of artisan weavers were invited here in the 1560’s by Elizabeth I from the Lowlands, and then because of the Catholic persecution of the Protestants they all fled and came to Norwich because that’s where they’d found safety already. So there were 4,000 of them who came into Norwich, a third of the population at the time. Norwich was a trilingual city for 200 years – Flemish, Dutch and English spoken on the streets. During those years following, the prosperity of Norwich had a great deal to do with the weavers coming in. One of the stories we’re telling in the show is about that, how Norwich coped with that many people coming in in one go. We’re not a massively diverse city from the outside but inwardly, in our genes, we are.

There’s definitely a sense of ‘by the people, for the people’ with The Common Lot. What are your aims?

We have a statement of intent on our website. That’s exactly it really, for the people, by the people about the people!

History, particularly of Norwich, seems to be at the forefront of your passions. How do you generally come up with the themes for your plays?

We always want to tell stories of place, and it’s important to us to make theatre that is free and also relevant to people. Theatre without walls, really, with a broad appeal, so it’s outside, and people can bring a rug and their kids. This month we’re going onto the Mile Cross, Larkman and Lakenham estates to do the show. I’m really into popular theatre that has a point, tells a story rather than just be entertaining, so it’s trying to appeal to everyone but also educating and entertaining.

1549 Ketts Rebellion was a great success last year. Did it all go according to plan?