Writing on the Wall

Peter Mortimer is a poet, playwright and editor who writes for both adults and children, often confusing the two. As well as his verse and drama, he has penned several restless 'external' books; The Last of the Hunters detailing his six months working as a fisherman in the North Sea, Broke Through Britain - an account of his 500 mile penniless trudge from Plymouth to Edinburgh, and One Hundred Days on Holy Island, recording an entire winter spent on this isolated North-East coastal outpost.

He proposed an ambitious project - to write, walk and perform a play along the length of Hadrian's Wall.

Pete describes this project: "Cloud Nine The Troubadours Tour was a throwback to a lost age, just as the Roman Wall is; a band of strolling players performing a play each evening, then moving on the next morning, calling down an audience from the hills and the farms of Cumbria and Northumberland. Arriving, performing, sleeping, then onwards, from Bowness in the West to Wallsend in the East, eleven days on the hoof, responding to the natural world around them, relating to the people of this sparsely populated landscape.
Drama, and music, and no two performances the same, and everywhere they go some impression left, some impression gained. And with the actors, the writer and his work, to entertain, to provoke, to shock, to involve, as we throw a band across the country.

Photo Credit: Stan Gamester

Off the Wall