St. Ives Youth Theatre - News Release
	Date:	9th June 2007
	Subject	Sing for Victory and for Freedom !
	Contacts	For press enquiries about St. Ives Youth Theatre, please contact Ian Lloyd on 07803 088185. More information about the St Ives Youth Theatre is available on www.siyt.co.uk

In preparation for July’s production of ‘Brother Jacques’ - a brilliant musical telling the story of brothers, French Prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars – members of St. Ives Youth Theatre visited HMS Victory and Dartmoor Prison to better understand the conditions in which sailors were lived and fought, and how as prisoners they were treated.

On board HMS Victory, the cast were able to handle the actual weapons used in the early 19th century and rehearse the battle scene that will be recreated in the musical. BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s Arts programme, The Eclectic Light Show, interviewed the cast and broadcast songs recorded while the cast were on board HMS Victory.

SIYT then travelled down to Devon to better understand the conditions in which the French Prisoners of War lived during captivity. Initially, the prisoners were left to starve on rat-infested, unseaworthy ships in Plymouth Harbour, but were then moved to the then newly built Dartmoor prison.

On visiting the Dartmoor Heritage Musuem, the cast members found that conditions didn’t get much better. SIYT member, Jack Henderson said, “I was shocked that as many as 40 prisoners would have to live in an unlit room about the same size as my bedroom.”

Jess Davey, who plays Grace, a wealthy heiress, in Brother Jacques, was also disturbed by the plight of the prisoners, “they were locked up and abandoned, some of the French sailors were just 11 years old. We had no idea they were treated so badly.”

When the prisoners were set free in 1815, there were 5,000 French servicemen imprisoned at Dartmoor, but thousands more had died and been buried in an unmarked mass grave. At the end of the visit, the cast laid white carnations on the mass grave and held a short service to remember not only the French Prisoners of War but all those who find that their freedom has been taken from them. This was only the second memorial held at the cemetery in living memory.

Despite nearly 200 years between those French Prisoners and today, the pain and confusion caused by separation from loved ones will have been no different then to that being suffered today by the friends and family of BBC Journalist Alan Johnson, of Madeline McCann and everyone who finds themselves held against their will across the world.

Brother Jacques will be performed at the Burgess Hall in St. Ives from 10th-14th July 2007.

More information about the St Ives Youth Theatre is available on www.siyt.co.uk 

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