Exclusive by Alan Quick

AN outdoor theatre, choral and music production - “Echoes of Wartime” - is being planned for the summer of 2018, to be performed in the three towns of Crediton, its twin-town Avranches in France and in Fulda, which lies in the German region of Hessen, where St Boniface is buried.

“Echoes” is a reflection on the true lives of ordinary people in each town who did extraordinary things in the First World War.

The production has been two years in the planning and is now the subject of a European Union funding bid for 200,000 euros towards a total budget of 330,000 euros.

Visits between producers, directors, writers, music and choral directors have been taking place since 2014, nearly all of them self-funded.

In October last year (2015) the three production teams, led by local producer Rod Brookes-Hocking on behalf of The Common Players Theatre Group, applied to the European Union’s “Creative Europe” fund, and managed to score 71/100 points, a good result but less than the 82/100 points that was needed.

In EU terms, where less than 15 per cent of such bids succeed, this was considered a close-run thing.

The result was accompanied by a detailed feedback report and news that the application could be revised and submitted just one more time a year later.

Since then, the groups have met three more times, in Fulda, Avranches and Crediton, and made significant improvements to the joint project and to their new application.

It was submitted on November 23 this year and the results will be announced in six months’ time.

Rod Brookes-Hocking, the Crediton and overall Producer, told the “Courier”: “Six months is a long time to wait, but two years of planning has brought us close together and everyone wants to do this.

“If the bid succeeds we will finally bring together, in one production, the very different stories of former enemies against a common backdrop of terrible sacrifice.

“Each team will honour the lives of ordinary local people who did extraordinary things.”

The EU applications, from 27 different countries, many of them complex and for projects running over several years, have to be translated into numerous different European languages and then go through three different assessments.

If successful, production work on the three-town project will start next July.

A website created for the 2015 pilot project can be seen at: http://echoesofwartime.com .