Jobling – The Musical

£3.50

Book and Lyrics Tom Kelly Music and Lyrics Steve Thompson

This is a script-in-hand performance of Jobling, a new musical, with music accompaniment from the Westoe Brass Band.

The show is based on events surrounding William Jobling, Jarrow Pitman and the last man gibbeted in the north in 1832.

Jobling was tried and hung at Durham, then gibbeted on Jarrow Slake for his part in the murder of South Shields magistrate Nicholas Fairles.

The action moves between 1831 and 1832 in the north-east and London: from the 1831 Binding Strike, a year after the birth of the Northern Union of Pitmen, led by Tommy Hepburn, to the gibbeting of Jobling in August 1832.

Actors will use scripts and the performance will be a run through of the musical. There will be an audience feedback/Q&A session after the show with the writers – with feedback helping the team to further develop the performance, before going on to the full production.

 

About Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly was born in the ‘Holy City Jarrow’ and now lives happily further up the Tyne at Blaydon.

He has had a varied career from his first job in a shipyard Time-Office; to writing the BBCTV Arena musical documentary Kelly with Alan Price.

He has had a great deal of work produced by the Customs House, a venue he regards as home, including recently the musicals, The Dolly Mixtures, Geordie, Tom & Catherine, Dan Dare & The Machine Gunners and the plays Ride a White Swan, Baby Love, Family Ties, Nothing Like the Wooden Horse, I Love Kent Walton and monologues Five By One, Love in NE32, Secrets and the regional tour Talking Tom and the play for children, The Girl and the Unicorn. In addition he has written two Community Plays, one for South Tyneside, Tyne Songs and The Black Hill and Geordie Ridley for Blaydon Festival. He has written two plays for the Workers Educational Association, Hungry Hearts and Heads (which toured the region) and The Blaydon Bricklayer on Joseph Cowen  His most recently play staged I Left My Heart in Roker Park (produced by Cranked Anvil) toured the area in 2014 and was a finalist in the Journal Culture Awards. Early in 2016 his play Baby Love (produced by Baby Love Productions) toured the region.

He also writes and performs in ‘Men of the Tyne’ a multi-media show, incorporating film, stories and song and has worked with the South Shields filmmaker Gary Wilkinson on a number of documentaries.

His eighth poetry collection, ‘Spelk,’ was published by Red Squirrel Press. These are vivid and compelling and often beautiful poems, by turns sad and uplifting, that deserve a wide readership. POETRY BOOK SOCIETY

His short stories have appeared on Radio Four and in a number of magazines.

www.tomkelly.org.uk

About Steve Thompson

Steve Thompson has written songs that have been recorded by Celine Dion, Sheena Easton, Elkie Brooks, The Hollies, The Searchers, The Tygers of Pan Tang, Baby Ford, Colin Blunstone, Elaine Page and Chris Farlowe.

Steve is a long-time collaborator of Tom Kelly. Their joint works include ‘Steeltown’ a musical, ‘Songs of Love Work and War,’ a musical review and most recently ‘Down To The River’ a multimedia work of sounds, poetry and photographs which premiered at The Word.

In a long and varied career, Steve also wrote and produced some key recordings during the ‘New Wave of British Heavy Metal’ (NWOBHM) including Raven, Venom (both huge influences on rock giants, Metallica) and The Tygers of Pan Tang, who at one time featured another collaborator of Steve’s – guitarist John Sykes, who went on to join David Coverdale in Whitesnake.

The list of Producers that have worked with Steve is equally impressive; Gus Dudgeon ( Elton John, Chris Rea); Rodger Bain(Black Sabbath); Christopher Neil (Mike & The Mechanics, Marillion, Gerry Rafferty) Peter Collins (Rush, Garry Moore, Bon Jovi).

www.steve-thompson.org.uk

About Westoe Brass Band

Based in South Shields, Westoe Brass Band was originally known as the Harton Colliery Band. The band today consists of around 30 members from a wide range of different backgrounds across the North East of England.

The band, as we know it today, was formed in 1911 after apparently adopting the players of the Tyne Dock Temperance Band to fulfil the needs for a band at the Harton Colliery in South Shields. Just eight years later they won the British Open Contest, being the first colliery band and the first band from the North of England to do so. The Band was directed by George Hawkins, who was the first amateur conductor to win this great title, regarded by many as the leading accolade in the brass band world.

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