In the gap between leaving Lancaster and joining the EMMA Theatre Company, I’d auditioned for Christopher Honer, the artistic director at the Gateway Theatre, Chester, and Howard Lloyd-Lewis, associate director at the Library Theatre, Manchester. I was offered jobs by both while I was touring the shopping streets of Nottinghamshire. It was difficult to choose between the two offers. Eventually, I decided that the project at Chester was going to demand more of me – composing as well as performing – than the musical in Manchester. That decision determined the next few years of my working life.

Cheshire Voices was an extraordinary undertaking. Chris Honer and his cast – Annie Tyson, Dinah Handley, John Vustyn, Trevor Nichols, Stuart Richman and myself – along with the writer Rony Robinson, interviewed a large number of people who had lived in Cheshire through the interwar years (1918-1939). From that raw material, a show was fashioned that took those people’s experiences back to to them and their communities, using the words entrusted to us. Verbatim.

The techniques used were pioneered by the likes of Peter Cheeseman and Ewan MacColl,  Studs Terkel and Erwin Piscator. You can read more about them and about Cheshire Voices here. 

Chris Honer died on 3rd November 2021. He was dedicated to the ideal of theatre serving a community. as this online tribute makes clear. He was a kind, intelligent, modest man. I was very fortunate to work with him,  and benefitted greatly from his faith in me.  R.I.P.