Our Christmas play A Pudding For The Chimney Sweep from Spiderweb Musicals was filled with memorable characters; Mrs Perkins and the Pie Shop orphans, the well-to-do Mortimer family, bone-tired factory workers Anne and Widdop, villains Quigley, Boyle and Gradshaw and of course Jim; the poor, hungry climbing boy.
To help bring our scripted characters to life, we spent an afternoon developing our characters through hot-seating; taking turns in character to interview and be interviewed in the ‘hot-seat’. The actors asked each other questions, got thinking and used their imaginations to flesh out the details as to what sort of person their character was and how they had come to be where they were today. What came out was inspired…
Mrs Mortimer- Emelia King
“My name is Millicent Mortimer. I was born in London to Victoria and Reginald Sansford who were from Belgravia. I was an only child and wished for a sibling so my mother and father bought me a Dalmatian, ‘Rose’ and a horse, ‘Midnight’ who was stabled in our country estate in Essex.
I was rich, posh and spoilt with a private tutor and all. Then when I was seventeen I went to a ball and met Mr Mortimer, charming son of Mr and Mrs Mortimer and it was arranged for us to be married. We were married in a church with royalty in attendance. I was now Mrs Millicent Mortimer of the Mortimer family. Then, one year later we had a child, Miss Charlotte Mortimer and we hired a nanny, Alice Jones, to look after her.
We moved to Mortimer Hall then and I filled my days with shopping, relaxing, going to beauty spas and more, then of course going out to lunch with friends and doing jobs for the church committee.
So every two years we had a baby. On the third child we had to get another nanny, Iris Blumfeld. Of course, when Mama and Papa died when Charlotte was a baby, I inherited the family estates and family wealth.
I now have six children: Charlotte, Edward, Eleanor, Grace, Alice and Beatrice. My husband inherited the factory, Mortimer’s Mill. And that is my life up till now”.
Bob- Nico Murphy
Once upon a time there was a baby named Boblex Frank Puff but everyone just called him Bob. Bob was born into a rich family that owned all of the sheep and cotton industry and the wood industry, they had a lot of money. They had a lot of stuff, I’m talking big mansion, gold stuff and jewelry.
But one day there was a disease that poisoned all the sheep and cotton plants and if all of this wasn’t bad enough, millions of termites had come out of nowhere and had started eating all the wood. Mrs and Mr Puff where devastated they were losing a lot of money because they had accidentally poisoned hundreds of people across the globe. Before you could say sorry, violent protesters were crowded around their house. The next day the Puffs mansion was on fire so they floated little Bob down a stream with a note saying ‘please take me in, I need a home’.
After many days a young woman was washing her clothes in the river when she saw him. Then she said ‘what… how… why?’ Anyway, Bob got adopted by the women named Miss Perkins, and they lived happily ever after. Until now when Miss Perkins and her children (all of them have been adopted) have to embark on a new adventure finding chimney sweeps catching villains and getting back the secret recipe. This is Boblex Frank Puffs story. I hope you enjoyed it.
Mrs Widdop- Heather Ward
“My name is Mrs Margorie Widdop. I had a husband, so yes, there was a Mr Widdop.
I had triplets, two girls and a boy. Oh that takes me back to when they were just three small bairns… but sadly memories are all I have now. It is a sad tale of how I lost my husband and children.
My husband was, like me, an accounts manager but one day he was out too late drinking. He got drunk and tried to burn down the workhouse but sadly his coat caught the flames and he was no more.
As for my children, when the war started they were evacuees but when they got taken away a rail broke and the train got wrecked by a bomb. A few escaped, but my three; Annie, Lila and John, were not of the few that survived.
Anyway, after my husband died I took over his job but of course the wages were even less for women than they were for men, especially since nasty Mr Gradshaw had been fiddling the accounts. I should know.
I lost my husband 17 years ago. And that is my tragic tale.”
Quigley- Connor Donaldson
“I was born on a date long-forgotten by all in the Year of our Lord 1816, Piotr Rźeznikski II, in a remote farm in the sprawling rural fields of Eastern Poland. I grew up with a few close friends who lived on surrounding farms. I helped tend to our land and livestock until I became eleven and on the year of Queen Victoria’s coronation, my father decided we should move to the booming city of Krakòw. This seemingly rash decision was probably due to the armed rebellions against Russian forces that occurred nearer and nearer to our farm. Moving to Krakòw, I left all my old friends behind and found it hard to find new ones. I studied in a school of Calculus and Mathematics, though my mother insisted I learn the growing language of English as well. I got on well with many people and was known to be quite joyous and quick to be merry. Though I found the longer I stayed around people the duller they seemed to become, until each friend I turned from seemed a monotonous husk of their former self.
At the age of twenty-six, after hearing tales of the joyous personalities of its residents, I moved to the quiet British territory of Ireland in the hope that I would be able to find some long-standing friends there. Sadly, there was no work in the rural counties of Ireland and though I made good friends there, none of them wished to come with me to the business filled streets of England where invention and ingenuity flourished. So I took what little money I had left and sailed across the Irish Sea to reach the port-town of Bristol. It was here I found that England was not the utopia I expected. I had to change my accent to fit in and there were too many attempts on my life by vagabonds and street urchins that I decided to leave. Without any money left I took the only option and joined the army to go fight in India. I fell for the propaganda of the “Invincible Nation of Britain”.
Once in India, I acted as a spy learning the Hindi language and changing my voice accordingly. I gave information to the Crown for many years until I was given a musket and told to aid in the storming of a suburban town. I managed to gain a glimpse of the plans and found we were severely outnumbered and the battle’s outcome would be the result of pure luck. Using the Hindi I knew, I betrayed Britain and sided with the Indian forces. All of the British battalions died and I knew I was responsible for the deaths of many of my own. Deciding I had had enough of the war, I returned to colonial forces and provided no explanation for my survival. They considered me a miracle and after revealing my knowledge of the Hindi tongue to them I was shipped back to London.
In London I met a rich landlord called Mr. Mortimer who was in need of a rent collector. I signed up and managed to stay on top of the failing British economic system. After hearing news of my parents’ death in Poland, I was filled with a fear of having to return to Britain’s many colonial wars. Thus, I grew insecure about my wealth and began to steal and rob. I adopted a Cockney accent to better associate with the folk lower down in the financial system, who would be willing to make some extra pennies. While adapting to this new voice, I realized I had lost any trace of the boy who lived on an Eastern Polish farm. Now I continue to pickpocket, forever insecure about my wealth and its ability to protect me from the horrors of war”
