VIDEO: An immersive dive into Crawley history!

Written by Ethan Taylor and produced by Ethan’s Half-Time Orange Theatre in association with The Hawth Theatre, it will appropriately find its home in the former ASK building, one of Crawley’s oldest buildings. The piece was commissioned last year to mark Crawley's 75th anniversary, but as Ethan says clearly it's a place that goes back considerably further than that. In fact it seems that the word Crawley itself comes from the Saxon for “crow-infested clearing.” Led by the ghost of the old Nightwatchman, you will get the chance to meet various characters from Crawley's past and hear their stories as you journey through one of the High Street's most historic places in a truly immersive representation of Crawley's history. It all takes place on Friday, March 24 and Saturday, March 25 at 49 High Street, (formerly ASK Italian), Crawley, RH11 1BW. Taking you back in time will be Ollie West (The Nightwatchman), Hattie Chapman (The Smuggler), Ryan Woodcock (The Illustrator) and Joseph Vaiana (The Soldier). Running time: 35 minutes. Free admission, but reserve your place on https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-nights-watch-tales-of-crawley-tickets-539434431907

As Ethan explains, Half-Time Orange are a brand-new theatre company dedicated to producing innovative and exciting work with a focus on bringing local communities and histories to the stage.

“Myself and a friend during lockdown were looking to remain creative and we wanted to start up a little theatre company. We were going to do some projects but the lockdowns put paid to those but we wanted to bring our local community and its history to life and we saw that the Hawth were creating associate artists and were asking for applications so we pitched our idea, and the Hawth went for it.

“Half-Time Orange is just a title that we came up with because my friend – Kit Loyd – and I both grew up playing village football where you were always given an orange at half time. We met on a tour in Austria and just got chatting. Last year was when we got the ball rolling when we were commissioned to do this for the 75th anniversary Crawley and came up with this immersive history trail.

"This is very loosely the same show now but just with a couple of tweaks.

"The first time we did it was in November and so there a couple of references to Christmas coming up. Now it's great to be in the old ASK building. It is currently vacant and it's one of the oldest buildings and the council allowed us to use it for this project which is great. When you get there you will be met by various actors and it will be a promenade production. Among the characters you will meet will be a World War Two soldier who will tell about tell you about his World War Two experiences.”

Ethan is hoping he will be able to develop the concept further perhaps with a sequel offering further tales of Crawley and he is already in talks to create something similar for Shoreham later this year.

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