Anglia Ruskin University students stage haunting in Cambridge’s Guildhall courtroom

An immersive theatre production will stage a haunting at Cambridge’s Guildhall, where actors will conjure ghostly prisoners and crooked judges.

Performers will haunt the Guildhall corridors before taking the audience into the wood-panelled Sessions Courtroom, built in 1939 on a site that has witnessed more than 700 years of trial and imprisonment.

The play has been created by students on the Anglia Ruskin University acting degree course and they hope it will be the first of many events taking over buildings in the city.

The play’s director, Dr Jonny Croose, senior lecturer in acting at ARU, said: “We've taken over the old Guildhall courtroom on Peas Hill and we're staging a haunting of the building. We’ve been responding to the structure of the building and the history of the crime and punishment that's taken place on the site over several centuries.

“I went to the arts team at the city council to say we were looking for historic buildings and locations around Cambridge that we can perhaps use in our performances. They said I should go and see them because the Guildhall is a building that they want to make more use of in a cultural sense. When they showed me the old fashioned wooden court room with a jury box, the judge’s seat, a witness stand and the dock, straight away I knew this was a fantastic, atmospheric spot for a piece of theatre.

“And then we started to research the stories that we wanted to engage with. The students and I have co-written the script.”

Audiences for The Guildhall Haunting will need to keep their wits about them after sunset between 11-13 December, as they are led around the historic building by a cast of ghostly prisoners, wicked wardens and crooked judges.

The hour-long, tragi-comic show features folk tales and testimonies on themes of justice and injustice, travelling through time from ancient East Anglian witch trials to more recent cases of mayhem and murder.

Dr Croose said: “The stories we have uncovered are fascinating, especially the tales of the East Anglian witch trials. One woman who will feature in the play is Elizabeth Woodcock, who was buried in a snow drift as she was on her way from Cambridge back to her home after her horse bolted. She managed to survive for over a week in the snow before being rescued. And later she was accused of ‘spirit misdeeds’ because of her survival.

“We’ve also included the story of Margaret Read, who was burned as a witch in the Tuesday marketplace in King’s Lynn. On the front of one of the buildings there is a heart engraved into the brickwork, which is allegedly the spot where her heart burst from her chest as she was burned. It flew across the marketplace and struck the wall of the building and left the mark on the building. She was, effectively, just a woman who spoke her mind and ended up being accused of witchcraft.

“We’ve also included Cambridge stories about the way the Suffragettes attacked the Varsity pavilion, for example, and planted fire bombs around the city. And we have included national events such as the Derek Bentley trial and an extract from Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

The site-responsive show is devised by final-year students on the BA (Hons) acting course at ARU as part of their immersive performance module, with support from the Allia Business Centre and Cambridge City Council’s arts team.

The students will use physical theatre, poetry, verbatim trial testimonies, lighting, projection and soundscape.

Dr Croose said the aim is to immerse the audience in the ghostly atmosphere of the historic venue.

He added; “It’s an amazing space to work in and we will be keeping the audience on the move, with performance coming at them from all sides.

“The students have devised the performance from scratch and the show has a great range of poetic moods: spooky, unsettling, challenging, moving and beautiful - perfect for a winter’s night.”

The Guildhall Haunting runs at the Guildhall in Cambridge from 11-13 December, 7-8pm, with entry via the Peas Hill entrance, and is recommended for ages 16 and over. Some of the performance involves moving between locations and navigating steps, and therefore parts of it may not be suitable for people with reduced mobility, but the main performance space has a fully accessible viewing platform.

Tickets for the show are £5, and can be booked through Eventbrite .