Heading for the coal face
Sun 4 Feb 2018Award-winning choreographer Gary Clarke’s true story of an industry and a community’s fight for survival is at The Marlowe Theatre on Thursday. Jeulz Gambrill, Amanda Gerrard, Reiltin Tighe and Yolanda Varney responded to a call for performers from the community and successfully auditioned. None have professional theatre experience, but they all have a family link to the mining industry.
At the age of 11, Jeulz’s grandfather George Wood was one of the youngest to go down South Normanton pit in Derbyshire. Jeulz (55), who was born in Whitstable but now lives in Broadstairs, said he only worked below ground for a few years: “Don’t ask me how, but he managed to learn to read and write, so he become the one who wrote the dockets for the older miners.
“I can remember my grandmother telling me his family had one pair of shoes and whoever got up earliest in the morning and got the shoes on, went to school.”
As well as her maternal grandfather – who played trumpet in the colliery band – and his brothers, other family members on Jeulz’s paternal side were miners. She said: “I was incredibly close to grandad, I went everywhere with him, so this is beyond a thrill for me. He would have been very proud.”
Jeulz worked as a teaching assistant in primary schools before taking redundancy in January. Her three grown-up children thought she was being “rash”, but she said: “Then this opportunity came up and if I’d been at work, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do it. Like the others, I have my own very discreet and powerful reasons for doing it.”
Amanda Gerrard’s mother Eileen Selwood was born in the mining village of Pity Me, Durham, where her stepfather William (Billy) and his brother Eric worked at Sacriston mine, which closed in November 1985.
Amanda said: “It was a tough life. I remember grandad and Uncle Eric coming home and being washed down outside with cold water before they could bath in front of the fire in a tin bath. And I remember the toilet at the bottom of the garden. The community looked after each other though – it was such a tight community, which is still there, just no mines.”
A former primary school teacher, Amanda (63), of Whitstable, went on: “Mum tried to escape her working class roots and joined the Wrens quite young, met my dad and was married at 18. If mum and grandma were here to see Coal, they could see their life and their roots being celebrated. It’s really important to me that I am part of that.
“My mum gives me my roots and I can’t think of a better way of celebrating my working class heritage.”
Amanda is the only one of the four women with acting experience: she is a member of Kent Coast Theatre, an amateur group. She does professional photographic work, but said: “Coal is an opportunity I’d never get in a million years. To be part of something like this is brilliant, personally and for my own self-esteem.”
Reiltin Tighe (39), moved to Canterbury from Dublin with her mum, Avril Leonard, in the 1980s. Avril did Women’s Studies at University of Kent – the only place to offer it at the time – and her thesis was on the women of the miners’ strike.
Reiltin, a paediatrician with three children (aged five, eight and 14) and now living in Whitstable, said: “I remember as a young child going round the houses in the local mining communities with mum and a dictaphone. She was writing their stories and it made a real impression on me.
“She was the sort of mum who’d always take me on marches – it was part of growing up. She was quite political and a very strong woman – fiercely feminist.
“I would never have believed I would do something like this – I was quite a quiet child and I liked dance but could never go to classes as we didn’t have any money. I still like it – but only do it in my kitchen! It’s a huge opportunity.”
Avril still lives in Canterbury and she will be in the Coal audience, supporting her daughter.
Yolanda Varney (43), of Hoath, was inspired to audition for Coal by her daughter, Lucy (nine). She said: “Lucy took part in the Spires Showcase at The Marlowe Theatre. She is being tested for autism and doesn’t like people looking at her, but she stood there and she did it.
“I left work last year really for her needs as she wanted me to be at home. I was finding it difficult at work anyway and had a bit of a breakdown. I lost complete confidence in everything and it was getting to the point where I wasn’t able to walk out of the door.
“When they said they needed women for Coal, I just thought if she can do it, I can, so I did. And I liked the subject – it’s strong.”
Yolanda had two great uncles, Jackie and Dennis Dickinson, who worked down the pits – one looked after the pit ponies at Chislet – and her stepfather, Roy Harlow, worked 30 years in the industry, 18 underground.
Yolanda admits that she left work with “no direction whatsoever” and had a rebellious past. But, one day she walked into Canterbury careers’ office and the rest, as they say, is history.
She became the first female engineer in the Royal Navy; in training she was a lone women among 1,000 men. This was the early 1990s, and although she remembers “small incidents among real sea-going guys”, along with women in other roles, she was accepted: “That doesn’t mean we were liked, but it was accepted because that was the way forward. There was a real divide between those who wanted it to happen and those who didn’t – and the wives didn’t want it to happen.”
Yolanda served for six-and-a-half years. One of her last duties was in Haiti after the civil war: “I worked in body clearing and most of them were just pyred. That kind of struck a chord with me so I decided to go into the funeral business in civvy street.”
She returned to Kent and became a driver-bearer for three months with the Co-Op, before taking over the top job and becoming a funeral director.
Yolanda, Reiltin, Jeulz, and Amanda are pictured (left to right). They’d be the last to admit it, but all four are remarkable women, with remarkable backgrounds, who are doing a remarkable thing.
Coal: Thursday 8 February.