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About Lynx Theatre and Poetry

In 1987, Lynx Theatre and Poetry launched Sylvia, a play about Sylvia Pankhurst, which was immediately booked by East London schools. The play used 250 slides combining archive material with specially commissioned modern photographs.

 

The played was booked for a fund-raiser for the newly opened Pankhurst Centre in Manchester the following March, and Sylvia also toured to schools and arts centres all over England, and in 1991 to Ireland too, often selling out.

 

In 1988, four performances of Sylvia at the Liverpool Museum were insufficient, and 16 schools were truned away. Lynx had to return for more performances the following year.

 

Other notable public performances were at:

 

Sylvia toured until 1992, but because there were so many enquiries, it was revived for a schools tour in 1997. It has now been revived in an updated version and is available for booking across the UK.

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The new production generally played to excellent or full houses, and even sold out a month before the performance at the Working Class Memorial Library in Salford in 2018.

 

Rebels and Friends was launched at the 1989 East End Festival and that summer made its first tour of Ireland, where the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, had to put in extra seating. This was followed by a 1990 tour and in 1992 a run at the Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin.

 

Rebels and Friends also was very successful in England at colleges and in, for example, Leeds, Skelmersdale, Runcorn, Bournemouth and Hexham. It was the first play about Ireland to be performed in Birmingham since the 1974 pub bombings.

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A new production of Rebels and Friends was toured in2019, including headlining at the 2019 Liverpool Irish Festival.

 

Because of funding cuts in 1992, Lynx was unable to produce Shadow of the Soul, a play with music, dance and poetry about Percy Bysshe Shelley, and so the theatre company ceased to tour. Lynx is planning a new production of this under the title The Image of Life to mark the bicentenary of Shelley's death.

 

However, Lynx did

  • become a company registered by guarantee and a registered charity

  • give readings and talks

  • work with other organisations, for example to produce The Battle of the Bridge with Wissey Valley Arts in 2007.

 

With a newly directed Sylvia, a revival of Rebels and Friends and a new play, I Want to be Wonderful in prospect, Lynx looks forward to a bright and productive future!

 

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