An innovative theatre project is set to reveal hidden stories around the streets of East Oxford. KATHERINE MACALISTER finds out more

It’s about bread. And community. About a way of life that is disappearing fast and about East Oxford.

It involves you, an MP3 player and an audio play which has already been recorded leading you around the roads off Cowley Road, telling you a story and revealing the neighbourhood as it unfolds around you.

Our Daily Bread, read by Linda Marlowe, is inspired by Gibbons’ Bakery, the last independent bakery in Oxford, following the lives of a baker’s wife and a young woman, as their contrasting worlds weave together.

But the experience also involves food, a visit to Gibbon’s Hertford Street Bakery, and a delicious, bread-filled breakfast at SS Mary and John school, opposite.

Based on interviews with Roy and Di Gibbons whose family have been running the bakery there for four generations, the project is the brainchild of Oxford Playhouse producer Michelle Walker, who lives near the bakery and is a regular customer.

“I live in East Oxford and realised I wanted to join a way of life that was becoming extinct so wanted to explore that. Because in 1950 there were 40 bakeries between The Plain and Hertford Street and now Gibbons is the only independent one left. So I interviewed Roy and Di about it and they were very pragmatic and said Gibbons would close when they retired or the oven broke, which ever happened first. Their children don’t want to take it on and neither do they want them to. And yet their is such a vibrancy in their bakery so it is really sad.

“But when you consider that bread used to be everyone’s staple diet and people would go the bakery two or three times a day and have bread and butter for their tea, you can see how things have changed.

“So I wanted to explore all of that, and I also wanted to start practising what I preached by introducing some new fringe theatre of my own. It was basically an itch that needed to be scratched.”

Teaming up with fellow Playhouse programmer Charlie Field, the pair devised Our Daily Bread, based around the concept of the word ‘companion’ meaning those you shared your bread with, and the sense of community that involved.

Managing to cast Linda Marlowe, who is currently filming Houdini with Adrien Brody, she found the time to record this new piece of theatre in time for this weekend’s Oxford’s Christmas Light Night Festival.

“It’s been really liberating and something I’d like to do more of,” Michelle explains. “We just hope everyone enjoys it and comes to take part.”

 

The community breakfast will take place between 8.30am and 11.30am on Saturday and Sunday, November 23 and 24, as part of Oxford’s Christmas Light Night Festival.

For anyone without a suitable listening device, there will be MP3 players available to borrow. A suggested route to take whilst listening to the play, culminating at Gibbon’s Bakery, will be available online. The audio play will last approx. 15 minutes. Visit partonandplath.co.uk for all the details.

  • Our Daily Bread is available to download from partonandplath.co.uk from tomorrow.

Suitable for all ages and completely free.