Shiela Vanloo, St Austell Radio
Living Word Walks - Scary Little Girls Theatre
Rebecca Mordan founded Scary Little Girls in 2003 and her innovative theatre became an instant hit at the Festival. No sitting around in a cosy theatre involved in this, for Rebecca and her crew invented an adventure - semi-guided walks through Fowey with a difference.
The walks began in the library of the Fowey Hall Hotel, luckily no dead bodies were discovered here. Each participant was given a beautiful flower to wear, a guide book and instructions to stay together before setting off into the unknown.
The first surprise came before reaching the bottom of the hotel drive, when one of our fellow walkers suddenly launched into the opening lines of 'Rebecca', before disappearing off into the woody grounds, never to be seen again!
And so followed a wonderfully informative walk around my beautiful hometown; using the clever guidebook filled with history and stories. Any walk through Fowey is special, but this one was interspersed with local actors of the finest calibre suddenly appearing in the most unlikely places and delivering passages from Du Maurier's books.
We found an abandoned car on Town Quay, with a recorded message taken from The Birds, a young man sitting on Victoria's steps on Albert Quay sang to us, an extract from Frenchman's Creek played out from the balcony of The Haven and so it continued. The journey was filled with delights and surprises every step of the way, finishing in the Oak Room of The Ship with the ghost of Rebecca herself in the famously haunted bedroom of the Inn.
The research and work that went into this piece of living theatre was deservedly rewarded with high praise being left in the Guest Book at the end of our day.
Du Maurier continues to throw up unexpected nuggets right out of left field and the Living Word Walks will be remembered for a very long time to come.
Check out www.scarylittlegirls.co.uk for details of upcoming walks in St. Austell and Truro - see you there!