Amy Merrigan
In June 1985, a large group of New Age travellers were stopped by the police on their way to set up the annual Stonehenge Free Festival. The resulting violence was reportedly more or less a one-sided clash between armed police and unarmed travellers. Dozens of travellers were injured, 537 people arrested and every single vehicle destroyed. This incident became known as The Battle of the Beanfield.
The really odd and slightly disturbing thing about The Battle of the Beanfield is that there’s very little information about it around. Not only does it seem to have been partially wiped from history (I had literally never even heard of it) but there is not much stuff to be found when you do look. Have a quick Google, and the whole thing still seems to be shrouded in an air of mystery
This company of students from Warwick set about a project to find out more about, and to in some way re-enact, The Battle of Beanfield. With the clever use of film instalments throughout, the process of research and discovery is documented and becomes part of the play itself. The piece goes from interviews with people who were there on both sides of the story – a traveller, a policeman, a journalist – to their journey to the site itself, finally recreating the battle.
Dressed up as police, they look almost ridiculous, like children in fancy dress, which in itself addresses the difficulty of recreating such a emotive event without losing a sense of seriousness. It’s when one member of the company, playing a traveller, is suddenly overcome with a very emotive and involuntary reaction to being beaten with a truncheon, that this play really packs a punch.
The play also firmly roots this issue in a contemporary mindset, creating a very immediate sense of festival-goers, as well as what it meant to travel to Stonehenge in another part of the narrative. The Beanfield is an incredibly engaging telling of such a shady and contentious issue – when they arrive at the site, nobody can be persuaded to talk about it.
The Beanfield is playing at theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) from 20-22 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For more information, visit the Edinburgh Fringe website.