A Portrait of William Roscoe: New one man show celebrates Liverpool icon

National World - LocalTV

A new one man play celebrating a renowned writer and one of England's first abolitionists, is coming to Shakespeare North Playhouse. 'A Portrait of William Roscoe' will see the man come magically alive and out of his portrait to talk about his life as a poet, historian, and patron of the arts.

Transcript

00:00 Celebrating a renowned writer and one of England's first abolitionists, a portrait of William

00:07 Roscoe will see the man come magically alive and out of his portrait to talk about his

00:13 life and times.

00:15 William Roscoe was responsible for really mapping out a lot of the cultural institutions

00:20 in Liverpool like the Royal Institution, the Botanical Gardens in 1802 and he was a man

00:25 who was self-taught. His dad had a pub just where the Everyman, the medical institute

00:32 is on the corner in the 1700s called the Bowling Green and his dad was kind of a bit of an

00:37 entrepreneur. He was ahead of his time. He used to cultivate potatoes in the back garden

00:42 and then sell them down at the market at advanced prices. So William Roscoe was a working class

00:48 self-educated man.

00:50 The one-man play takes audiences on a journey to see Liverpool through the eyes of this

00:55 distinguished gentleman. Using puppetry, physicality and traditional storytelling.

01:01 It's really interesting just to get to the heart of the man. If you hear the name Roscoe

01:05 you just think, oh politician, boring. But he's not. He's got so many different interests.

01:11 So we've been able to bring them to life on the stage. My task is to bring it to life

01:17 in a really interesting and animated way because the difficulty with one person shows is it

01:22 could just be a really dull monologue. He could just be sitting, you know. So it's moving

01:27 it around. We're using lots of puppets. We're using, and we've got this fantastic puppeteer,

01:32 Rusa, who is amazing and she's done all the little mad ideas we've had of like wanting

01:37 to use paper. So we're using bits of origami. We're using pop-up books to suggest flowers

01:42 and the outdoors because he was obsessed with botany and flowers as well.

01:47 A poet, historian and patron of the arts, William Roscoe was responsible for helping

01:52 to establish the first botanical garden in Liverpool in 1802. In that same year he wrote

01:57 a children's poem, The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast for his son, Robert,

02:03 which won him international fame.

02:05 The more I learnt about him, the more I really respected him. I understand where he was coming

02:11 from, his determination and the fact that he worked so hard and loved nature and culture.

02:19 Roscoe was a social activist throughout his life and an advocate for the environment and

02:23 racial justice. He became an MP in Liverpool to vote against slavery. This led to the abolition

02:30 in 1807.

02:31 We've just founded the Friends of Roscoe Gardens because not a lot of people realise that the

02:35 small bit of green space by the Mount Pleasant car park, that beautiful piece of architecture,

02:41 opposite there, there is the Roscoe Gardens. There is a Grade II listed monument to him

02:47 there and he's also buried there.

02:50 A portrait of William Roscoe will be at Shakespeare North Playhouse on Saturday 26th and Sunday

02:56 27th August. As well as the Reader Theatre Room at Calderstones Park on Monday 28th August.

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