Site-Specific Dialogues for Greenway and Reed Hall

Creating site-specific dialogues for Greenway, National Trust

In November 2024, a class of second year students on the Drama module ‘Playwriting’ were taken to visit Greenway, the Devon summer home of detective fiction writer, Agatha Christie and her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. The property is currently owned by the National Trust, who kindly facilitated the visit, and gave us a short tour of the gardens. After the visit, students were tasked with creating short dialogues inspired by the site.

The intention was for these dialogues to be listened to in situ, as if the characters were present in the room with you.

In preparing these dialogues, the students chose activities from a workbook. These included, for example, collecting petals, stones, seeds and other disposable objects; reading about the site history and its appearance in Christie novels; approaching the site as a crime scene (adapted from Smith, Making Site-Specific Performance, p.109), or writing a postcard to the place.

After returning to Exeter, students wrote their dialogues and brought them to class for feedback, before revising them and recording them in our podcast studio.

We invite you to listen to them, ideally on a visit to Greenway!

Note:

We should stress that even where these dialogues were inspired by aspects of the history of the house, we were also mindful of its importance as a site of fiction: no real life residents are intended to be accuraterepresented here (not even the dogs who are buried in the pets’ graveyard).

Please also note that these recordings may require you to turn up the volume on your device. Students were using a simple podcast studio, as our focus was on writing skills, rather than sound design. Sound effects are also kept to minimal use of free downloads played back in the studio, in real time. You may also find there is a short delay, or some unedited sound at the start of some recordings.

Thanks to the National Trust at Greenway and to Jon Primrose for driving us.

New Friends. Pets’ Graveyard. Scarlett Sims.

Memorial. Fountain. Sadhbh Holden.

A Late Arrival. Sitting Room. Lily Gossage

An Encounter. Tall tree, near to the fountain. Spencer Leach.

Evacuees. Fountain. Molly Newman.

 

Cook. Kitchen. Alicia Wood-Radcliffe.

The Affair. Tree behind the wall near the vegetable garden. Wren Chaffe.

Questions about a Will. Boathouse. Hau (Estella)  Yeung.

Recordings for Reed Hall, Streatham Campus, Exeter.

A few of the students created dialogues for Reed Hall, inspired by similar prompts.

A Discovery. Reed Hall Lawn. Katie Fenton.

Sincerely Mary. Reed Hall Gardens. Apollo Lamberton.

Stakeout. Outside Reed Hall windows. George Oakley.

The Gardener. Reed Hall Terrace. Lucy Williams.

(Please note this recording cuts off before the second part of Lucy’s script)