Theatre / bare-knuckle boxing
Preview: The Dog and the Elephant, BOV
Next week at Bristol Old Vic brings this compelling one-man show from local writer Matt Grinter, developed last year as part of BOV’s Ferment Fortnight.
Drawing on a local legend and using physical theatre, vast and immersive soundscapes, music and a simple set, The Dog and the Elephant tells the story of Bristolian bare-knuckle boxer Bendigo Barlow and his friendship with an elephant – and, in the process, explores the noble and brutal world of Victorian bare-knuckle boxing and Bendigo’s relationship with the Romany Gypsies.
Here’s Matt to explain the extraordinary story and its curious genesis.
Sounds like quite a story. How did it take shape?
I grew up in Warmley, just outside Kingswood. It’s a tiny little mining village with a pub and a church on every street. Other than its overabundance of small churches, it’s as unremarkable as everyone else thinks their hometown is.
I had always dismissed it, until in my mid-teens I first heard the local legend that an elephant had been buried in the graveyard of the church between Warmley and Kingswood. The idea that something so foreign, so huge, so exotic might have ended its days in my sleepy, quiet, grey little village captivated me.
And how did the elephant make it into a stage play…?
Years later, training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, I met Jack [Johns, actor] and decided to write a play that we could develop together. There are a thousand practical and financial reasons why it is easier to write your own piece so I thought I’d give it a go. I had written before, but mainly short film scripts and short stories – nothing on the scale of a one-man show.
The elephant was the first story that sprang to mind. I searched high and low, visiting the church, contacting local historians – and soon realised that the facts were few and far between. After eight months I’d established little other than the fact that an elephant had died in the area in 1891, and that it was part of Bostock and Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie. Eating yew leaves was the reported cause of death, but it could have just as easily been from the cold or neglect.
What other historical elements made it into the story?
My research, although slim on facts regarding the Kingswood Elephant, had taken me through the culture of the travelling menageries in Victorian Britain, and onto travelling communities in general – the Romany Gypsies, Victorian Freak shows, where people with many conditions we would recognise and treat today were paraded as freaks of nature. I had read about Georges Gilles de la Tourette and his early studies of the disorder that took his name. I realised that my story lay within all of these things.
The one thing all these communities had in common was a detachment from the society that was developing around them. This is something that interested Jack and me, so we took what we knew about the Kingswood Elephant and – in true theatrical fashion – made up the rest. I managed to get Sharon Clark, Bristol Old Vic’s Literary Producer, to read an early draft and we began a development process with the Old Vic’s Ferment scheme, which was invaluable and ended with the first performance last February.
Tell us a little of the story, then…
Without giving too much away, The Dog and the Elephant is the story of a friendship between Bendigo Barlow, a young Victorian bare-knuckle boxer, and Ina, an elephant from Bostock and Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie. Bendigo has Tourette’s syndrome: his family believes his condition is some sort of curse, and the only solace he can find is with the animals. His vocal tics and barks drive the local kids to nickname him ‘The Dog Boy’ and pretty soon he fights back, eventually leaving his village with Romany Gypsies (mistaking their lack of fear for acceptance). Soon, he is making a name for himself fighting for the Gypsies in the bare-knuckle rings.
As you can imagine, this doesn’t last for long before he has to leave again. Eventually, he is taken under the wing of Moses, a man that works with the animals and Bostock and Wombwell’s. This is where he first meets Ina. Ina, who has been previously mistreated, is as violent and dangerous as Bendigo has become. They find an unlikely friendship but because Bendigo is different, people don’t allow him to find any peace or happiness.
How is the story told to us?
Bendigo tells us the story of his life, which he has mapped out across his body in the form of tattoos. A number of big events in the play happen in Bristol (there’s even a subtle mention of Bristol Old Vic), but nothing is nailed down and spelled out. Part of what makes Bendigo’s story fascinating for me is its forward motion. Neither he nor the story stay in one place for long.
is needed now More than ever
‘The noble and brutal world of Victorian bare-knuckle boxing’. Tell us more about this little-known world?
Go for a pint at The Hatchet and you’re right at the heart of Bristol’s bare-knuckle history! A plaque on the beer garden wall lists some of Bristol’s more famous bare-knuckle fighters and their achievements. Fights were brutal and hard, and deaths were not uncommon. The longest fight on record lasted over six hours. It was messy and dangerous, but there was a code and the fighters garnered huge respect among the Victorian high society.
One in particular, William ‘Bendigo’ Thompson, earned huge wealth and fame. He was a sort of boxer-turned-preacher-turned-businessman who was wildly charismatic. We had a lot of help from the amazing Craig Turner of the SGS and Downend boxing academies, who put Jack and me through our paces in the ring during our research. He has a great knowledge of bare-knuckle techniques, and of the history of boxing in Bristol.
Is it just an extraordinary story of unusual characters and relationships, or is there something more universal in there?
Whenever I have to pitch this story it sounds massive and hyper-real: ‘there’s a boy, he’s a bare-knuckle boxer, oh and he also lives with the gypsies – and he also has Tourette’s syndrome’. But at its heart is something very small and very personal. For me, The Dog and the Elephant is very much a story about belonging and what it means to have a home. The more violently these things are pulled from Bendigo, the more violently he reacts.
Bendigo is told repeatedly that he has no place, that he is an animal and that he doesn’t belong. Eventually these things come to define him. He becomes what they tell him he is – a monster. This judgement on people is relevant now more than ever with the situation in Syria and across Europe. I think loneliness and displacement can strike a chord with pretty much anyone.
The Dog and the Elephant is at Bristol Old Vic Studio from Wednesday, Feb 3 to Saturday, Feb 6. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/dogandtheelephant.html
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