The Road

© Photography by Przemek Szczodry

About

In the late 1960s an Inner City Ring Road was proposed which was to cut through Bristol from the M32.  In Totterdown, 500 homes and businesses were reduced to rubble, and 5000 people displaced ready for the road.  In the end, it was never built. 

The Road, in collaboration with Bristol-based Calling the Shots, is a series of short plays written by Mike Akers (Passing the Baton, Jane Eyre, Peter Pan) and directed by Wyldwood’s Artistic Director, Rachel Adams (Passing the Baton, May).

The site specific performances took place in three different houses in Firfield Street and Stanley Hill, and explored the fascination, and rise in population, of the motor car. Told from the perspective of local residents past and present, this biographical piece has been written from stories and archives from the community.

The Road was part of a wider project over the Arts Trail called ‘The Three Streets’, a collection of exhibitions and installations by local resident John O’Connor, the 138 Arts Collective, Floriography, Hillcrest School, the University of Bristol’s Brigstowe Institute and the Knowle and Totterdown Local History Society.

For more details see The Road Project’s Facebook page here.

Cast and Creatives

Writer: Mike Akers
Director: Rachel Adams
Producers: Calling the Shots and Wyldwood Arts
Cast: Alison Cowling, Kim Hicks, Andrew Kingston 
Production Managers: Jo Woodcock and Rhian Graham

Do you have stories to share?

If you have any stories of Totterdown, please do get in touch via email at hello@wyldwoodarts.co.uk

You can find out more about what happened to Totterdown by clicking here.