A Bankside Walk with John Constable

John Constable, celebrated local playwright, poet and performer, is conducting a lunchtime walk for Better Bankside members and local residents.

The walk, lasting approximately an hour, will take in some of the area's famous landmarks along with some of the 'secret' treasures hidden in its surrounding back-streets. It's a must for anyone who would like to feel more connected with the place where they live and work. The walk will be followed by refreshments in a local hostelry, where John will briefly outline the current plans to revive The Southwark Mysteries as a Bankside community drama by 2010. The event will conclude at 2pm.

The Southwark Mysteries was written by John Constable, and performed on a route between Shakespeare's Globe and Southwark Cathedral at Easter 2000 with the assistance of a cast of community actors. Southwark MP Simon Hughes has gone on record as saying that the Mysteries could be the borough's equivalent of the Oberammagau passion play, performed every ten years. With this in mind, Better Bankside's CSR theme group funded John Constable to begin developing a new production of the Mysteries for 2010.

Bankside, the area through which the walk will go, was for centuries outside the jurisdiction of the ancient City of London, Bankside has long been a law unto itself. The area has inspired the nation's greatest writers - Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens - and been home to the world's most famous theatre, The Globe. These same south London streets have given sanctuary to immigrants and refugees, to generations of tradesmen, craftsmen and Thames Watermen, to the workhouse poor and the criminal underclass.