ABSTRACT
On her return to England from working with Carlo Boso in 1990, Didi Hopkins sought to adopt the trainer/conductor approach that she had learnt from him. When she was invited to teach a performance project at a performing arts College in Liverpool, she decided to base the term’s work on Le Médecin Volant. She translated the original text from the French, creating a new version more suitable for a young Liverpudlian cast, The Flying Doctor.9
This college production was seen by Stella Hall, at that time the Director of the Liverpool Festival of Comedy, who immediately bought the show, programming it as part of the festival that year (1990). Didi then offered the cast the chance to work as a professional company might do as part of their course, in other words, rehearsals six days a week, long hours and as many performances as could be squeezed in. To support this project she fundraised extensively, both in money and in kind, so that as the show restarted outside college, rehearsal space, photocopying, lunchtime sandwiches, and storage premises had all been secured. In collaboration with Ninian Kinnear-Wilson and John Broadbent of Unfortunati, a further training programme was created to run alongside the rehearsals, dealing with mask making, voice and improvisation, modelled on Carlo Boso’s Avignon workshops.
