August 1998, September and November 1999.
Site specific performance
across Mynadd Bach, an upland moor in west Wales. Performed in Welsh and English.Undertaken by Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes and members of Brith Gof.
Funding and support from the Arts Council Wales, Radio Ceredigion and Dyfed Police.
In the 1820s Augustus Brackenbury, a minor squire from Lincolnshire England, bought 350 acres of moorland and bog, Mynadd Bach near Trefenter, from the enclosure commissioners of Wales who were pursuing major land reorganization. The local people saw their rights to dig peat for fuel and to common grazing threatened. Between 1820 and 1826 they frustrated every attempt to build a house on Brackenburyís land. The techniques they used ñ mobs dressed as women, firing guns in the night, parading effigies, setting fire to property - anticipated those of the notorious Rebecca riots that challenged the state in Wales in the mid nineteenth century.
Early on a blustery evening in late summer, with leaden skies over Mynadd Bach, Pearson walked five miles across what was Brackenburyís estate and what is now a wind farm. In character as Brackenbury he was accompanied by Mike Brookes with satellite radio transmitter, and the halogen searchlight of a police helicopter hovering overhead. His voice, conveying diary entries and personal commentary was relayed live in a radio program that featured source materials, further historical commentary and characterizations delivered by the professional performers of Brith Gof and local inhabitants. The live audience of several hundred watched from cars on overlooking hills as they listened to the radio, or looked out from their back doors. Some attempted to track Pearson and Brookes. More listened at home.
The work was restaged as a performed lecture (with randomized taped materials and projected imagery, and without live performer) at Bournemouth (European Association of Archaeologists Annual meetings) and at Stanford.
