Giles Woodforde speaks to Soapbox City's Jonathan Lloyd about this major new event

May Morning has been a special event in Oxford for centuries. At one time members of Magdalen College Choir were reputed to throw rotten eggs down on to the crowds below after singing Hymnus Eucharisticus from the top of Magdalen Tower at 6am. The singing, but absolutely not the egg throwing, continues to this day.

This year a major new event, Soapbox City, will join the traditional festivities. From 7am to 7pm on Thursday, May 1, a soapbox will be provided in Broad Street for 12 hours of continuous public address, divided into 144 five-minute slots. Managing the event is Pegasus Theatre’s recently appointed artistic director, Jonathan Lloyd. How, I ask him, is he going to ensure speakers don’t overrun their allotted time?

“You mean people may end up going on for an hour?” Jonathan laughs. “We thought about that very early on. We’ve got a klaxon and a red light. When they’ve got 30 seconds to go we’ll hold up the card.

“The klaxon will go off strictly at the end of five minutes for the next person to go on. That applies even if you are in the middle of a sentence, or in mid-song. But we haven’t also got a crook to forcibly remove people!”

Soapbox City is jointly produced by the Pegasus and the Oxford Playhouse. How, I ask Jonathan, did the idea first come about?

“I believe John Hobart of Modern Art Oxford had the original idea: what’s wonderful about Oxford is a lot of the local arts organisations talk to each other. We all thought this would be a really good way of bringing together not just the arts organisations but the University, some of the schools, some of the charities, and also the general public. For me as a newcomer, what’s fascinating about this city is the incredible mix of people. We want to celebrate Oxford as a hotbed of radical thinking.”

I’m guessing the flats overlooking Port Meadow will come high on the list of subjects to be raised. Has Jonathan got his own secret list of bookmakers’ odds on what people might talk about?

“We haven’t quite got as far as listing odds, but I think flooding will be high on the list. We also know one or two people want to talk about fracking. However, this isn’t just about people getting up and ranting – although we welcome that. Our brief to people is: ‘You’ve got five minutes, we want you to make all the people watching and listening to you look at the world in a slightly different way by the time you’ve finished’. It doesn’t need to be shouty, it might be a quiet radicalism. Or it might be a song, or a performance of some kind.”

Obviously there’s a risk of a speaker going off the rails, or becoming offensive. Is there a vetting procedure? “We’ve asked people to tell us what they’d like to talk about,” Jonathan replies. “On the day we’re going to put up a big board listing who is going to fill all 144 slots, and what they are going to talk about. We need to prevent people giving their subject matter, then getting up and talking about something else – there are obviously legal constraints.”

And how about Jonathan himself? Is he allowed to take part? “I am preparing something,” he says enigmatically. “Just in case people don’t turn up and we have some gaps.”

Soapbox City
Broad Street, Oxford
Thursday, May 1
To take part, email soapboxcity@oxfordplayhouse.com