Giles Woodforde hears how an audio tour about radical thinkers was made

Turn off Oxford’s George Street and walk past the front of the Odeon, towards Friars Entry and Beaumont Street. Just after the Oxford Fish and Chips shop, you’ll see a plaque dedicated to the memory of Private Biggs and Private Piggen, who were shot nearby on September 18, 1649.

They died “for their part in the second mutiny of the Oxford Garrison,” to quote the plaque. Both were members of the Levellers, who campaigned for reform of the law, religious tolerance and free trade.

The plaque is one of the stop-off points on a new Playhouse Plays Out production called Suffragettes and Rabble Rousers – A Walk in the Footsteps of Oxford’s Radical Thinkers. As with the Playhouse’s Poetry Walk a couple of years ago, you pick up an MP3 player, headphones and a map from the box office, then stroll along the route at your own pace, with the tape as a guide. But wait. Why the title?

“Oxford has a rich history of rabble rousers,” explains Playhouse producer Hannah Bevan. “They were people willing stand up for their beliefs, push beyond the social norms of their day, celebrate differences and make us look at the world in a different light.

“Rabble Rousers does conjure a sense of trouble making, but it’s also an awakening, a feeling of action and doing something radical. The walk is part of our Radical Thinking season and we wanted it to be a celebration of the great and radical minds who spent time in this city. Using suffragettes in the title is a nod to Emily Wilding Davison, who one of the pieces is about, but acknowledging that many people who stood up for their beliefs suffered as a result.”

Scriptwriting for the tour has been divided between writers, with author Dame Margaret Drabble contributing the section about Levellers Biggs and Piggen. She has published 18 novels and edited two editions of the Oxford Companion to English Literature.

“It was very interesting, inventing a story for Biggs and Piggen,” says Dame Margaret as we meet up below the plaque dedicated to them.

“Both names are very English, they’re Anglo-Saxon in a way. They were certainly local men – Piggen, in particular, is thought to have been a local name. So the names were there, but we didn’t know much about the men themselves. So I spent a lot of time reading historians and some of the original Levellers’ pamphlets. The great Oxford historian Christopher Hill was very interested in the subject and I consulted his work. So I knew where to look for original material. But, in my script, I have Piggen looking back through history and thinking how odd it was that he ended up being shot in Gloucester Green bus station.”

Also according to the script, Piggen was “a shoemaker to the mighty”.

“I invented that,” Dame Margaret laughs. “I entirely invented Piggen’s life as an ordinary chap before he became a Leveller. I decided that his being a shoemaker would be quite good fun. I wanted him to have a trade and, as we know, shoemakers have always been rebellious people. They’ve always been in the ranks of the self-educated, left wing man.”

Dame Margaret became a writer after a “brief and inglorious career” acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company. So, was she particularly conscious of the actor who would be reading her script on to the tape?

“I didn’t want the script to sound all old-fashioned ‘prithee’, and ‘thee and thou’, although I have included some nice quotes from Levellers,” she replies. “I hope I’ve enabled the actor to use a contemporary voice when he’s saying, ‘This is where I’m standing now,’ but also get the flavour of the extraordinarily powerful 17th century language.”

Suffragettes and Rabble Rousers
Oxford Playhouse
Until September 30
MP3 players are available Mon-Sat, 10am-6pm (or 4.30pm when there is no evening show at the Playhouse)