CHEERS

Cheers (1995) was an intergenerational show prepared at the Reminiscence Centre. Older people from the Good Companions and young people from the Age Exchange Youth Theatre worked on the older people’s memories of the end of the war in London. The setting for the show was a 3-dimensional installation in the gallery space, evoking war-torn London in 1944-5. The space was very small to host the large cast of 20, but its intimacy made it all the more powerful.

Cheers played as part of the festival 'A Time To Remember’ which brought together older people from across Europe (and including groups from USA and Taiwan) to share memories of that time in their own countries.

A survey of the impact on those people who participated in this event is included in this section of the archive. It shows how profoundly the experience of developing their shows and performing them to audiences in their own countries and in London, touched and enriched the lives of all involved.

After playing in Britain, ‘Cheers’ travelled to Freies Werkstatt Theater, Cologne where the younger and older performers were given a very warm welcome and where older German people felt able to share for the first time some of their own memories of the Second World War.