HAY Theatre Company are in the final stage of their reminiscence project, Reflections, which began in October last year, and set out to collect memories from elderly people local to Hay-on-Wye borders, with a view to creating a new play script and production from the material.

This new production Reflections on a Train Journey Home has an intergenerational cast drawn from Hay Senior Youth Theatre and a new reminiscence group who meet at The Globe in Hay every week, “and boy do they get on! We can’t and don’t want to stop them talking”, says artistic director and writer Janine Sharp.

In a curious style similar to Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz and Dr Who, the local doctor’s daughter, Elizabeth Wilson, steps off the Hay train on her way home from school, only to find it is 1936, the year she was born. She meets many local characters on her journey through time, all with a story to tell, before she returns safely home to 13 Broad Street (Tinto House) in1950.

“ I have loved the process, not only the new friendships formed with the new reminiscence group, but the abundance of amazing stories I collected visiting people on a one-to-one basis. More than a hundred interviews proved to me that everyone has a story to tell; whether it is about how naughty they were at school or their early memories of Christmas. The most amazing story has to be from 98 year old Raymond Smith who not only led his troops in the Normandy landings but also was the first to arrive at Belsen concentration camp.”

Janine Sharp, no novice to theatre and TV learnt this process through working with Age Exchange Theatre in London way back in 1983. After 28 years of working in London she moved to Herefordshire 12 years ago to perform with New Theatre Works and to work as a freelance director at The Courtyard theatre with her adaptations of the books The Borrowers and Stig of the Dump. “I was also a presenter for the BBC's Playaway with Brian Cant," Janine reveals.

This theatrical train will be stopping at The Parish Hall, Lion Street, Hay -on-Wye on Monday, October 27 at 7pm, Cusop Village Hall on Tuesday, October 28 at 2.30pm and Dorstone village hall on Wednesday, October 29 at 7pm. To book, call Sue Hodgetts on 01497 822523.