"When the Blackbird Sings". Creation Theatre
All aboard for a Creation Theatre, site-specific, Magical Mystery Tour. Creation, thirty years old in 2026, has become the non-pareil of Oxonian hybrid theatre over the years. They’ve done Midsummer Night’s Dream as an iambic treasure hunt through the back alleys and gardens of Oxford, and Sherlock in Summertown , where audiences picked up clues to a street crime even worse than the Council’s bus gates. Now they’ve teamed up with the Schwarzman Centre and director Erica Whyman to create a bus ride through history, accompanied by some of this great city’s most significant, if marginalised, unsung heroes. Crucially, When the Blackbird Sings isn’t just a history of Oxford. It’s a history of Blackbird Leys, the vibrant estate barely two miles east of the Radcliffe Camera. How many students find their way there? You could probably count them on one hand. Built in the 1950s as housing for factory workers, it’s traditionally been snubbed by the supposedly smarter parts of town. But Blackbi...
