Miners' Hall, Murton

‘Bernard Shaw’s play “The Showing up of Blanco Posnet” will be produced by the newly-formed Murton Community Players Society in the Miners’ Hall, Murton, on Monday and Tuesday. The play, which is described as a sermon in melodrama, will be given under the direction of Mr Eric S. Barber, Carnegie Trust dramatic producer and organizer for Durham and Northumberland, who will also take the leading part of Blanco Posnet. The Society was formed under the auspices of the Rock House Educational Settlement, Seaham Harbour’. Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 27 May 1932. ‘In the current issue of “Drama,” the organ of the British Drama League, Mr Eric Barber, the well-known producer, has a contribution on the development of amateur play-acting in Durham and Northumberland. Mr Barber says that an interesting new growth of drama has taken place in the mining areas of Durham and Northumberland during the last two years. As a result of a grant from the Carnegie Trust Fund, a dramatic organizer and producer was appointed in November, 1931, for the purpose of creating acting groups in pit villages and towns. Eight such groups have come into existence, mostly composed of men and women who had done no acting before. Plays which have been successfully produced are “The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet" ... The Carnegie grant is now exhausted and the services of a paid producer will no longer be available, but the eight centres - Seaham Harbour, Murton, Silksworth, Waterhouses, Willington, Dipton, North Seaton, and Seaton Delaval - have every intention of carrying on the good work which they have begun. They have all joined the British Drama League and are hoping to take part in future league festivals’. Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 11 July 1933.