The Ballard of Jack & Poll

Jack and Poll are part of Portsmouth’s historical legacy. Two down and out kids swept up in the high seas life of battles waged and sordid acts on salty shores. Join us in a mixed media puppet show of epic proportions. A phantasmagorical journey to the rum-soaked heart of histories forgotten dynamic duo.

Our puppet show is a highly imaginative look at Portsmouth’s history and we want to ignite the public’s interest in its own history and make links between the social and political realities today. The puppet show ignites not only an interest in local history but in puppetry and how this unique art can make the abstract concrete and the concrete abstract. This fully immersive experience will demonstrate to viewers that historical content can be vivified by the creative arts and become a force for not only education and information but action, protest and change. Portsmouth’s hardscrabble past is behind it but the class, economic and political struggles of days long past are still ever present in ole’ Portsmouth Towne and has vast implications for the way the city envisions it’s future. The play is about the long arc of narrative and how the past breathes into the future meaning, purpose and understanding of the unique circumstances that make Pompey, Pompey.

Days: Thursday, 27 June, 2024
Times: