Wildworks Theatre has announced a spectacular new production, Stranger Beasts, to be staged on the rugged far edge of Cornwall this autumn.  

The theatre company will set the outdoor show at the iconic Geevor Tin Mine site near Pendeen from September 18 to October 6.  

Cornwall will take centre stage in the drama. The heroine is Belerion, a girl born of a cosmic mother and an earth-born father, bound to change the destinies of her land and her people.  

Stranger Beasts will be the dramatic culmination of a multitude of Wildworks-led activities running since late last year under the banner We are Shining - the biggest theatre engagement programme ever staged in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.  

Wildworks describes Stranger Beasts as a love song to the land and a wild cry to the skies with its roots firmly planted in myth and fairy tales such as Cupid and Psyche - a classical story from the second century - and Beauty and the Beast.   

Artistic director Mydd Pharo, who conceived Stranger Beasts and co-wrote with Mercedes Kemp, said: “This promises to be one of our most ambitious productions, with a bold intention to embody Cornwall and its incredible landscape in human form.   

“We are setting the story in the most dramatic of places – among the spoils and ruins of a rugged tin landscape at the end of the land with the wild Atlantic beyond.  

“Stranger Beasts is a life story and a love story that explores the transformative nature of strangers. It reminds us that despite the surface wounds and scars that we gather through life, sometimes all it takes is the power of a stranger to hold up a magic mirror to reflect and remind us of what strength lies beneath.”    

Belerion grows up wild and motherless and as she reaches womanhood her ordeal deepens. She is forced into an unwanted femininity and exploited by those who should love her but who wish to tame her.   

Her stormy rage at cruel fate brings a Stranger to the shore and together they journey through the Thin Place, the boundary between land and sea. A liminal space, neither here nor there, where rules are suspended, and Bel and the Stranger can find love and acceptance of their strangeness.   

For more information on Wildwork Theatre latest project, visit: wildworks.org.uk/projects/cornwall-erratics