Sea mysteries, women’s secrets and more as Hastings' Bev Lee Harling digs into her ancestral past

The result is Ploughing The Salt Sea which arrives at The Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham on September 5, complete with a free community workshop.

Bev Lee Harling never knew her maternal grandparents: her mother, Jan, was adopted at the age of nine. “She was a very secretive person and never spoke about her parents or family,” Bev explains. “After she died, I was left with holes in my understanding of who I am and where I belong.”

Bev began to plug the gaps, recording conversations with her father about her mother’s past, researching her family tree and visiting local museums. In the grip of these stories, Bev devised a performance influenced by traditional folk music and the comical and tragic stories she was uncovering about her Hastings fishing family.

Ploughing The Salt Sea represents a culmination of this research. Bev tells of a great uncle lost at sea; a dastardly grandfather running amok with the law; a great-greatgrandmother, proprietor of net huts down on Rock-a-Nore; and the decline in her own mother’s health. She shares precious memories, real and imagined. While exploring themes of the fishing-community, the show also connects universally to women, secrecy, loss and finding your own voice, Bev promises.

After each performance, the audience are invited to join an informal, post-show, community conversation with Bev: “This is our opportunity to come together and get to the heart of the experience we just shared.”

In the run-up to the show, Bev invites members of the Shoreham community to share their stories of their female ancestors at a free Fishing for Creativity workshop: “The stories captured will be added to a collection of personal anecdotes celebrating the women who made us who we are today. Drawing on the recently discovered rich heritage of centuries old, fishing family roots in Hastings, the narrative, told through the eyes of the overlooked women, seeks to rewrite their stories back into our current consciousness.”

Bev is a multi-genre vocalist, violinist and composer working across performance, theatre, dance, film and opera bringing classical, folk, jazz and found sounds to her projects and collaborations. Supporting the show is a team of award-winning artists and professionals including choreographer Arthur Pita, costume and set designer Simon Daw and composer and sound designer Frank Moon. Hastings-based artist, Mae Dewsbery, is the show’s producer.

Bev began her violin studies at the age of five and toured Europe extensively as a teenager, playing classical repertoire with the East Sussex Youth Orchestra. After graduating from Middlesex University with a degree in jazz studies with voice, she toured with UK jazz project Septpiece (featuring Dave Mattacks, Mark Lockheart, John Donaldson and Stuart Hall) and began writing her own material.