Tourists and holidaymakers looking to explore England and its history next summer may treat themselves with the theatrical extravaganza – the open-air historical theatre event ‘Kynren – an epic tale of England’ – set to take place in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, starting July 2016.
According to a report by The Guardian, tickets are now on sale for the live action night show which will open on July 2, 2016. Tickets, which cost £25-£55 for adults and £19-£41 for children, are available for booking at kynren.co.uk. There will be 14 performances next summer.
Produced in collaboration with the team behind the live historical extravaganzas at French theme park Puy du Fou, the GBP31m show will be delivered by a cast of more than 1,000 members of the local community. It will be performed along a bend of the river Wear with Auckland Castle as its backdrop, on a stage measuring over 7.5 acres.
Kynren – which signifies the Anglo-Saxon word for generation – will take up to 8,000 spectators on a journey through 2,000 years of British history, from the Roman and Viking invasions through to the Industrial Revolution and the Second World War. More than half of Kynren’s cast is women – many of whom have been trained in stage sword fighting and archery. The lives of Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria will also be represented.
Kynren, which will be as much educational as it aims to be entertaining, is expected to attract thousands of locals and tourists. The Puy du Fou theme park, on which the show is based, opened in 1978 in the Vendee region of western France. Since then, its open-air theatrical performances have been seen by over 10 million people and the park welcomes two million visitors annually.
