Silence Speaks

Silence is an adaptation of the medieval French romance, the Roman de Silence. Rachel Rose Reid, ‘Queen of the new wave storytellers’, will perform one part of her adaptation of the epic tale at St. Mary’s Guildhall in Coventry’s cathedral quarter. The manuscript containing the Roman de Silence was kept in a box marked ‘old papers – no value’ alongside letters from King Henry VIII, until it was found in 1911 in Wollaton Hall. The manuscript has been worked on by scholars, but the text is not widely known outside academic circles. On April 28th, the story will be brought to life through Rachel Rose Reid’s performance, thanks to funding from the University of Warwick’s Arts and Humanities Impact Fund and Global Research Priorities ‘Connecting Cultures’ programme. The story focuses on the life of a character called Silence, a descendent of King Arthur who is gendered female at birth but raised as a…