Over 150 people attended Saltmine’s production of ‘The Soul in the Machine’, the story of George Williams and how he founded the YMCA in 1844.
Commissioned by YMCA and created by Saltmine Trust, The Soul in the Machine is a new production featuring Norfolk-born Freddy Goymer and Joanne McGarva. The show at Norwich Playhouse on May 12 was entertaining, informative and uplifting and of local significance as we celebrate 160 years of the YMCA in Norfolk this year.
We meet George as a child on the family farm in Somerset. He is not cut out to be a farmer so in 1841 he moves to London to become an apprentice at a drapers. Here George meets some Christians and is converted. He experiences hostility at first from his work mates who were not interested in his religious thoughts.
George, however, was eager to tell people about God. He felt moved by the plight of workers and campaigned for early closing to reduce the long hours they had to endure. He was interested in the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of young men and on June 6 1844, the YMCA was formed.
The play explored the idea of work as ‘the machine’ and how people are treated like cogs in a big machine; there is more to people than their capacity to work. The play demonstrated the isolation people experience when working at a machine, it remained firmly routed in the 1850s and the audience was left to draw the parallel with modern times.
The development of the railways meant that the message spread across the UK. Within just 10 years, YMCAs had been set up across the world.
The YMCA grew at an astonishing rate. Today there are 58 million members in 119 countries. As an organisation, it continues to thrive today – this can be attributed to some of the values demonstrated in the play such as working together, making the most of opportunities, being driven by faith and not fearing to address injustice.
At the end of the play, Caleb Mitchell, who played George said, “This very night 260 people have been given somewhere to sleep by YMCA Norfolk. I think that’s amazing.”