Talented youngsters at Parkside School provided a taste of Cullingworth past and present with a unique performance.

Students staged a play entitled 'Fat Chips, Thin Chips' which mingled fact and fiction to chronicle the lives of villagers. The play was developed after students interviewed elderly locals about their youth. Interviews were transcribed and developed into monologues by Bradford writer Sue Wood.

Students enacted scenes of Cullingworth past at the village's Methodist church, watched by family members and those who had taken part in the interviews. John Mee of the Leeds-based theatre group 'Alive & Kicking' directed the play with Lin Stentiford, head of drama at Parkside, producing.

She says: "A lot of the original language from the tapes was put into monologues and from there students used improvisation, which we polished up on the day of the performance. It contrasted the life of modern teenagers with someone growing up in the 40s and 50s and was very well received.

"We invited all the residents who had been interviewed. I think they were expecting us to dramatise events in the village's history but we decided to use more social drama. The students who took part have gained an enormous amount because they were working under pressure and performing theatre in the round for the first time."

The cast of 20 students from Year 8 and 9 were selected as part of the school's gifted and talented programme, which is funded by the government's Excellence in Cities scheme.

Lin Stentiford says the school hopes to produce another piece of community-based drama in the future.