April meeting

Loads of feedback on progress on our RSC Open Stages production - it is all coming together. Liz F used a model to illustrate the proposed set design, having been inspired by the set design module from the RSC skills share day. It was brilliant, with drapes, a stage and even little props!
Dorothy gave feedback on the workshop for directors and Liz H on stage management.
Lots of help offered baking cakes and on the stall for this Saturday's cake stall in the High Street - thanks to all of you.
A gaggle of Players will be off to Wolverhampton to watch Goldthorn Theatre's "Natural Causes" in a couple of weeks. There is so much on offer at the mo it is hard to see everything, but some of us caught BROADS Agatha Christie, "The Hollow" in Broseley and enjoyed it. There is more AC on offer in a couple of months at Wolverhampton's The Grand too.
See you all at next month's meeting on May 2nd if not before.

Shakespeare Showcase

Liz Fisher reports on a visit to the RSC Regional Showcase at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, where amateur drama groups across the region were performing.

Open Stages – a challenge!

Geoff Speechley & I really enjoyed our evening at the RSC Open Stages Regional Showcase on Sunday 25^th. We both felt it was very well worth going, as we saw the standard of other amateur companies & groups like ours, performing perhaps 10- minute extracts from their Shakespeare productions. This is what we have to aim for as we very much hope to be selected for the next Regional Showcase in the autumn.

All 12 that we saw, plus a finale choral speech, were always entertaining, always sincere, with all casts straining with concentration to give their very best performances. All were good; some were excellent. All had aspects for us to admire, whether in acting, direction, or sheer imagination of a clever new setting. Three examples perhaps show these:-

The Oxford Theatre Guild chose to present the heart-wrenching scene from Macbeth of the murder of Lady Macduff & her children, & then the news of this being brought to Macduff. They had two wonderful young children who played their parts beautifully with Lady Macduff, really struggling against their killers; their bodies remained on the stage in dimmer lights, while Macduff & Malcolm enter from another direction & hear the news from Lord Ross. As the grief struck, & the resolution to pursue revenge, the shadowy forms were very telling. The scene ended with Macbeth lit, standing still, facing the audience with his back turned on all of them.

The Gloucestershire Youth Players presented the last scene from “The Taming if the Shrew” with Katerina as a rather Amy Winehouse figure, becoming a very sad study of an abused & beaten wife with the parallel characterising of Petruchio as an abuser, both with the vulnerabilities & brittlenesses we recognise from current psychology. We thought this was a brave way to interpret the play – but neither of us really agreed with it. What we did like was the use of black & a single colour palette (shades of red) for the modern day costumes – we’ve already thought of the same idea for our whole show, & it gives a good visual impact to a short extract.

The last & most spectacular example that we both loved was Longville Little Theatre Company’s presentation on a scene from “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. The story is as complex as a Whitehall farce in terms of who loves who while secretly engaged to who else, while someone else is trying to do deals with others to deprive someone of someone else’s inheritance while plotting to trick someone into a fake lover’s tryst etc.etc., so to present this, the director set the whole thing as if it were a turn-of-the- century Hollywood film set rehearsing various scenes & then going for “Action!” They clearly wrote some dialogue around it which was very funny; the plotting was explained in rapid melodrama-style dumbshow poses with running commentary which left the audience gasping with laughter, & ended with Falstaff in a woodland scene stripping off to blend into the scenery (?) clad only in a thong with a very suggestive cuddly toy stag’s head to preserve his modesty. . . . I think Shakespeare would have approved!

So this is the challenge we are aiming at in June – presenting “Behind Every Successful Man. . .” as well as these. Geoff & I know that it will be tough, but have no doubt that we’ll make it!