Full details on the enclosed separate sheet.

Oh how we struggled to find a date (December 7^th) when we think you won’t be busy with other things – that our tutor is available (Garth Jones) and that our venue can host us (The Club Theatre).

From Page to Stage -Whatever Your Age!

This acting course is about finding clues in the text in order to build the performance. How can we create the right effect—laughter, anger, tears and sometimes a quick move from one to the other? How does the writer help us to do it well and why do so many performers ignore this help?

The course will also explore the benefits of teamwork—no actor, however experienced, is an island and no character stands alone (except in a monologue!). We will work as a team and see how one performance can strengthen or explain another.

“Fraught not taught” may be the outcome! It will be a day of discovery rather than being taught new tricks—although there may be a few up the old sleeve. We will study the possibilities of voice and movement, the need for timing and a sense of climax not just ina scene but in a performance. It may sound heavy but it wont be—we shall have fun, learn from one another and work at and enjoy the wonderful art of acting.

Garth Jones

We have been asked to arrange another course on First Aid – same fee £36 and providers as last time. We have to pay in advance for 14 places and so far we have promises of 5, possibly 6, people – can we get the other 8 or 9? No date yet – but quite likely the venue will be in Northwich.

I would very much appreciate a phone call – 01606 833645, if you think you have any interest – subject of course, to date suitability.

For your excellent response to my request to get those adjudication dates in to help Danny plan her 2003 / 2004 diary. Several have paid for the full season in advance and one even sent scripts – thank you MADS. However do note that these are not always required – please check with me and possibly save the expense of buying an extra script just for the adjudicator.

That the Theatre Royal – Bury St Edmunds is the only theatre in the UK leased to the National Trust (NT members can find it in the handbook on page 211). This theatre has launched a restoration appeal – it is the oldest working theatre in the country and a superb example of a Georgian playhouse.

How do I know all this? Well I went to the Buxton Opera House to see a touring production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” from the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds company and the details of the restoration appeal were included in the programme. Anyone with £6.4 million to spare can help!

Despite all the trials and tribulations of running a one act play festival we hope this will continue in 2004. We need a venue – can you help and be our hosts. Offers of help on 01606 833645

Cheshire Theatre Guild are delighted to announce that Meg Cooper has agreed to be co-opted onto our committee specifically to give new ideas and input on ways of revitalizing this event.

Meg (Sale Nomads and Tudor Players) has many years exxperience of Amateur Theatre and festivals – I suppose you could say she is to theatre what Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson are to cooking – and she is also good at that – welcome aboard Meg.

I’m talking about the £7 – yes seven pounds I was asked to pay for a programme at Manchester Opera House to see “Lord of the Dance” – I passed.

Another grumble about the Opera House / Lord of the Dance visit. Whatever happened to “latecomers will not be permitted until a suitable break in the performance” – in my book that’s the first interval – not at the Opera House and at £28.50 for a circle seat plus “booking fee” I object to being disturbed twice during the first 10 minutes of the show. It only needed one mobile phone to ring and I would really have thrown a wobbly! Lord of the Dance was highly enjoyable – such energy and precision.

Wilde Words of some importance.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything – Lord Illingworth

Lord Illingworth : The book of life begins with a man and a woman in a garden

Mrs Allonby: It Ends with Revelations.

Lord Illingworth: Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in woman.

Mrs Allonby: Or the want of it in the man.

A kiss may ruin a human life – Mrs Arbuthnot

After a good dinner one forgives anybody, even ones own relations. – Lady Caroline

Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin, but 20 years of marriage makes her something like a public building – Lord Illingworth

Nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages – Lady Caroline

John R Powell
Chairman

Cheshire Theatre Guild member Margaret Boschi reports on being part of the Edinburgh Festival.