Adjudications

Your adjudicator, Jon Kerr, is having a busy time and as usual this means seeing 3 or 4 plays in a busy week.

Despite this Jon’s adjudications are coming through remarkably quickly and unlike recent Cheshire Theatre Guild adjudicators, Jon has a day job! Thank you Jon. Don’t forget you can have your adjudications Emailed to you – just fill in the details on your adjudication form.

Just one further point – the first heading on the adjudication you will receive is ‘Choice of Play’. As Jon explained at our chairpersons / secretaries lunch (shame on you if you missed the season’s launch event) this part of the sdjudication is written before he comes to see you – bear this in mind when you read these comments.

Directors / Actors Register

This is held by committee member Jean Teggin and you are urged to update the enclosed form – (if you have already done so and some of you took these at our lunch – thank you).

Just to clarify the purpose of the register. It is to enable Cheshire Theatre Guild to help you in an emergency situation (eg a cast member has pulled out of a production at short notice). What we cannot do is become a casting agency when requests come in to fill roles weeks before production dates. We do have some directors willing and keen to experience working with other groups and here it is a different situation. Most directors – unless they have already done the play – will need plenty of time to study and work on then play before the first rehearsal. For this reason if you find yourselves short of a director for a play give plenty of notice and Cheshire Theatre Guild will try to help.

Affiliations for 2007 / 2008

There are a number of these outstanding and our new treasurer Gerry Card would appreciate these as soon as possible please.

A change of treasurer has also involved a change of bank and they don’t make this easy do they. I know Chester Little Theatre had a similar problem – perhaps the banks imagine that amateur theatre people are all involved in money laundering and similar rackets!

New Cheshire Theatre Guild Members

A welcome to Purvies Productions who in October presented “The Winding Sheet” at MADS theatre. This was a new play written by Purvies chairman Taffy Davies. The theme of the play was a fictionalised account of the last day of a block printing works.

So what exactly is a winding sheet?

(noun) i: a sheet in which to wrap a corpse for burial, a shroud. ii: a mass of solidified wax clinging to the side of a candle, likened to a sheet folded in creases and regarded as a bad omen…

News From The Groups

Club Theatre

Th playing of the National Anthem before performances has been a lonk tradition at Club Theatre – but no longer. Members were asked to vote on continuing to play with 93 in favour and 271 against.

This month (see diary) they have a premiere (not unusual at Club Theatre) and this is “Yonder Peasant” – written by club stalwart John F Banks and telling the true story of how a well known carol Good King Wenceslas came about.

Stockton Heath Methodist Dramatic Society

Many of you will have presented “Nevilles Island” and know the play starts as Gordon, Angus, Roy and Neville emerge from Derwentwater and on to dry land. I understand that the Stockton Heath Methodist Dramatic Society set was quite amazing – trees, rocks, sand and of course water! Now we all know how how the smallest amount of water seems to go everywhere if it spills and here was a large amount that despite polythene sheeting and tarpaulins decided to seep into the cellar below the stage. On Sunday after the play finished it was a major job to clear up the mess and during the play’s run it was a major concern that water would get into the electrics – fortunately it did not.

The set for “Neville’s Island” was designed by Gordon Firth. Father to Jin Firth the play’s author, who came along on the final night to see the play and afterwards to congratulate the cast.

Sandbach Players

Sadly after 61 years this group has – despite all the efforts of a small number of stalwarts – been forced to close.

It was the first drama group I joined – over 40 years ago and was then known as Sandbach and District Amateur Dramatic Society – later shortened to Sandbach Players.

We performed in Sandbach Town Hall – with a stage, set, lighting, tabs and all to be put up (it took 3 days) – for 3 performances – to be struck in 1 day – hyard work but what fun we had.

Later a chance to have our own theatre in hope street – to be shared with a church school room – but we were allowed to do more or less what we wanted with a permanent stage etc – Scene store and the luxury of being able to rehearse on stage from day 1. Then disaster came after many years of 3 plays a season and several awards – dry rot. We had to move out and by this time I was no longer with the players – a move was made to Sandbach School and what seemed a perfect arrangement. By now a certain Margaret Boschi was the hard working chairman of the players and there were some good productions.

Sadly membership declined, standards slipped and audience numbers fell. It was time to leave the school and move back to the Town Hall (now refurbished – but a pocket handkerchief stage).

The players struggled on but the writing was on the wall and so despite further effo0rts to keep afloat the heart breaking decision was made to fold. A sad day – particularly for those few – you know who you are – who through thick and thin never lost hope that Sandbach Players would again rise to it’s former glory.

Wilmslow Guild Players

When the director of “Night Must Fall” found himself (unexpectedly) forced to sample the services of the N H.S. in hospital it was a case of “the show must go on”  And so for Geoff Reed it was direction by remote control via wife Grace. – who was in the play herself as the wheelchair confined (when it suited her) Mrs Bramson. I went to see the play on the Friday night and Geoff had been let out for the weekend, and the look of joy on his face spoke volumes. Get well soon Geoff.

Don’t forget to let me have your news for next time.

The ultimate Role?

Hamlet is often cited as the biggest challenge for a young classical actor, but why?

It’s the size for starters – 357 speeches 1,507 lines and 11,563 words. Hamlet is by far the longest part in any of Shakespear’s 37 plays. Only Henry V has more to say but the 1,922 lines are stretched over 3 plays. King Lear the prize part for older actors has only half the lines of Hamlet.

And Still on Shakespeare

Did you know the connection between the Alexander Technique and Shakespeare? Read on ….

The Alexander Technique

Frederick Alexander was a Shakespearean actor who developed problems with his voice. After doctors informed him there was no physical cause, he carefully observed himself in multiple mirrors, and realised that he was needlessly stiffening his whole body in preparation to recite or speak. He used his observation to develop what is now known as the Alexander Technique: a form of education that enables us to overcome reactive, habitual limitations in movement and thinking.

The Death of the Extra

“Greedy casting agencies, new technology and Ricky Gervais have combined to kill off the professional extra”, said Ben Hoyle in The Times. Twenty years ago, about 1,500 actors in the UK made a living as “background artists” – the unsung stars of the screen , adding colour atmosphere and believability to everything from an intimate restaurant scene to the vast crowd shots in Ghandi. Nowadays as many as 50,000 “amateurs” are plying their trade in the British film and television industry, many of them drawn to the business by the popularity of the Ricky Gervais sitcom Extras. Established background artists complain that there simply isn’t enough work to go around.

In the old days, said Hoyle, many of the background artists were trained actors who prided themselves on their ability to follow complex directions on set, often maintained their own wardrobes and upheld a strict code of etiquette that included never disturbing the lead actors. Today there are increasing complaints that the new generation pester stars for their autographs and even pose for souvenir photographs.

According to Paul Kirby, a veteran of more than 1,000 film and television productions, this is no laughing matter. “There’s real acting involved in being able to mime an uproarious conversation for a restaurant scene, or in playing a corpse, shallow breathing for a long time”.

To make matters worse, advances in technology now mean that Hollywood is hiring fewer and fewer extras. In the recent historical epics Troy, King Arthur and 300, for example, computers generated “virtual extras” to populate the dense crowd scenes. Humans didn’t get a look in.