This is another opportunity for you to learn some basic First Aid Skills. This will again be run by Clayton Training Group, the UK’s premiere First Aid training company.

The date is February 22nd 10am to 5.30pm and the venue Harlequins Theatre, Northwich.

A booking form is enclosed—please note that the price of £36 is the cost to Cheshire Theatre Guild – we add nothing to cover our admin and other expenses. This price has been held for us as previous clients of Clayton Training. If we were to run any courses in the future (and this is very unlikely the cost would be higher).

Today we all have a legal duty of care to our audience and cast / backstage people. Accidents do happen and prompt action could make a considerable difference to the outcome.

Once again a Cheshire Theatre Guild group has been refused permission to perform a play – the set was part built – rehearsals were starting and some posters were already out. In cases like this there is no right of appeal.

The lessons are clear.

I have spoken to the main publishers Samuel French - you might like to make a note of a direct line to the amateur play royalties department —

0207 255 4302

The advice they give is to contact them AS SOON AS YOUR PLANS ARE MADE TO INCLUDE A PARTICULAR PLAY IN YOUR SEASON. Give your proposed dates - seating capacity etc and a license to perform will be issued if it is available. You will need to pay 28 days before opening night. The important thing to remember is that this permission to perform will be honoured even if the play is later withdrawn for amateur performance to other groups without that important license to perform. Another very important point to remember is that if you have paid royalties and then have to cancel the play Samuel French will REFUND your payment or pro-rata if you do fewer performances than originally planned.

There really is no excuse for being caught out!

Congratulations to Tudor Players who have once again been selected to take part in the Isle of Man full length play festival at the beautiful Matcham designed Gaiety Theatre on the seafront at Douglas.

Tudors will be playing on Wednesday April 14th our director is that well known adjudicator who counts how many digits you dial to make a telephone call on stage. The cast will include the Cheshire Theatre Guild official printer of labels (Meg Cooper) and the compiler of newsletters, diaries etc, etc, etc

- all the jobs for Cheshire Theatre Guild that make me wonder how I ever found time to run a business before retirement.

The play we will be taking over is “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” by Neil Simon.

For my role as Harry in “Prisoner of Second Avenue” a Jewish American accent is required. Fortunately help is at hand with the Cheshire Theatre Guild voice coach - Thelma Eastwood Angus - (see the December 2003 newsletter). I see and read all the Cheshire Theatre Guild adjudications and Danny still finds problems with accents in your plays - comments like “his accent worked reasonably well but was not fully sustained” - “this actor did not get to grips with the accent at all” - these are typical comments and similar ones were made last season by Robert Meadows.

Dialect / voice coach Thelma can be contacted on 01270 625185.

YLI houses the largest collection of performing materials in the country comprising 90,000 copies of plays. They allow groups outside their region to use this service and can be contacted on 01924 302229. Plays are charged at £1.50 per copy plus postage. A useful service when choosing plays for the season or for a play reading evening.

Does a drama workshop on the splendid Queen Mary 2 appeal?

Graduates on London’s most prestigious stage school will head a variety of acting workshops during transatlantic crossings.

You will pay rather more than the £5 Cheshire Theatre Guild charge but the n we can’t offer the high life on the high seas!.

The courses for a fiver are unbeatable value—read on for Caroline Young’s report on our course held in December.

Acting Workshop December 7th 2003 with Garth Jones

Never having had a chance to study acting at school - dissecting texts in English literature and language was the nearest we girls were allowed to get to that dangerous profession - I have been trying ever since to make up for this grave educational shortcoming.

So I was immediately drawn to the open and inviting title of this session and plucked up courage to enroll for my first workshop in Cheshire. The day dawned cold with a sharp frost, but the warm welcome at Attrincham’s Club Theatre, and the reviving cups of tea and coffee so efficiently provided throughout the session, soon drove all thoughts of that away. To keep our energy levels humming we oscillated between discussions in the bar and demonstrations on the stage itself. Our thanks are due to all the behind the scenes staff who so expertly and unobtrusively organized the “domestics” for us. Or is there an industrial dishwasher hidden somewhere in the bar?

Garth had put together an ambitious programme which cleverly mixed up friends with strangers, so that we were all “included in”, regardless of age or experience, and given a chance, like eager shoppers at the sales, to try on different roles, acting styles and situations we might never have dared to tangle with otherwise.

After examining some of the ways the actor can analyze texts for clues to character, (such as posture, gesture, voice, mannerisms, grouping, costumes and props) we were given a variety of texts to practice on in groups, from Shakespeare to Wesker. Back again (via Stannislavski and Brecht!) to using the text of various prose and verse extracts to see how each has an individual style to be honoured and using as the springboard for performance, we explored the problems of playing crowd scenes, and ended with playing a range of extracts from restoration comedy to Enid Blyton spoof, each learning from, and building upon, the previous group’s offering.

There was plenty to take away and think about, and I have been enjoying using some of the handouts to help prepare for our next Harlequins production. The Cheshire Theatre Guild should congratulate itself on providing the organizational structure to allow such workshops to be mounted, and I am sure all the course members would also join me in applauding the way Garth managed to give stimulus, amusement, encouragement and challenge to us all.

More Please!

Caroline Young.

At the beginning of October last year we received a phone call from the Royal Exchange asking if we were interested in appearing as extras “on a voluntary and unpaid basis to appear on stage without lines” in the next production which was to be ‘The Playboy of the Western World’ by J M Synge. We almost bit their hand off!! The first rehearsal was on October 15^th and at this we were introduced to the Director, Greg Hersov, and some of the stage management team. They explained what would be involved (we would be arranged in teams and would take turns to appear, so no one had to commit themselves to appearing in all 40 performances) and took photos of us all so that they could put names to faces.

The next meeting was a week later when we actually rehearsed. Greg had us pacing backwards and forwards across the rehearsal room floor while he added layer upon layer of description of what life would have been like in rural western Ireland a century ago and we reacted accordingly. We then practised cheering and shouting for about 10 minutes for the Head of Sound, though at that stage we weren’t quite sure why. We also met most of the cast who presented a ten minute extract for us. Their Irish accents were so broad we had extreme difficulty in understanding what they were saying. Some of us were then ‘fitted’ for costumes. Everything was old, ragged and in a different shade of dirty brown.

I was asked what size boots I took.

6 ½ I replied.

Try these they said, handing me a pair of what must have been size 14 ¾ at least.

To the left is a photo of my feet (a first for a CTG newsletter?) showing me with one boot on and one off.

They were surprisingly comfortable – once I had learned to walk with them on.

Who was it who said they started developing a character from the shoes upwards?

Our next meeting was on the Saturday morning, when we watched the whole play being rehearsed. Mind you, the cast were in ordinary clothes and there was only a minimal set, so all was not very clear, but we did see where we fitted into the story.

Our only rehearsal proper was on the Monday evening, the night before the first Public Dress Rehearsal, when we all found out exactly what we had to do. We only appeared in Act Two, twice, once rushing in after the Hero to celebrate his wins in the village fete, and the second time to watch the fight develop between him and his father (the second time he thought he had killed him). However, what did surprise us was that our participation offstage as spectators of the donkey race was done live every performance. (Hence the practice cheering earlier.) We had expected them to record it and use the recording instead, but no – we worked to cue lights and a cue sheet every performance.

And that was it. Rehearsals over, costumes allocated, rotas worked out and the show started. Peter and I both managed to have named character parts in the show – he was St Patrick and I was the Poteen Granny, complete with earthenware jug. At least it meant I got to go all the way across the stage and back again. All the other extras had to huddle in the doorway and not block the sight-lines.

We were treated very well by everyone at the theatre. That may sound like a silly thing to say, but imagine that you had been rehearsing a play for some six weeks and just before opening night, teams of about twenty strangers appeared to be in your production. Wouldn’t you feel perhaps that they were getting in the way a bit? We were never made to feel that. We went in the stage door each night, used the Green Room alongside the casts of both plays (the Studio performances were going on at the same time), and joined them for drinks after the show each night. Our names were in the programme and we were even given copies of all the press reviews of the show, ½ an inch thick.

I went through every single one of them. The only mention I could find of the extras was a reference to a “some enthusiastic amateurs helping out in the crowd scenes”. At least it was accurate, and it was in The Stage!

Some tongue twisters - tutors at drama workshops seem to like using these as “warm - up” exercises (personally I think they enjoy watching us squirm with embarrassment when we become completely tongue tied!).

Eleven benevolent elephants

Preshrunk silk shirt sale.

An Argyle gargoyle.

I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch.

Lovely lemon liniment.

Three short sword sheaths.

From Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott.