Bromley Theatre Guild Announcements

Thursday 18th , Friday 19th , Saturday 20th February
Farnborough Dramatic Society
“Generations Apart” by Peter Gordon.
Adjudication on Friday 19th.
In 1969, having fallen in love with Anne at the Isle of Wight music festival, Paul is forced by his father’s heart attack to abandon her. In the present day, a chance encounter with Anne’s daughter leads the recently widowed Paul back into the past and romance slowly grows, not just for Paul and Anne, but for their children as well.
Farnborough Village Hall, High Street, Farnborough, BR6 7BB
Box Office 01689 854 995

Thursday 18th , Friday 19th , Saturday 20th February
The Hayes Players
“Caught in the Net” by Ray Cooney
Adjudication on Saturday 20th.
Bigamist John has two wives, Barbara and Mary. When their respective teenage son and daughter meet in an internet chatroom, they decide to meet up in person. John, desperate to keep them apart, enlists the help of his best friend Stanley and his old Dad, who for some reason thinks he’s at a hotel in Felixstowe.
Hayes Village Hall, Hayes Street, Hayes, BR2 7LH
Box Office 07905 210718

Mon 22nd, Tues 23rd, Wed 24th, Thur 25th, Fri 26th, Sat 27th February
Theatre 62
“See How They Run” by Philip King.
Adjudication on Wednesday 24th February.
When Penelope Toop, a Vicar’s wife in Merton-Cum-Middlewick, is reunited with an old friend from her acting days, they hatch a plan to escape their present lives for one night. However, the involvement of four vicars, a bishop, an uppity maid, a former actress and the nosey town frump leads to chaos, confusion and calamity.
Wickham Theatre Centre, Corkscrew Hill, West Wickham, BR4 9BA
Box Office 020 8777 3037

Fri 19th, Sat 20th, Mon 22nd, Tues 23rd, Wed 24th, Thur 25th, Fri 26th, Sat 27th February
Bromley Little Theatre (Starting 7.45pm)
“Glengarry Glen Ross” by David Mamet
Adjudication on Thursday 25 February
In a New York real-estate office, four salespeople cajole, connive, wheel and deal in a never-ending scramble for their fair share of the American dream. Where closing a sale can mean a brand new car but losing one can mean losing it all, the pressure to succeed leads to a robbery, with unforeseen consequences for them all.
Bromley Little Theatre, North Street, Bromley, BR1 1SB
Box Office 07917 853621

Mon 22nd, Tues 23rd, Wed 24th, Thur 25th, Fri 26th, Sat 27th March
Beckenham Theatre Centre
“Private Lives” by Noel Coward
Adjudication on Thursday 25 March
Amanda and Elyot can’t live together and they can’t live apart. When they discover they are honeymooning in the same hotel with their new spouses, sparks fly as each character yearns desperately for love. Eventually they not only fall in love all over again but also learn to hate each other all over again.
Beckenham Theatre Centre, 46, Bromley Rd., Beckenham, BR3 5JD
Box Office 07905 744 991

Thursday 15th, Friday 16th, Saturday 17th April
Burnt Ash Drama Association
Play choice to be confirmed.
Adjudication on Saturday 17 April
St. Andrews Church Hall, Burnt Ash Lane, Bromley BR1 5AF
Box Office 07961 023 174

Thursday 22nd, Friday 23rd, Saturday 24th April
Pratts Bottom Dramatic Society
“Day of Reckoning” by Pam Valentine
Adjudication on Friday 23 April
The summer fête committee of a typical British village is in the throes of planning its annual event – and some of the committee are not playing fair. Discussion soon gives way to bickering and the sharing of not-so-secret secrets. Some are funny, some are darker than others and some lead to a day of reckoning.
Pratts Bottom Village Hall, Norsted Lane, Pratts Bottom BR6 7NQ
Box Office 07599 811 516

Thursday 29th, Friday 30th April & Saturday 1st May
St Mark’s & Keston Players
“Ladies in Retirement” by Reginald Denham
Adjudication on Friday 30th April.
In a lonely old house in the Thames marshes Ellen Creed, the housekeeper, burdened by two simple-minded sisters, murders her employer to gain possession of her house and money. The crime is discovered by a ne’er-do-well nephew, who recreates the murder scene. Realising that her secret is known, Ellen plans for the security of her sisters before giving herself up to the police.
Keston Village Hall, Heathfield Rd, Keston, Bromley BR2 6BG
Box Office 020 8462 4086

All Productions starting 8.00 pm except where noted.

Saturday 15th May
Final Adjudication and Award Ceremony
Wickham Theatre Centre, Corkscrew Hill, West Wickham, BR4 9BA. Start at 8.00 pm

REMINDER: Auditions for Private Lives this Wednesday at 8:00pm

I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.

Private Lives is Noel Coward’s delicious comedy of manners. After brief courtships and lightning weddings, a divorced couple find themselves reunited by the adjoining balconies of their honeymoon suites.

Originally performed by Coward himself and his muse, Gertrude Lawrence, this intimate play provides the opportunity for a small group actors to explore the style and character of the 1930s period.

We are looking for

Elyot Chase (mid 30s to early 40s)
Wealthy, witty and cynical, Elyot’s relationship with Amanda forms the centrepiece of Private Lives. His habit is to “be flippant” and mock traditional social conventions; if he has a philosophy, it lies in his refusal to ever be serious, in defiance of “all the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable.” His eloquence and restraint mark his insecurities and emotions.

Amanda Chase (early 30s)
Amanda is Elyot’s equal in every way. Fashionable, intelligent and cultured, Elyot describes her as having long hands and being an excellent dancer. Her sophisticated wit belies her wild side and far to knowing insights. She is often described as unconventionally masculine. “Unreliable” and “apt to see things the wrong way round”, she can be violently acidic.

Sybil Prynne (20s)
Small, blonde, feminine; in everyway the opposite of Amanda. She is far less cultured than her new husband and very much an innocent in a world she has bene ruthlessly pursuing. Like “a little sharp-eyed blonde kitten”.

Victor Prynne (late 20s)
“Dear old Victor” is a jollygood sort. The director would like him to be younger than Amanda in this production. Hearty, occasionally pompous; the kind of man who smokes a pipe and wears tweed.

Louise (any age)
Louise the maid is a small part. It is likely the actress – of any age – will also be able to stage manage the production.
If you are interested but unable to attend the audition dates, to see an advance copy of the script, or for more information, please contact Sarah Mann at sarah_a_mann@yahoo.co.uk.

As you are probably aware, in May 2010 we will be presenting “The Full Monty” at The Churchill Theatre in Bromley.
This is advance notice that we will be looking for a talented black male actor to take the role of ‘Horse’, as we know now that we do not have a suitable candidate within our membership. If anyone is interested they need to be able to sing, dance and be prepared to bare all in the final number (but not on thier own!)

The Full Monty is the raucous, heartfelt story of six unemployed steelworkers in Buffalo, New York who go to great lengths to make some cash and help out a friend in trouble. When a local male strip show – whose dancers venture down to G-strings – is a hit with the local women, the cash-strapped factory workers figure they can really cash in if they go “the Full Monty.” Desperate for self-respect and financial relief, the buddies must overcome their fears, their nerves, and their clothes for a shot at success.

With book by Tony Award winner Terrence McNally (Ragtime, Kiss of the Spiderwoman) and music and lyrics by pop composer David Yazbek (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), The Full Monty, based on the record-breaking 1997 Academy Award nominated hit film by the same name, is hailed by critics as “a genuine musical comedy,” “full of brilliance,” “witty,” “funny,” and “exhilarating.”

for further info see www.wwos.org.uk
If you know anyone in your membership, or otherwise, can you pass this on.

Any interested parties should contact me on kevin.gauntlett@yahoo.com or mobile 07841 742312

I’ve held off to the very last minute to allow people to make up their collective minds but I really can’t hold off much longer before putting this durned thing to bed. Much longer and the adjudicator’s going to suddenly remember a prior engagement. To those with issues still to resolve: Please, guys. In or out ?

Bromley Theatre Guild Full-Length Play Festival 2010

Imperial Players: (Participation still to be confirmed)
“Out of Focus” by Peter Gordon with performances 11-13 Feb and adjudication on Saturday 13 Feb

1) Farnborough DS: CONFIRMED
“Generations Apart” by Peter Gordon with performances 18-20 February and adjudication on Friday 19 February

2)Hayes Players: CONFIRMED
“Caught in the Net” by Ray Cooney with performances 18-20 February and adjudication on Saturday 20 February

3) Theatre 62: CONFIRMED
“See How They Run” by Philip King with performances 22-27 February and adjudication on Wednesday 24 February

4) Bromley Little Theatre: CONFIRMED
“Glengarry Glen Ross” by David Mamet with performances 19-27 February and adjudication on Thursday 25 February

Beckenham ADS: (Withdrawn due to casting problems)
“Quartet” by Ronald Harwood with performances on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 March and adjudication on Saturday 20 March

5) Beckenham Theatre Centre: CONFIRMED
“Private Lives” by Noel Coward with performances 22-27 March and adjudication on Thursday 25 March

St George’s Players: (Not qualified due to nature and length of performance)
Easter production tba w/c Monday 29 March (Holy Week) in the Church.

New Wickham Court Players: (Participation still to be confirmed due to type of production, ie: Paired one-act plays not qualifying)
Play choice tba for performance dates in early April tba with adjudication date tba

Phoenix Drama Group : (Participation still to be confirmed)
“Dangerous Corner” by J.B.Priestley, with performances 12th to 15th April with adjudication date tba.

6) Burnt Ash DA: CONFIRMED
Play choice tba with performances 15-17 April and adjudication on Saturday 17 April

7) Pratts Bottom DS: CONFIRMED
“Day of Reckoning” by Pam Valentine with performances on 22-24 April and adjudication on Friday 23 April

St Mark’s & Keston Players: CONFIRMED
“Ladies in Retirement” by Reginald Denham with performances on 29, 30 April & 1 May and adjudication date tba

Due to the fact that many people were disappointed in November when Bromley Players presented `A Night at the Musicals’ (The Sound of Music, Chicago, Grease, Mama Mia) as we sold out very quickly we are repeating the performance twice in January.

16th January at St. George’s Church Hall, Bickley, 7.45 pm Tickets £12.00 (including supper)
Audience Participation and Licensed Bar Tickets 0208 325 1547 and…..

23rd January at The Memorial Hall, Petts Wood, 7.45 pm With Special Guest Gary Rhodes in aid of The Sentinel Node Analyser Fund for the Chartwell Breast Unit PRUH.
Tickets £12.00 (including supper) Tickets 07747 440601/ 07939 037104

Come and singalong or just watch.

WE NEED SOME MEN!
Out of Focus by Peter Gordon
Possible dates – 28th April – 1st May 2010
5th May – 8th May 2010

We need to two men, one aged late teens to early twenties and one in his 30’s to be in the next Downe Arounders production. If you know anyone that would be interested please encourage them to come to our informal reading on Thursday 7th January 2010, in Downe Village Hall BR6 7UT – 8pm start.

What follows represents the opinion of none but myself. It does not, as far as I’m aware, reflect the opinion of anyone associated with Bromley Theatre Guild, nor with any of the Drama Societies with which I am involved. Just me.

Anyway.

I’m a matron. Really. I’ve got a laminated card that says so. As is often the case, it has a picture on it of someone you wouldn’t trust to keep an eye on a team of rugby players, never mind your children. That’s photo-booths for you. Next Autumn, it expires, and they’ll want me to pop along with a new photo, in case I’ve shaved or started wearing glasses in the interim. I’m not bothering, and I’d like to explain why.

Those who know me anything more than slightly will dismiss this as being entirely of a piece with my generally bolshie outlook, but I do have more thought-out reasons as well, and it’s those I’d like to explain.

To keep the tone light, at least to begin with, let’s look at this from the point-of-view of the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’. Regulations that were drawn up in the sixties to guard against exploitation of young performers on the professional stage and in film and tv, and that were never meant to apply to amateur societies have been dusted down and applied to them anyway, to be on the safe side. Rules that might make a modicum of sense in the labyrinths of a West-End theatre are now applied to theatres the size of a decent suburban semi. At the one where I’ve recently been standing guard, the rules call for one chaperone for each gender and one to see the kids safely along the twenty-five paces it takes to get to the stage. (Twenty-six if you take for the bend in the stairs). To fulfill my part in this operation, and owing to the layout of the building, I could either position myself outside the toilet, or if that seemed a touch irregular, I could stand directly opposite the constantly opening door to the girls’ changing room. Brilliant.

My wife, who was recently directing children, could not be considered to be chaperoning, even her own child, as her attention was considered to be on her other duties. In fact, her attention was mostly on trying to deal with a snow-drift of forms, birth-certificates, consent forms, health declarations, passport photos, and for all I know, tarot-readings; actual directing didn’t get much of a look-in.

The wing-space, at best comparable to a reasonably-sized broom cupboard, is now cluttered with concerned-looking adults, poised to leap into action at the first sign of, well, whatever it is we’re supposed to be on the lookout for. Hopefully we’ll know it when we see it.

And of course, at ten o’clock an imaginary whistle blows, and all the children turn back into pumpkins or something. Or more likely, go home to their sky+ boxes to catch up on all the tv they’ve missed while onstage.

I note en passant that the small print suggests I keep a weather eye for the youngsters’ ‘moral welfare’. I can’t wait to see what happens when I storm onstage during a Shakespeare tragedy and drag my charges off in a headlock, announcing that I’m saving them from years of therapy.

So far, so facetious, and I’m well aware that making fun of the well-meaning clods who run our regulatory bodies is shooting fish in a barrel. It’s always a shame when a heart of gold is teamed with a brain of cheese-dip, but then these people have to be seen to be doing something, however pointless, and they can’t entirely be blamed for the fact that they’ve no idea what they’re about.

Where any sympathy I may have had dries up completely is in what they do actually intend, rather than in what they didn’t, and the serious point is this: they genuinely believe that children will be safer if they are taught to treat everyone with suspicion, that all adults represent a threat, that any adult is considered guilty of being at the very least a potential abuser until they have ‘proved’ that they aren’t. And not only ‘proved’ it, but ‘proved’ it time after time. Ad infinitum.

The family atmosphere that was there for years and years, in which the adults naturally and without prompting, took care of the youngsters in the cast, watching out for them and helping them along, and which, by the way, was a situation in which it was infinitely more likely that anything untoward would quickly come to light, is now considered to have been dangerously unregulated and slapdash, and far from being allowed to help out, the older cast-members are now ordered to keep their distance. How much better to deputise half the adults as a sort of Stasi-lite to keep a wary eye on the other half.

Say what you like about children today, and believe me, I do, they’re no mugs. They know exactly why all of a sudden there are irrelevant grown-ups on every landing, and guess what was the subject of most of the witty banter during the coming and going on my staircase? Yup, paedophiles. Seriously, you couldn’t make it up.

It is worth mentioning, incidentally, that among the currently young, ‘paedo’ is the term of abuse de choix, (alongside ‘gay’, the little darlings), tossed around with abandon. It would be reassuring to know the walls don’t really have ears when that one is flying about.

Anecdotal evidence suggest that some societies are already starting to decide that the thing’s not worth the candle, although this cuts little ice at HQ. When this was put to our own local Council drone, she replied, rather sniffily I thought, that she had yet to see any diminution in her workload. My sympathy was fulsome.

The problem is that regulations like this are easy to dream up and set in train, but very difficult to get rid of. It is no bother at all for a councillor or minister who hasn’t had a good headline in ages to declare themselves to be fighting against child abuse; as opposed, one takes it, to the rest of us, who are for it. To come out in opposition to these ideas without sounding like a member of the Gary Glitter Defense Committee is a bit of a challenge. What we have to make clear is that it is the many and wonderfully varied interpretations that different ’stakeholders’ are putting on the regulations that are causing the grief. The best we can hope for is to trump their expertise with our expertise. We’ve been successfully running drama groups since the time of the Attlee Government; they have been attempting to implement a bunch of silly regulations dumped upon them unasked from above for a few months now. The truth of the matter is that a system that has worked without serious problems for decades is being distorted for well-meant reasons, by people who haven’t troubled themselves to learn about our circumstances, but whom it may still be possible to convince that we are in a better position, to say nothing of better motivated, to police our own situation than they are. It can’t hurt to try.

And what I would say to any parent wary of leaving their brood in our care is this: join the group, get to know us, get a feel for the way the group functions, and when you feel like you and your kids are among friends, when you’re confident that we’ll take care of them because we’re like that, and not because of the secret police behind the skirting-board, then let them go onstage with us. They’ll be fine.

Among the other fun stuff I do for a living, I photograph a lot of school plays, so I’ll continue to be reliant on my regular CRB checks, although the teachers I’ve spoken to have privately suggested that they realise there’s not much I can get up to from the fifth row of the stalls, but that’s quite enough for me. For the rest, it’s a deliberately-created atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust that I’m not interested in being part of.

You’ll just have to trust me.

yours ever,

Tim Hinchliffe.

Announcing open auditions for
Skylight
by David Hare
Directed by Alex Vail

Performance dates: Monday 8th ~ Saturday 13th February 2010

Auditions will take place at BTC on:
Tuesday 8th December @ 8pm
and
Saturday 12th December @ 3pm

Kyra is a young teacher working and living in one of London’s “challenging” areas. Tom is a wealthy restauranteur whose wife has recently died of cancer. They have history: their love affair ended several years earlier, when Tom’s wife found out, and Kyra left abruptly. On a cold winter night Tom’s teenage son, Edward, calls on the young teacher to beg her to be reconciled with his father.

Tom arrives shortly after his son leaves, hoping to expiate his guilt and renew his lust. Kyra complies – sort of – until the debate soars and the insults fly in a way that makes you wish your own domestic rows were half as brutal, half as civilised. David Hare’s most passionate play is sharp and satisfying, an incredible head-on collision of values and confused desires.

We are looking for:

Kyra
Late 20s – mid 30s. An independent woman; a school teacher in a troubled comprehensive; bright and capable; driven by the need to make a difference

Tom
Late 40s – early 60s. A wealthy entrepreneur who owns a chain of restaurants; impressive demeanour; intelligent; bullish and spoilt by his success

Edward
Tom’s son, 18-21. Tom’s son; a troubled lad who is torn betwen being the boy Kyra used to know and babysit, and asserting himself as a man

More information is available at: www.beckenhamtheatre.co.uk/btc_auditions.htm

If you are interested in auditioning, but are unable to make either date, please contact Alex Vail at alexvail@ntlworld.com to make alternative arrangements

Hayes Players are looking for 2 men to read for the two 40 – 50 male leads. See attached audition notice for details. Right-click her, then save as, or something:
http://www.timhinchliffe.com/store/caughtinthenet.doc

Imperial Players present for one night only !
A Night of Nostalgia
An evening of poetry, song and humour from times past.
Saturday 28th November, 8.00pm.
Methodist Church Hall,
Prince Imperial Road,
Chislehurst.
Tickets £6.00 available from Box Office 020 8289 6424
or 07792 801 358.