Bromley Theatre Guild Announcements

Hi everyone!

The April play “Flying Feathers” is short of 1 female and 1 male. Here’s the blurb about the play –

When Chief Constable Henry Potterton and his sister, Sarah, arrive at the peaceful country house of their late brother, Bernard, they are astonished to find scantily-clad ladies wandering about, not knowing that during Bernard’s absence on a religious commune in the Orkneys his housekeeper, Nora Winthrop, has turned the place into a “house of sin”. As Nora is not expecting a visit from the Chief Constable, and is fearful of the questions he will ask, she hastily tries to hide the truth from him. This leads to many hilarious comings and goings, involving one of her clients who is dressed as a vicar, a window cleaner in a laundry basket, and a meek solicitor on horseback When Bernard also turns up from the Orkneys (or from Heaven!) and it is seen that he and Henry are identical twins, the house-hold is thrown into further confusion and chaos, leading to an unexpected climax.

We need 1 young lady to play one of the scantily-clad ladies. Don’t worry too much about the scantily-clad part, the director is allowing the ladies to wear whatever they feel comfortable in.

We also need 1 man to play a solicitor. This part can be very flexible when it comes to the age.

Please get in touch asap if you are interested or if you know of anyone who might be interested.

Thanks!!

The time has come.

It’s time to say “Damn the torpedoes”,”In for a penny, in for a pound”,”It’s now or never”, and any other song titles you’re fond of. I now need full and final confirmation and details of the productions that are being entered in the Full-length Play Festival of 2011. So if there’s anything that you know I don’t know about your production please tell me. Now.

I need to know what it is, who wrote it, when it’s on, when it’s being adjudicated, and where. A box office phone number if it is different to last year, and the one I keep forgetting, the start time for those of you who do not religiously stick to 8 o’clock. The sooner I get this information the sooner I’ll be able to bring out the publicity booklet and start letting the world know about our doings.

It has long been our desire here at the Guild to find ways to involve those societies that do not compete in our annual festival, for whatever reason. As one way of doing this we are expanding the concept of this year’s festival to incorporate, at least for marketing purposes, any productions by any of our member societies that fall within the timeframe of the festival, whether or not these productions have been entered for adjudication.

In exactly the same way as the Cannes Film Festival shows films “outside the competition”, as it were, we will be mentioning in our publicity all productions by our societies. We might not make too much of a fuss of productions that clash directly with competing productions because that would be shooting ourselves in the foot a bit, but there’s really no harm at all in at least mentioning the fact that these other productions are taking place, particularly since quite a few of the productions that our societies put on during February March and April are outside the competitive part of the festival simply because they don’t qualify, by being musical in nature for instance.

One of the principal purposes of the Full-length Play Festival is after all to spread the word about our productions to each other and to outsiders. My idea would be to use the back page of the printed festival programme to list any productions by member societies that have not been entered for adjudication either because they do not qualify or simply because the society chooses not to.

Having said all that, I’m still having to go and find a lot of this information myself which is time-consuming and dull. So the more information you can send me, by whichever means you prefer the better.

I’m testing some dictation software that I got hold of, and in some ways it’s quite good and in some ways it kind of sucks, so forgive me if every now and again as rebel leader added Barber bluefin dingbat birdied the other.

As part of our efforts to publicise the Guild’s societies in general and next year’s festival in particular we will be taking on the exhibition area in the central foyer of Bromley Central Library from January 26^th through to February 10^th .For those of you that haven’t seen it, this is a prime location right at the top of the central staircase and everybody who comes into the library has to go through it in order to get to the DVD’s and the computer terminals. (I believe they have some books as well in the cupboard behind the boiler).

This represents an ideal opportunity for all the societies in the Guild to publicise themselves and their future productions, whether these are part of the forthcoming festival or not. The exhibition area consists of about 20 boards or sides of a board or board-sized areas of the wall so each society can have the equivalent of an 6 x 4 display board to use as they will. I’m prepared to do the setting up myself unless anybody is free that Wednesday in the morning, and all I now need is each of our societies to furnish me with some material to stick up, for instance posters of the next production,  posters or photographs of previous production, laminated sheets with history of the society, and most importantly of all, information about joining and a couple of membership forms to have on the table nearby. I even have a laminator somewhere in case you haven’t got your own.

So if I could ask you all to give a bit of thought as to how best to publicise yourselves either for new members or for  an audience for your next production, then give me some stuff to stick up. As well as the boards there is also an illuminated display case for us to use, and I am thinking that we will put something in there such as interesting costumes or any peculiar  or unusual props you might have. Anything that might make people stop and look and want to know what  is going on.

If you really haven’t got anything of the right kind to stick on the wall, get in touch and I’m sure we can cobble something up between us. I’ll need anything you can give me by the end of next week, and I can come and fetch if you’re not too far away. This is an ideal opportunity for us to reach exactly the kind of audience we are looking for and it would be a shame to waste it so give it a bit of serious thought and I’ll be in touch soon.