PUBLIC FORUM OCTOBER 2019
As we are passionate about local, affordable theatre, we have set up this newsletter feature providing information about shows by other amdram groups in our area – with their agreement, of course. There will also be web links on The Gage Players’ website.
Please, as originally agreed, circulate this to your own members and put in on your own web site – thank you. It’s important that we support each other.
The Chipstead Players
Member of The Little Theatre Guild and BRBAC
Our October production is The Nether by Jennifer Haley. The Nether offers complete freedom – a new virtual wonderland, providing total sensory immersion. Just log in, choose an identity and indulge your every desire. An intricate crime drama and a haunting thriller set in the year 2050, our play follows an investigation into the complicated, disturbing morality of identity in the digital world, and explores the consequences of making dreams a reality.
Contains adult sexual themes; parental guidance advised. Although we are warning about adult sexual themes, these are only implied and discussed during the course of the play.
Performance dates: Monday, 21st to Saturday, 26th October inclusive, at 8pm with a matinee at 2.15pm on Saturday, 26th October. Venue: The Courtyard Theatre, Longshaw, Hazelwood Lane, Chipstead, Surrey CR5 3QU (near The White Hart pub).
Tickets £10 all performances. Box office 01737 555 680 and leave a message or email: boxoffice@chipsteadplayers.org or book online.
The Gage Players
www.thegageplayers.co.uk; friends@thegageplayers.com
Our winter production 2019 will be Good Things by Liz Lochhead. Set in a charity shop on three different days in one year – Twelfth Night in January, Valentine’s Day in February and Christmas Eve in December – Good Things is a poignant and funny play with a lot to say about finding love later in life.
Performance dates at The Riddell Hall are 28th, 29th and 30th November, 2019. Tickets £10. Box office 01737 812 703.
Patrons intending to dine before the show at The Blue Ball pub near The Riddell Hall will be offered a discount on food if, when you come to pay the bill, you show your pre-bought ticket/s to the staff, or if you have not got your ticket/s, you mention the name Jon Laws, who arranged this with the manager.
Gatton Community Theatre
www.gattoncommunitytheatre.org.uk
GCT operates as a fully inclusive organisation – anyone who would like to take part may join the cast or crew regardless of experience or age, although children must be over the age of eight. There is no membership or production fee.
We are taking a little break and planning for our next large-scale open-air production in July 2020. There will be one or two smaller events before then, so stay in touch or check our website for more details on how to get involved or for more information.
Kingswood Amateur Drama and Dance Association (KADDS)
www.kingswoodvillage.org/kvca-amateur-drama-dance/
Our autumn production will be Murder in Play by Simon Brett, playing at 8pm on 30th October, 1st and 2nd November. Tickets £10, children £5, available from Village Stores, Waterhouse Lane, Kingswood; or from www.ticketsource.co.uk/kadds
In October we are also holding auditions for adults and children for our February 2020 show, The Snow Queen, being stages at half-term. Rehearsals will be on Sunday afternoons for children and Thursday evening for adults. If you are interested in taking part, please contact Richard Palmer on richardpalmer@ntlworld.com or 01737 3633 355.
Merstham Amateur Dramatic Society (MADS)
Our October production will be Dinner by Moira Buffini, directed by Lisa-Jane Ray.
Take one deranged but elegant hostess and her long-suffering husband, mix with jilted, bohemian artist school friend (with a sprinkling of an affair), a foul-mouthed seductress, a jealous microbiologist and an uninvited misfit, finish off with a silent, mysterious waiter and what you have is a delicious feast of comedy at its most heartless and macabre.
Performance dates are 23rd, 24th and 25th October at 8pm at Merstham Village Hall, Station Road North, Merstham, Surrey RH1 3ED. Box office 01883 742 708, email: madstickets@gmail.com or book online.
The Oxted Players
www.oxtedplayers.co.uk; www.barntheatreoxted.co.uk
The Oxted Players are affiliated to NODA and are members of BRBAC.
Our autumn production will be The Safari Party by Tim Firth.
The play is set in rural Cheshire around the early part of the 21st century. Three households have agreed to hold a ‘safari party’ – a dinner party where each course is served in a different house and the participants move from one to another.
Brothers Daniel and Adam, struggling to make a living on the dilapidated farm they have inherited from their recently deceased father, have undertaken to do the first course, but are entirely lacking in any culinary skills or, indeed, in any suitable furniture. Lol and Esther, a vulgar, pretentious and snobbish upwardly mobile couple, recently moved to the countryside, will provide the main course in their converted barn, reluctantly assisted by their rebellious adult daughter, Bridget. Inga, an antiques dealer of dubious integrity specialising in ‘authentic’ rural artefacts, is to do the dessert.
The dinner party is a disaster. Misunderstandings and conflicts mount as we move from location to location until this black comedy culminates in violent destruction, both of apparently valuable objects and of the pretensions and secrets that the characters carry with them.
Performance dates are Wednesday, 16th to Saturday, 19th October at 7.45pm. Booking office telephone number 01883 724 852 for cheque and cash payments, and online at www.barntheatreoxted.co.uk or www.oxtedplayers.co.uk for all card payments. Tickets £10.00 adults and £8.00 students.
Polesden Lacey Shakespeare
www.polesdenlaceyshakespeare.co.uk
Undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s best loved plays, our summer 2020 production of Romeo and Juliet explores the usual themes of thwarted young love and passion, youth, family status, violence and the inevitability of fate, with some interesting twists in both performance and setting.
Join us in the beautiful surroundings of the theatre lawn at Polesden Lacey on Saturday 27th, Sunday 28th June and Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th July, 2020. Performances at 2.30pm, with the Theatre Lawn open for picnicking from 1pm. Children under 16 go free. Group rates. Free parking with ticket. Tickets available online from January 2020.
We shall be holding open auditions on Sunday, 2nd February, 2020 at the Archway Theatre, Horley and on Sunday, 9th February at the Follett Hall, United Reformed Church Dorking, both from 3pm – 6pm. We’d love to welcome anybody from the local community who would like to audition (also to provide backstage/ front of house help).
We’re now in the run-up to 2021, our 70th anniversary year, when we shall be presenting A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the first play performed on the Open Air Stage at Polesden Lacey in 1951. There are also lots of other exciting plans for this 70th anniversary year. If you’d like to get involved, please go to the website and contact our Marketing Director, Franki Gray, via the press tab at the top of the page.
St Mark’s Players
Our winter production will be a play entitled The Inaccurate Conception by Richard Ahsam and Geoff Saunders. It’s a comedy about a school nativity play and will be performed on Thursday and Friday, 28th and 29th November at St Mark’s Church Centre, Alma Road, Reigate, Surrey RH2 0DA.
Tickets (likely to be priced at £16 to include fish and chip supper, or £10 if no food required) will be in due course be available through the website, www.stmarksplayers.co.uk and click the ‘book now’ button. Do come to see it and get your Christmas festivities off to a fun start!
Sutton Amateur Dramatic Club (SADC)
Our November production is We Happy Few by Imogen Stubbs, the story of an all-female theatre company touring Britain during the darkest days of the Second World War.
Performance dates are 13th, 14th and 15th November at 7.45pm at The Adrian Mann Theatre, 54 Reigate Road, Epsom, Surrey KT17 3DR. Tickets: £13 – www.ticketsource.co.uk/sadc
West Horsley Independent Players (WHIPS)
Website: www.horsleyamdram.org
Our October production will be Mind Over Matter by Stuart Tomkins, with performances on 16th, 17th 18th and 19th October at 8pm, West Horsley Village Hall, 95 The Street, West Horsley, Leatherhead, Surrey KT24 6DD.
Set in a care home, this poignant and gentle comedy explores relationships between young and old, with an unexpected ending.
Tickets: £8 for 16th, with an 8pm start; £17.50 for a two-course supper on 17th, starting at 7pm; £12 for a bring your own supper on 18th, starting at 7pm; and £12 for 19th starting at 8pm. Please book online at ticketsource.co.uk/horsleyamdram,
Woodmansterne Operatic and Dramatic Society (WODS) and Junior WODS
Our October production is MI5 to P45, a show in two halves – a one-act comedy with an interval for supper, followed by a one-act comic musical revue. Performances dates are 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th October; doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start. St Peter’s Church Hall, Woodmansterne, Surrey SM7 3NR, carpark entrance on Chipstead Way.
Tickets £16 for a fish and chip supper, of £11 for no food. Please book online: wodsweb.co.uk/productions.
