So, with a new year, we have a few changes at the Players - all aimed at improving and developing what we do. Don't worry! Our "mission", and plans are all the same. 

Theatre school
​First of all - we are reopening our theatre school; in conjunction with a national actors agency with a brilliant reputation. Alongside AKP Management, we are opening monthly stand-alone classes , from later in January.   More information and how to sign up, can be found on our Training page. 

Auditions
The next thing - well we have our auditions for William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet  later this month as well. As always, it is an open audition and we love to welcome new faces as well as returning faces. We are bringing the show to a wonderful variety of venues in Devon and the Midlands - mostly public shows, but also some for schools and student groups.  There is a wonderful range of characters and as always we love getting a diverse cast and crew together. 

One of the new things that we are bringing in, is a handbook. This is one of the things we have needed to put together at the Players, which will now be sent out to all cast and crew at the start of a new show, as a PDF e-book. 
You see, for many people (not all, of course), this is their first experience of taking a role in a professional touring theatre company, and especially down here away from cities, the stereotype is that all theatre is a bit of "small community amdram"  and that it isnt really serious or high-quality "because it is just local". That is very hard to get around. 
Between being a professional group, touring high quality shows in Devon, the Midlands & in talks with London venues; working with national actors agents, and streaming internartionally, everyone is expected to adhere to professional standards both on and off stage.

Each person is part of a close collaborative team, wherin the public, venues, and entertainment industry contacts all judge the theatre company and each persons professionalism; on the work of the whole. 

As always, we welcome people of any background and level, and so that there is a useful tool-set to hand of how things work, we have produced a "handbook" for the theatre company, which we hope will help be useful.  It isnt a drama-school in a book, but it should hopefully still be of use. 

With Romeo & Juliet, we are hoping to maintain a video-log series about the production, showing the process and work behind the scenes. We would love to put together a documentary film about this process, but lack the peoplepower and time to do it; so the video series is the logical way to do it

New age restrictions in the Players

From Romeo & Juliet onwards, we will not be accepting new actors or crew aged under 16.  Actors who are under 16 who have previously worked with us in good standing will be welcome to rejoin us, but we will not be able to take on new performers under 16. This is for a number of reasons, the key ones cited below. 

The Players are not a childrens theatre company, and with touring, there are late night shows and travel, using carshares and coaches; sometimes across the UK. 

By UK law,  actors under 16 need to be accompanied by a parent or licenced chaperone at all times in shows and rehearsals;   and additonally, we have to work with the minors parents and school to obtain a licence for each under-16 to appear in a show.  There has been a lot of resistance from parents in complying with these legal requirements, and it has become simply too much of a difficulty to maintain these legal requirements in running a show. 

Sometimes in shows, we have roles that cannot be played by minors, because of actions or subjects discussed by those characters. Despite stating the age range for those roles,  we have been approached on several occaisons, by parents to cast minors of 10-12 years old, in roles which we have stated are stated as strictly over 18, resulting in bad feeling and offence when we have refused. 

Therefore, as a cummulative  result of these issues, we have had no choice but to close the doors to under-16s. 

Behind the scenes going to 2025 we have some changes afoot. These are some of the key ones.
- We will be reopening our professional actors training school in conjunction with AKP Management Agency on Saturdays once a month, here in Brixham at Chestnut Community Centre.

- Due to various occurrences over 2024, we will no longer be accepting auditions from new actors aged under 16, for the foreseeable future. A few incidents have led to this but namely problems around behaviour, working on theatre tours which means late travelling and commuting, and chaperoning, which have rendered taking on new performers under 16 too problematic, too frequently.
Under 16s who have worked with us previously with excellent behaviour, focus & performances and their parents chaperoning them to legal requirements, will be very welcome to audition. (This has already been discussed with most of them).

Our shows continue to adhere to our usual contents standards.

- We now have two streaming outlets, one in the U.K. and one in the USA, for future shows. These will continue to be filmed at Brixham Theatre and released in the months after the physical show tour has finished. As an additional nice thing for our actors, not only do the show credits get recognised for the Spotlight professional actors directory, but with the streaming everyone also gets IMDb credits. IMDb is more useful for castings in the USA but everything helps .

- We are working on tightening up our touring riders, especially when travelling to venues not used to hosting theatre, to provide more information and support for those venues.

- During 2025 a team members hand book will be finished and released - on our website where anyone can read it, and also sent to everyone at the start of new productions, and also to our venues. This is aimed largely at people new to participating in professional -level theatre, and covering basic skills, how & how various aspects and production aspects work as they do, , frequently asked questions and expectations. None of it is onerous but we hope it will be a useful resource.
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- We are now on Bluesky- you can find us at @sdevonplayers - and we follow back anyone local or involved in the creative industries.
As always- drop us a line if you have questions or thoughts : the Christmas time is a time of admin, sorting things out, and getting things ready for the coming year!

​Well, the tour of Three Musketeers is under way (for all the upcoming venues between now and January see https://www.southdevonplayers.com/box-office.html )
As director, I love getting these "candid" sidestage photos of my incredible cast and crew in action. There is a truth to them, performing in the space, in mid-action, which you can never replicate with posed photos and pretty backdrops . Plus, with our more ambitious projects that sometimes we have people assuming we will never achieve, it is great to show the work in action.
This is a great team - theres an age range of about 50 years in the cast and crew, and a huge range of experience from people who have performed professionally for decades, through to people taking their very first step on stage over the last weekend. That is how we roll
It is impossible to choose just a couple of pictures of this team; so here is a gallery of sidestage photos taken at Brixham Theatre.
Our tour now goes on to Knowle Village Hall near #BudleighSalterton, Lipson Co-operative Academy's Muse Theatre in #plymouth, Stokenham Village Hall near #kingsbridge, Exeter Northcott's Barnfield Theatre in #exeter, Unleashed Theatre Company's Royal Lyceum Theatre in #torquay and Kingskerswell Village Hall near #newtonabbot.
- Laura (Director)

Behind the scenes at rehearsals!
Our lovely tech team and stage manager for our shows.
Sally; our sound tech, Sean who is a regular performer with our theatre company and has come in as emergency cover to run lighting for the Plymouth performance of Three Musketeers; and Michael, our main lighting tech, - with Ruth, our stage manager in the background.
At rehearsals, we have our own sound system on a laptop, and run our own portable LED lighting system, which also comes with us to the smaller community venues on our tour which usually dont have their own sound and lighting systems, this allows us to reach out to many smaller places where theatre doesnt usually get to tour.
This team are so versatile and friendly
We are looking for an additional tech to cover in 2025 for Romeo & Juliet (able to cover Michael or Sally as needed on a handful of the performances)
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