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An absolutely wonderful launch to our theatre school in collaboration with AKP Management Agency. A wonderful mix of regular and new faces. Abi is a really experienced agent who represents a magical range of actors for productions from short films up to big name international productions. Today’s session was all about developing your professional acting profile and resume for both UK and LA castings, and then a headshot photoshoot for all attendees. A day of learning, sharing, joy, laughter, support, meeting new faces, and creativity for everyone All part of “making it happen” for local creatives and actors (which is our theatre company remit, after all) and proving professionalism isn’t just limited to the big cities. The next sessions are February: stage craft, performing live on stage. March: self tale auditions and showreels- plus filming a showreel clip for your portfolio. Tomorrow are the open auditions (all welcome to attend ) for our theatre production Romeo & Juliet - info at Open Theatre Auditions: William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (DM if you have any questions)
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URGENT:
Important note, please can you share to theatre contacts . This evening Laura posted our handwritten rehearsal notes for our Friday performance to our cast and crew facebook group. Facebook decided that this infringed copyright (goodness knows how as it is our own handwritten notes for a theatre production with our own company, for which script Laura personally owns the copyright as it is our in-house script) and suspended her account. Laura Jury is now unable to access facebook (!!!). Please can all actors and crew ensure they use Instagram, Bluesky, or our website (or our email [email protected] to contact us while we hope @meta sort this out (appeal sent) . Also can someone please send this to Laura Jurys fiance and ask him to use whatsapp for the time being. Also to request Kim to contact directly re moving the set and props. Please can someone else check in with Barney to check he is okay. As this will be the final show in the tour, can all cast and crew also ensure that Laura has your contacts via email to update you and arrange your share of the ticket profits for the performances which will be ready soon after the show run finishes. Actors and crew who need the notes before Friday should contact us on email. Please arrive at the theatre at 4pm to go over everything due to not being able to share the notes. Tagging @meta @facebook to please assist (appeal and explanations of why we had had written notes for our theatre show has been sent directly). (Please do not contact us with third party offers of assistance - we will only respond to official contact from Meta and Facebook) Also tagging the actors union @equityuk so that they are aware in case of any issues about getting pay to actors due to the loss of contacts etc. 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. Theatre company handbook 
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. Video series 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.   |
This is our new format news page. To read all our news between 2010 and Jan 2015, please see our old format news page HERE The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company, is the trading name of The South Devon Players Limited;
Registered at Companies House: Company number 11569166 
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