The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company News

Memories of Brixham before D-Day

3/6/2019

This was a recording done for Brixham's 75th Anniversary D-Day commemorations in conjunction with Brixham Futures. Brixham has an especial claim to fame, as it is from here that the first troops landed in Normandy at Utah Beach.

This video, made in April 2019, records the memories of Brixham residents who were children in the town during the war. We were going to inclide recreations and cutaways, but in the end, the magic of these wondeful memories, needed to be shown uncut regardless of glitches - with nothing taken away from the history that can be learned from these eyewitness stories. It was truly an honour to be able to record such wonderful stories and meet such wonderful resilient people.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2019 The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company. Reproduction without written permission strictly prohibited.

The Cowtown Project

25/3/2019

On Saturday Night some of our team (Wayne Cutler Allison Abbott Sarah Gregori Fiona Humphreys Laura Jury) supported Friends of Brixham Library with their concert celebrating their historical research of the farming area of Brixham ("Cowtown") as organised by Phil Trayhorn, at St Mary's Church Brixham

Photos by Christine Bovey and Laura Jury

Les Miserables rehearsals Act 2 - March 24th 2019

25/3/2019

Fantastic day again at Les Miserables rehearsals for Act 2. Here are a few pictures nabbed in between racing around and dying over the barricade - and some partial costume starting to appear :D . A LONG afternoon today, but it really paid off, with the cues and reactions, especially on the extremely fast paced barricade scenes. Thank you so much to all the great people who helped make it happen.

Behind the scenes at Les Miserables rehearsals

18/3/2019

Rehearsals are now well underway for our production of Les Miserables; costumes will begin to appear over the next few weeks now. The cast are working together as a fantastic team regardless of age and background. Over the next three/four weeks scripts will go down and costumes will appear!

Photos by Tabatha Cart

Collaboration with the Friends of Brixham Library

27/2/2019

Cow Town in Words & Music

In olden times, our home town of Brixham was very much divided into two halves. The area around the harbour was known as "Fishtown" and was the area of our trawler fleet, and the fishing families. "Higher Brixham" up the hill, known as "Cowtown" was more the domain of the farming and agricultrual industry of the town. At times there could be a lot of rivalry between the two parts of the town.

The Friends of Brixham Library, have been conducting extensive historical research, centering on the records, graveyard, and stories around St Marys Church in Higher Brixham, and are presenting some of the research as an evening of entertainment, music, and spoken word on March 23rd 2019.

The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company, as a local organisation based in the town, are delighted to have a number of our team (Allison, Sarah, Laura, Wayne) involved in the performances.

The event is open to the public at 'St Mary's Church' in Brixham on March 23rd - doors open 7pm for 7.30pm start. Tickets are £5 adults children free.

Refreshments will be served with a glass of wine included in ticket price available on the door. See Harpingmad, Folk Inspired, Missin' Tackle and Friends and hear words from Victorian Brixham spoken by members of the South Devon Players. All proceeds to the church restoration fund. (if you want to book to come, please see the event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/2010596719037195/

Still casting some male roles in Les Miserables

16/2/2019

We held open auditions for our production of Les Miserables, last weekend and filled most of the roles.
As it stands though we are still looking to cast several male roles, and would like to hear from anyone interested in auditoning - contact us to arrange an audition time and date .

You can download an audition information pack here

south_devon_players_2019__audition_pack.pdf
File Size:	1460 kb
File Type:	pdf

Welcoming Christophe.

8/1/2019

We would like to welcome to our Macbeth team, the French-Irish actor Christophe Lombardi, Actor, who has been a member of the Players for some time, along with his wife. Christophe trained at Les Cours Simon in Paris, and has since appeared in numerous TV programmes for the BBC, the Smithsonian, Universal and Netflix. He is also a living history performer and fight choreographer. There is some incredible work underway to prepare, and all is going smoothly and very well. He recently appeared in a production with Ivybridge Community Arts, The Armistice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gGIc87LUmg), and is a regular actor with Trapdoor Entertainment.
Photos (not from Macbeth!) are by Roger Kenny, from the Irish TV programme Prisoners of the Tower, and Dorothy Grace Laity Lombardi and the montage is from various productions, all as supplied by Dorothy Grace Laity Lombardi.
We are thrilled to be working with this fantastic actor, and cant wait to introduce him to Brixham theatre audiences, hopefully the first of many times in future.

Announcing our open auditions for Les Miserables

10/12/2018

Open auditions for our production of Les Miserables.
Based off the original novel by Victor Hugo, this show requires a full cast, aged from 10 - 70, male and female, for named speaking roles. It is a non-musical dramatic adaptation of the novel, for full scale stage performance.
All roles except "grown up Cosette" open for casting, please scroll down for a list of all roles being cast.

AUDITION INFORMATION PACK AVAILABLE FROM
https://www.southdevonplayers.com/auditions.html

Auditions are on Sunday Feb 10th 2019, at Chestnut Community centre, 1-3 Poplar Close, Brixham, Devon TQ5 0SA. Please arrive to begin at 1pm. (doors open from 12). .

Castings will take the form of reading and characterising excerpts from the script.

As with all our in-house shows, all persons appearing as cast and crew for this production will be entitled to remuneration as
- equal profit share (ticket-take less venue hire cost)
- portfolio photos and video for portfolio use
- copies of all press in which the character is featured
- programme credit
(and anything else we find that we are able to offer)
More information on our audition process is to be found at https://www.southdevonplayers.com/auditions.html

THERE IS NO CHARGE TO AUDITION OR BE INVOLVED WITH US.

SHOWS
Brixham, Torquay, Plymouth, on Friday-Saturdays in June 2019

REHEARSALS
Rehearsal dates: Wednesday evenings 7pm - 9.30pm, Sundays 12.30pm - 5pm,
at Chestnut Community Centre, 1-3 Poplar Close, Brixham, Devon, TQ5 0SA, the same as the auditions. For this reason, priority will be given to performers who live in the South Devon region. Please note that you will be expected to attend regular rehearsals.

NOTES
Due to previous incidents we need to state that
1) All cast will need to be able to attend regular rehearsals, and to be able to learn characterisation, lines and blocking,
2) Actors will be required to wear costumes
3) All people in the production are expected to adhere to socially acceptable behaviour at all times.
4) Performances are on an open-book equal-profit share basis.
5) We welcome performers of all backgrounds.

MORE ABOUT US
www.southdevonplayers.com
www.facebook.com/sdevonplayers
www.twitter.com/sdevonplayers
www.instagram.com/sdevonplayers1

ROLES BEING CAST:
(Key: *= roles we may be able to combine, L= large roles)

Roles spanning both acts

Jean Valjean (middle-aged or older male) L
Javert (middle-aged or older male) L
Thenadier(male)
Madame Thenadier (female) L

Roles in Act 1

Brevet (male, convict)
Fantine (female, single mother) L
Factory Boss (male or female) L
Bambataois (male roustabout and fop) *
Little Cosette (female child around 12/ 13 years -Fantine’s daughter) *
Bishop (male) *
Mlle Baptistine (female, Bishop’s housekeeper) *
Innkeeper in Digne (Male or female) *
Petit Gervais (child, age 9 - 13, ideally male, otherwise female) *
Factory girl 1 (female) *
Factory girl 2 (female) *
Sister Simplice (female, nun who takes care of Fantine after her rescue)
“Gendarme” (male, policeman) *
Estella (female, prostitute) *
Bernardo (Male, sailor)*
Sailor (male, sailor) *
Landlord (Ideally male, otherwise female, who tells Jean to leave his inn) *
Prosecutor (Male, at the trial of Champmanthieu) *
Champmanthieu (male, needs to be a similar build to Jean, as mistaken for Jean) *

Crowds:
Factory workers (female) *
Prostitutes (female) *

ACT 2
Marius (male. Law student, revolutionary) L

Enjolras (male, student, revolutionary, very dedicated to his cause) L
Grantaire (male, student, revolutionary but more interested in a few drinks) L
Mlle Gillenormand (female, Marius’s aunt) L
Coufeyrac (male, law student, friend of Marius) L
Eponine (female, almost destitute, in love with Marius, but her interest is not returned) L
Gavroche (child, street urchin with an attitude age 8 - 13 – male)
Jean Prouvaire (male, student, revolutionary, much quieter spoken than the others) *
Madame Mabeuf (female – male in the book, but changed to female for ease of casting,
elderly bookshop owner whose shop went out of business) *
Le Cabuc (Ideally male. revolutionary and a generally not very nice person! )*
Toussaint (female, Jean and Cosettes housekeeper. )
Madame St Just (female, homeowner killed by Le Cabuc) *

Fundraising quiz nights announced!

7/8/2018

With the advent of some lovely new people helping us get the group moved on to the next level, we have now got the manpower (and ladypower!) to run fundraising quiz nights.
The Rising Sun pub in Brixham have kindly agreed to host our quiz nights, and therefore, Laura, Maggie and Gareth can now proudly announce the first of what we hope (and intend) will be many events! All funds raised go directly into funding rehearsal space, costumes & props, etc, for our productions.
Come and test your knowledge, and win several bottles of wine! Starts promptly at 7.30pm, finishing by 10pm.

Venue
The Rising Sun,
8 The Quay,
Brixham
TQ5 8AW

Lively, friendly quiz night, the first of (we hope) many regular quiz nights at the Rising Sun, raising funds for The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company, Brixham

Have a great night out, and support your local artistic community, at a beautiful, family-run traditional harbourside pub.

There are 8 rounds, of 10 general knoweldge questions in each round, with a break in the middle to refill at the bar! Entry is £10 per team (payable on the day), teams may comprise up to 6 entrants each.

Please contact us on southdevonplayers@gmail.com with any questions or if your team wish to reserve a table in advance.

Macbeth Castings

25/7/2018

Last sunday was a brilliant day - what a turnout of amazing new and established people - and what a standard of audition. Pretty much everybody was deserving of a lead role, which made selection incredibly difficult!
We are just waiting to hear from everyone with regard to accepting thier roles, but as it stands we have been able to fully cast the entire production, and it is outstanding!

We also have a new lovely crew member, Andrew, who is helping with things behind the scenes and he got some great audition photos!