As we look towards busier times again after the pandemic, we are also looking for people who would like to get involved with us, behind the scenes, to help create shows, and increase access to our work. The roles we are looking to fill vary hugely in commitment and theme, but as long as you are based in the relevant area, are reliable & communicative, and love the arts, then we should get along very happily indeed. Please read on to find out what we are looking to fill. If you would like an informal chat about any of these roles, do please drop us an email on southdevonplayers@gmail.com, at any time. 

*NB, at the moment, due to lack of funding, all of these roles are voluntary. We hope, eventually, to be able to make all of these roles paid positions by dint of raising the funds to do so!  Sadly with the Brixham Pannier Market being permanently closed by the town council, we have lost our large second-hand book stall, meaning that we are having to create new sources of fundraising even for basic things like rehearsal space, from scratch. 

COVID NOTE
We would also like to be very clear that we take Covid-safety extremely seriously. While some roles can be done, or at least prepared for, from home and can therefore start sooner rather than later, any roles that involve working out and about with others/ in groups will only begin when it is safe to do so - we estimate August onwards. In the meantime, training and preparation, as far as can be done remotely over Zoom etc, will happen for those roles in preparation.  All of our "face to face" work in groups will have Covid-safety measures in place. 

Fantastic news! 
We would like to extend a HUGE thank you to the owners of local health food shop Oats ( <- please like their page!) who will be stocking our fundraising book stall, beginning during next week! 
Thank you so much to Oats for helping support our work! 
You can visit their website at https://www.oatsofbrixham.co.uk

We are sad to announce that today we, along with all other stall-holders, recieved the sudden news that after the pandemic, Brixham Pannier Market will not be reopening, as the local Brixham Town Council have decided to not renew the hire to the market. The Pannier Market was held in the market hall in the town hall complex, in Brixham Town Centre.
Over the past year, when able to open, it won a national award for it's support of local businesses, and was featured on ITV, for doing the same. 

Sadly there was no consultation with stall-holders when the Town Council decided to close it. 

This of course has negatively impacted quite a few local businesses, completely closing-down at least one, and for our company, has resulted in the end of our book stall, which fundraised for rehearsal space (in turn putting those funds into a local volunteer-run community centre), as well as providing a face-to-face place where people locally could find out about our work.
With the town having a higher-than-national-average demographic of older people who are often less familar with using the internet, having a face-to-face point of contact was invaluable, as well as the fundraising. 
 
Our existing stock of books (all of which had been donated)  will be sold off over the spring (ideally in bulk), and we will be focussing on different ventures, including building up our ebay shop, and, once it is fully safe to do so, arranging a point in town where people can come and meet us and find out about our work, once a week. 

Regardlless of how things have turned out, we cannot thank Shaun and Mark Kennard enough for all their hard work in trying to get that market running well, and for their support for all local businesses and organisations. Everyone at the market has made enduring friendships, which will continue into the future, but it is truly the end of an era. 

We will find new ways to fundraise and new ways to make ourselves accessible on a general face-to-face level in our local town, as we slowly come out of the pandemic. 

If anyone might be interested in acquiring three large crates of books (all subjects, fiction and non-fiction), please drop us a line southdevonplayers@gmail.com

A HUGE thank you to Allie at  The Naked Sheep Hayle
and the person who donated via her, for a wonderful bag of used stamps for our fundraising. When lockdown is over, Allie will be dropping these up to us in Brixham, which will be sorted for stamp collectors and sold via our ebay shop to raise funds towards core costs of costumes/props/insurances, and rehearsal space when times are better. These will actually make a huge difference to us. Saving stamps is an ongoing fundraising drive of ours.
Also if you love beautiful, handmade, ethical knitwear from Cornwall, do check out Allie's page above!
#supportthearts #theatre #supporttheatre #gratitude #WeMakeEvents #stamps #philately​

We are working on #fundraising -yes some creative approaches- to prep for 2021 - because as soon as it is safe and viable, we will be back to the live #stage (in the meantime we will continue working on digital broadcast) Please pass to anyone willing to help!

Info on our fundraising at https://www.southdevonplayers.com/fundraising.html. 

Fundraising like this for some of the day to day core costs, allows us to support our actors and creatives as much as possible from the show ticket sales, as well as to improve equipment and costume/ prop/ set resources, to create higher quality, more creative shows, and to develop free educational resources. 

We are collecting used postage stamps to help fundraise for our theatre productions.
All used stamps (any age, or country of origin) are gratefully welcomed. 
The stamps are sorted and sold to stamp-collectors, which help raise invaluable funds for us. 

Every penny raised from this fundraising is used for
- sourcing props & costumes
-hire of rehearsal space (or Zoom subscriptions during Covid)
- printing show posters & flyers
- saving for & buying basic technical equipment
- insurances/ script copyright registrations

Please email us on southdevonplayers@gmail.com for a UK postal address to send the stamps to.
(while the covid pandemic is happening, we pop in at our usual shared rehearsal base less often, so it is 
easier to send direct to one of our team at the moment) This is an ongoing appeal with no end-time.
​
#SaveUKTheatre

​Absolutely THRILLED beyond measure, that today we have been awarded funding for an additional theatre/ digital media project. This funding specifically covers for full union-rate wages for a small handful of cast and crew to create a local-interest lockdown project.
Sadly it isnt enough for a huge cast/ crew, but it is absolutely thrilling that for this project and for some of our awesome people, we have been able to move beyond profitshare. Cast and crew are being approached in line with relevant specialist skills for the specific project, from the awesomes who work with us on a regular basis.
Generating paid work (that we all love doing) for our actors and crew is a primary company goal. Profitshare - sharing of the ticket sales funds equally between everyone - is the best we can usually manage without external funding though.
To get this grant and project proposal accepted though, and to generate some full-rate paid work especially in times like this where it is so hard for actors and creatives to find work, is absolutely beyond words. <3
Obviously all work will be done with correct social distancing, risk assessments etc. 

Hello all! Lots of news at this end, re the online and offline shows, rehearsals, paperwork, plans and changes for the future. Everything is as positive as can be expected in these crazy Covid-times. 

Midsummer Night's Dream (Live shows) 
I apologise for the radio silence on this. This is a reiteration that the live shows will most definitely happen, however long it take, and a HUGE thank you to all cast and crew and venues for sticking together. At the moment we are looking, with lots of hope and wishful thinking, for an autumn run. This will be dependent on safety and legality at the time. We would look to have at least a month’s notice so that we can rehearse, and get things ready, quite intensively, for the shows at our full usual standard. As the shows WILL happen when it is safe to do so, we are asking all cast and crew to remain familiar with their lines and characterisations, as there is not likely to be time for "re-learning" when we are able to get the shows back; I find remaining familiar just involves a good focussed read and run over my lines once a week. When we get to live rehearsals with the final dates for shows, those rehearsals will need to be intensive logistics, blocking, and tech,. Lines etc will need to be already known. There will not be a performance at Brixham Theatre, as Brixham Theatre is remaining closed until Jan 2021, due to the pandemic, as the theatre needs several months marketing ahead of time and has very high local demographics of older people who need to isolate even more than the rest of us. I am however looking at alternative venues in Torbay. 
In addition at least one of the live performances (I am aiming for the Bristol one) will be live streamed to audiences who still prefer to isolate. 


Jack The Ripper (Live shows)
This show is going ahead. We are casting as planned this summer (although through the use of self-tapes instead of "in person" auditions, though an audition over Zoom or Facebook call can be arranged if someone feels unable to video their audition.). Initial rehearsals will be online, over Zoom. 
The performances are likely to be moved to late January 2021 (discussions taking place over the next weeks), when most surviving theatres, as is currently thought, will reopen. We will also be doing a live streamed online performance in the meantime, and again, one of the venue performances will also be streamed to those who may still be isolating. We are not casting "online only" actors for this show, as we want to be able to present the same actors to all audiences, on and offline.  We would love to hear from regular and new actors who would like to be considered for a role (all the details are over on the auditions page.) 

Further shows
The 2021 programme of live shows, all being well, is fully planned, and may tip over into early 2022. There is a very exciting line-up of work, including more Shakespeare (which is already booked in for the 2021 Bristol Shakespeare Festival) and historical dramas. These will be announced formally once there is more clarity on the Covid-affected timing of the current shows. 

Rehearsals
Later in July, our rehearsal venue will be available for limited use under current official guidelines. We hope to return by the beginning of August. There will be stringent safety (distancing, cleanliness) guidelines in place which will be mandatory to be followed for anyone attending. We have currently sent these to Equity for checking, and will have a finalised safety document outlining safety procedures which everyone will be required to follow, before we confirm a return to any physical rehearsal space. 
We would like to be very clear that even when this return happens, attendance at the physical space will be optional. Any cast member not wishing to attend in person for any reason, will instead be able to attend the rehearsal from their own home, over Zoom. Physical attendance at rehearsals will become mandatory again, when it is fully safe to do so and we are in the final stages of getting back to live touring (for blocking etc). As long as full attendance happens, whether physical or online, at rehearsals, then we are happy! 

The main rehearsal dates for our main shows remain the same; Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Where shows overlap there may be one show being rehearsed on one day, and one on the other. 

Until we are able to return to physical rehearsals in full force, any trainee/first-timer crew roles will have to either be postponed, or take place solely online.

For the time being we will not be able to accept guests at physical rehearsals. Due to space being at a premium with social distancing, only actors and senior crew involved in the scenes being rehearsed will be able to attend. Family members or friends who are not in the production, will not be able to come and "sit in".


COVID Online Season
We are in the final stages of planning the show line-up for a season of online Zoom-based "Virtual theatre" which will be live streamed to audiences during the autumn, with a wonderful mixture of new and established shows. We already have a wonderful Shakespeare production being planned, and a piece of new writing by a guest author who normally works in the Broadway circuit and is very excited to expand her work over to the UK. Following a call for new work, we are also reading through a number of other very exciting submissions, to select one or two, for the season. Casting calls for all available roles will be released as soon as possible, in line with our usual profit share & portfolio content line-up. Rehearsal times for these may vary from our usual times. 

Stage fighters
It should be noted that we have updated the policy document pertaining to fight choreography and weapons use, in order to clarify best practice and our expectations. It can be found in our governance documents. With the upcoming two year programme of shows involving a high percentage of shows with action and fight scenes, it was deemed important to re-clarify.

Training Zone
We often have people join our team who are new to professional acting, who may have come from either an amateur background or indeed who have never performed before. Even for those us who have been performing for 20 or 30 years, you never ever stop learning. All levels of experience are equally welcome, however we have often found a huge discrepancy in expectations of professional theatre, which unfortunately can, without any negative intentions from anyone, create friction. In an ideal world with the relevant funding and qualified personnel, we would run free training classes at our rehearsal hall, however this is not currently possible, and therefore we have opened the Training Zone on Facebook, which all of our cast and crew who own a Facebook account, regardless of experience, will be asked to join from Jack The Ripper onwards, where we can share learning, best practice, and help with questions or skills gaps. After all, we pride ourselves on having some of the best raw talent in Devon, and making sure that we are all as finely honed performers and crew as possible, will serve to build everyone's individual careers, and the team as a whole. The Training Zone group can be found here. If you have a question, however basic or advanced, this is the best place to ask and discuss, and find resources.
For those people not on Facebook, we will forward the contents into emails.

Skills assessments
From this point on, for the first six months with the company, new personnel will be required to complete monthly skills assessments with one of our senior staff. After six months satisfactory completion, new team members will be reviewed 6mts later, then, as with all of our team, will be reviewed on an annual basis. This will allow us to focus on continuous development of everyone working with us.

Market Stall, Ebay & Friends’ Scheme
With Brixham Pannier Market reopening later this month, we are reopening our book stall at the market on Wednesdays. This will have our usual wide variety of fiction and factual books, with new books added each week. The market takes place in the Scala Hall, part of the Brixham Town Hall complex, in the town centre by Bolton Cross.

We have also opened a dedicated Ebay store, which will sell donated items and any items that we are clearing out, to fundraise for the company. We will be re-launching our used-stamp appeal shortly as well. The ebay account is at https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/southdevonplayers.

“Friends Of” Scheme
Our ‘Friends of’ Scheme remains available. Full details on the website. Email southdevonplayers@gmail.com to sign up.

Child Actors
Following a spate of high-double-figures of highly concerning incidents of children contacting us without the knowledge of their parents for shows, providing dangerous amounts of personal information including secret contacts away from parents, and even requests for illegal trafficking from abroad (all of which have been reported to the child protection authorities in the relevant area to the child's residence, and anti-slavery organisations when from abroad), and incidents where parents have not been aware of chaperoning laws (in some cases being unaware even of the existence of such laws, let alone of the actual nuanced regulations and responsibilities), we have had to take the difficult decision to close our doors to child actors for the time being.
Dealing with these enquiries (sometimes two or three in one day) where children and parents are wilfully endangering children cause us huge amounts of worry & concern, it eats up hours of production time, from our small team, and we are unable to continue to cope without endangering our productions and company.

If we have shows or projects requiring child actors, we will contact a pool of three teenage actors with whom we have worked with this summer, who have established high-level professional skills & reliability, who will be invited to audition for any child roles that come up with new or peripheral projects.  For anyone who wishes to read our child protection policy, which remains in force as a non-negotiable production document and regularly updated in line with new legislation, the document may be found in our governance documents section. 

It should be noted that the coming two year forecast of shows after A Midsummer Night's Dream, (which is already cast as of Feb 2020, with two child actors involved) will not require child actors. 

If local child actors wish to find alternative opportunities, we highly recommend Dramatically Different youth theatre run by the lovely Rachel Swain as an excellent practical team for children and teens, which works towards two full-scale productions per year in Brixham Theatre, as well as other local events, or alternatively, on a wider scale, you may wish to look at the Young Company at Plymouth Theatre Royal.