We had a brilliant meeting with our volunteer Vikki, to discuss the launch of the test phase of our free inclusion project, Theatre Buddies, helping local people struggling with isolation and loneliness to access and enjoy theatre- and make friends.
The draft ideas are at https://www.southdevonplayers.com/buddies.html Due to autumn availabilities for Vikki, and Laura (group founder) being seriously ill and currently unable to take on extra things, Vikki and Laura sadly agreed that Theatre Buddies will publicly launch in Spring 2022. This allows more time for preparing the project. This is later than we would have liked but with illness and life commitments eating time this autumn, there has been no choice but to push it to Spring 2022. It will center around a befriender being available to meet with people who would like to attend our shows at the theatre but have nobody to go with and are anxious about going on their own. The befriender, Vikki, will provide that welcoming, friendly face at our shows. We are also considering having social meetups, maybe once every three months or so, where local people struggling with isolation, depression and loneliness, can meet up with others who have the shared interest of theatre.
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A wonderful play about autism is coming to Exeter, featuring two of the actors from Ben Hur10/10/2021 Two of our lovely actors from our production of Ben Hur, are involved in this production by Ugly Duck Theatre Company, bringing to life the experiences of an autistic student at college, performing soon at Exeter Phoenix.
As a theatre company founded and adminned by an autistic creative, ourselves, and with several creatives working with us who have similar conditions, this is a theme we can fully appreciate. Wishing the two gentlemen involved a fabulous performance! Screenshots below have more information about the show Blurb online about the show from the theatre Facebook page: “We are incredibly excited to announce that we are involved in the Exeter Fringe Festival this year We will be bringing a newly updated "Mental" to STUDIO 1, EXETER PHOENIX 16th of October 2021. 8:30pm Tickets are £12 full price/£10.50 concessions "A behind-the-scenes look at Autism. We follow a day in the life of Jake, an autistic teenager trying to navigate the trials and tribulations of a day at college." Follow the link below to book tickets https://exeterphoenix.org.uk/events/mental/“ Dear Casts of both Ben Hur and Henry V;
Some more external work offers have come in. especially for you lovelies, (this time for Halloween scare actors). Please check the respective production facebook groups for more information and how to apply. This is fab stuff. Well done for being so awesome. Laura In addition to that, two of our team have also been asked to assist with the pirate fight choreography for a new short film being made in Brixham next week. This is one of the outcomes that we love - as well as producing our inhouse shows, we love it when external acting work comes in and is offered to the people currently working with us. Getting into professional freelance acting is a huge and thick glass ceiling especially down here in Torbay (its why we were founded in the first place, lol!) without drama schools and local agencies etc. Lots of productions come down, and lots of acting work looks further afield to bring people in, when in reality, there is a ton of fab talent right here. Seeing talented people get additional opportunities is one of the most rewarding things you can imagine. <3 The all important link to all the information: https://www.torbaylottery.co.uk/support/the-south-devon-players
The Torbay Lottery is a locally run lottery which supports verified local charities and non-profit / community organizations. You play from £1 (and can win up to £25,000! We have already had two winners of smaller prizes) and in turn this helps raise funds for us as well. We would (naturally) be enormously grateful if you would like to sign up to support our work, in creating exciting new theatre, and providing inclusive, exciting opportunities for local people of all demographics and backgrounds to get involved in theatre, to build experience in theatre towards or as part of careers in the arts, and work towards their Equity cards & Spotlight registrations if they need to. 100% of everything raised via Torbay Lottery goes directly into our work: hiring a room in a local community centre for rehearsals; costumes, props, insurances, printing posters and flyers to advertise the shows, developing free education packs for schools and audience members. Today Awesome Sarah (and the lovely Ziggy!) joined our tech team- today, Sarah came along to meet us, find out what our rehearsals are like, etc. Sarah will be one of the new people helping with tech on our shows- we will have 4 technicians for sound/ lighting so that there’s always one, and ideally two, technicians available for performances - around their life/ jobs/ family / other commitments
The other new technicians will be coming along to rehearsals over the next week or so to also sit in on a rehearsal and meet us- then training will begin! #womenintheatre #theatre #performingarts #stagesound #stagelighting #brixham #britishtheatre #devon #torbay #arts (news at https://www.equity.org.uk/news/2021/july/2021-committee-election-results)
From Laura: As an actor & director who has always lived in Devon, the fortunes of regional theatre (as well as best practice, making more opportunities for people in the regions and improving things for those involved in it, etc etc) are forefront of my interest! Do always message me if there's something you want to discuss, ask, input/suggest etc, and I will get back to you as soon as I'm able. ( and if I need to redirect you, I will do my best to point you to relevant help). I don't claim to be an expert (we are all learning and developing, all the time) but I do claim to be someone who really cares. - Laura Today we have some incredible news which we hope will make a huge difference to our future.
We would like to welcome Dawn on board as our new grant fundraiser (she will be specialising in grant applications). She has a professional history of grant fundraising for theatre and the wider arts, including some larger national companies. Securing this kind of assistance means that while we will continue all our usual fundraising (ebay, Redbubble, the second-hand book shelf in Oats, etc), we have a better shot at getting really proper funding which will allow us to do things like (but not limited to) - obtain up to date portable lighting, sound and projection equipment - build our arts inclusion "theatre buddies" scheme easier - raise Equity rate payments for our cast and crew at last (something we have wanted to achieve for years) - fund the £20 per week for our rehearsal space, in a stable manner. - transport our actors and crew easily to show bookings outside our home area of Torbay - reach new venues further afield with our shows, from which we are precluded due to travel costs. - provide specialist, knoweldgeable accessibility support to both creatives in our shows, and visiting audience members, with disabilities. - develop our digital education packs that come with each show. It has taken a long time to find someone with such a background, and experience. Having met Dawn today she seems absolutely amazing and I cannot wait to work with her to help bring the South Devon Players forward to this (in my opinion) long overdue step for our amazing team. Laura We are are working on a project for post-covid, that we have called Theatre Buddies, to increase access to the arts and combat lonliness/ isolation, in our own small way. It is especially aimed to help people who feel they cannot attend events like theatre shows or other live entertainment because they do not have someone to go with.
We are gathering feedback and information to help us develop the idea, and we would be enormously grateful for any time or thoughts anyone would want to put into our research survey! The survey is at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VQ3MXC6 and takes about 3 / 4 mins to complete. (Project details explaining the idea in full are at https://www.southdevonplayers.com/buddies.html) As we move into 2021 - and beyond - we hope to begin creating education packs for children and students for each of our productions. The first one is already underway for our coming production of Henry V. As a unique part of these education packs, we are creating a series of videos in British Sign Language. For each show, we hope to create a video in British Sign Language, teaching show to sign 10 (or 15) words specific to that theatre production. To begin, here is the sign language video for Henry V, signed by our lovely Sarah Gregori. We are opening our training zone! With lots of thanks to several contributors who helped us locate free online resources.
While we lack the people-power and funds to run formal training sessions as activities, we do consider it very important to provide a resource where those newer to professional theatre (or anyone who wants to refresh on something) especially in an area where there is not immediate access to theatre training for adults. The new zone, consists of an online library at https://www.southdevonplayers.com/training-zone.html as well as a discussion / learning group on Facebook at https://www.southdevonplayers.com/training-zone.html We will of course continue to offer specialist training sessions for specific skills for actors in our shows, when we get back to physical rehearsals and shows, but this training zone covers a much wider range of skills than we have the the facility to run classes in. We hope that you find it useful. |
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;
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