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)
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After a brilliant run of shows at Brixham Theatre we are now going on to our sold out show at the Barnfield in Exeter, before coming to Torquay, Kingskerswell, Ashburton and Stokenham. It is brilliant to also have multiple schools coming along and being involved, and to have great audience feedback from the shows. If you want to get tickets to any of our shows, (obviously Exeter is sold out but the rest have tickets available) please pop over to our Box Office page for dates and booking information.
. So, it has been a really long time since we got to update this page. Our tour of Les Miserables through May and June gained fabulous audience feedback at all venues, excluding Plymouth which we had to cancel due to a bereavement on our team and an outbreak of Covid among the venue staff.
Soon after the start of the run, the director's mother passed away suddenly, and other cast members also had illnesses and family emergencies, so it was quite a trial of fire to keep the show running - however, thanks to an amazing, supportive team of people, we kept it running. It has been an absolute honour to work with such an amazing team of people. We hope very much to work with many more times in the future and all of whom I would highly recommend as amazing and competent theatre actors and crew. Phenomenal audience feedback for the show, building a real fan following for our work there too. We are having quite a short turn around before we come back in for Macbeth,
![]() We must apologise for the quietness over the last few weeks - lots of things have been happening! Taming of the Shrew news First of all, we must apologise for the cancellation of The Taming of the Shrew. Due to illness in the team, it was impossible to continue to the deadline. (for the record those affected are recovering well!). The team behind that project plan to resurrect it in the future, timing to be decided in that team. Sir Walter's Women On the plus side, the performance of Sir Walter's Women went very well, with great feedback from the author - we certainly hope to work with Rachel again, especially when shows come back to the live stage in the future. It is wonderful to find a playwright who, like us, loves researched historical plays.
BSL Christmas stories We are currently working on a pair of children's Christmas stories, both spoken as recordings and recorded in BSL (British Sign Language), which will be available for free via this website, in the next few days. (The signing for the second story is being done as we speak). This project has been very kindly funded by Western Power Distribution. It is the first time we have worked with getting BSL signing (the first of many projects, and increasing the accessibility of our productions) . Welcoming new stage crew We are delighted to be welcomeing new stage crew, Sophie on tech and set design, Rebekah who is a trainee ASM and filmmaker, Pete assisting with research and digital shows, and Jean on costuming. We are still looking for a stage lighting/ sound tech to join the crew - please check our Crewing page if you would like to be considered to join our upcoming team. Next castings coming up: We have our next open casting announcements coming up. With show dates for both virtual projects and "live" shows in discussion (we have provisional live show dates booked for later in 2021, but of course physical rehearsals and shows are dependant on covid safety, and venues being able to re-open to audience numbers which makes a show tour viable in terms of ticket sales for our actors.). Please keep an eye on our newsfeed for the latest castings - we hope to announce during either December 2020 or Jan 2021. Housekeeping We are currently in the final stages of updating the company documents and governance documents. As a lot of these are the policies and procedures by which we run, we ask that all actors, crew and anyone else who works with us, pops over to the Policies page to check up on them. As always it is all just really about checking the latest best practice, and making sure that our paperwork reflects what we do anyway. We find that it is best to keep things open and clear. Next shows coming up:
Coming up next, we have two virtual shows already planned, Lost Girl and Jack The Ripper, rehearsals for both are well underway, and the tickets are on sale on our box office page Midsummer Night's Dream castings. Roles marked TBC are still in discussion with people being auditioned for those roles over the final part of this week. Well done to EVERYONE :) First main rehearsal takes place on Sunday.
Tara MacGowran (Lysander) Charlotte Slade (Robin Starveling, Mustardseed) TBC (Snout) Victoria Balster (Titania & Hippolyta) Keanna Mabin(Hermia) TBC (Bottom) Daniel McCarthy (Flute) Joe Staton (Quince & Egeus) Laura Jury (Puck) Rich Sandford (Oberon) Peter Carey (Demetrius) Gemma Burford (Philostrate & Peaseblossom) Alex Slade (Moth) Joe Tresize (Snug) Sarah Rutty (Helena) Carl Reynolds (Theseus) So, the last few days have been spent at Brixham theatre, setting up for, and performing, our production about the 1866 Great Gale of Brixham with an amazing cast. We now break for Christmas, although we are back in January for another performance at Ivybridge! (Box office details here) Our retiring collection raised approximately £95 for Brixham Fishermans Mission. Show photos by Laura Jury and Gemma Burford.
Some of our team have been working with a multi-agency team led by Childrens Services at Torbay Council, at St Cuthbert Mayne School in Torquay, as part of the 16 Days of Action, raising awareness of coercive and abusive behavior, and how to seek help.
Our contribution at the school was for two of our team, to work with the students, through drama workshops, to create a play based on students experiences. This will be performed back to the school during 2020. ![]() On the evening of November 2nd, 2019, the South Devon Players won our fourth award. We were one of the organistions who won the Brix Award, a local award by the community organisation Brixham Yes at their community hub The Edge. The Brix Awards celebrate the contribution of local organisations and individuals, to the local community, and making Brixham a positive, and vibrant place to live. The South Devon Players founder, Laura Jury, and our stage manager, Sammy Hickman, attended this Musical Theatre themed event in costume, and were thrilled to win this award. This is the fourth award won by the Players. While our other awards have been local (2010 Torbay Together's Arts In The Community), national (2017 Epic Award for England; All-England winner), and international (2019 Long Island Theatre Festival - Theatre Partner Award), all of them mean so much to us and our lovely team members. We are a highly ambitious professional theatre company, making opportunities for local people, and sharing our work as widely as possible, but we also value our contribution to the local community highly, and it was a huge honour to be recognised for it. It is often hard to be taken seriously as a regional theatre company, and things like this are a huge morale boost to everyone involved with us. We are very happy today after this great news. Our lovely golden brick from the Brix Awards will join our other collection of awards. <3 Absolutely wonderful day working with this brilliant team yesterday at The Loco Klub in #Bristol, performing #Macbeth. A wonderful team of people, in a wonderful location- a theatre, arts venue and nightclub built into old underground railway tunnels at Temple Meads. Thank you to all our cast, crew, and audience!
Photos by Agne Stra Photography |
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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