The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company News

Our fundraising postage stamps appeal gathering pace

30/7/2021

We recently relaunched our postage stamp appeal, and have been finding some absolutely wonderful support.
Collecting used stamps for our fundraising, sorting them, and selling them to collectors via our eBay shop is a small but steadily growing part of our fundraising. (If you are a stamp collector and want to check out what we currently have on offer, please visit the ebay shop tab in in our top menu.)

We have found several wonderful private supporters, many of whom have stated that they will support this stamp fundraising in an ongoing manner (which is fabulous - we don't plan on stopping this, rather the opposite).

As well as our private supporters, we would like to extend an enormous thank you to Janet of the Welsh-themed café Crafty Cwtch on Middle Street in Brixham who is now acting as a collection point for our stamp collecting, and to Mandy of the Brixham Mission Community Magazine, who are also helping us by appealing to the congregations of four local churches, to save used stamps for us.

Of course, if you want to hand any stamps directly to us, please get in touch with us on southdevonplayers@gmail.com

Thank you so much to everyone for your incredible support <3 It is help like yours which keeps our work of creating local theatre, and creative performance opportunities for people in the region, alive.

All funds raised from these stamp sales, go towards hiring our rehearsal space at Chestnut Community Centre in Brixham (yes so then that money from our hire, benefits a local Brixham community centre in turn), buying second hand items to use/ remake as props and costumes, for insurances & other legal requirements.

Should you wish to read more about our fundraising policies, please see FUNDRAISING

Children's DVDs added to our fundraising ebay account

24/7/2021

Thanks to an awesome local lady's donations, our fundraising ebay account has been updated with a lovely selection of good condition children's DVDs, just in time for the holidays, all listed this evening! Lots of Disney and other content. Every penny raised goes into our rehearsals/ props/ costuming/ venue hire/ insurances etc (and thus mean we can keep running!)
https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/southdevonplayers

Fantastic fundraising news !!

25/3/2021

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

Brixham Pannier Market - closure of book stall (and market)

22/3/2021

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

Launching a crowdfund for our Ben Hur project

6/3/2021

Details of the crowdfund can be found at https://crowdfunder.co.uk/benhursdp

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, has caused the continued postponement and cancellation of live shows for well over a year, for every performance venue in the UK. Now, the UK government has published an expected roadmap of eventually being able to reopen the theatres by the end of the year.
Ben Hur is the Players' big returning big project, returning to theatrical "normality" after Covid. It is also the company's biggest/ most ambitious show to date, pushing performance, technical, set, lighting and costuming ingenuity to new heights, bringing this beautiful tale to the stage.
Based on the famous novel by Lew Wallace, Ben Hur is set in the first century AD. Judah Ben Hur, a young nobleman of Jerusalem; a city under the occupation of the Roman Empire; is accused of attempting to murder the Roman governor, by his erstwhile closest boyhood friend, Massala, now a Roman commander. Sentenced to life as a galley slave; a sentence which usually led to death within months, Judah survives, and after a pirate attack on the Roman navy in the Agean sea, travels to Rome a hero, having saved the life of the Roman commander in his escape. He once more returns to Jerusalem, seeking his mother and sister, who were imprisoned for the same attack, and finds no trace of them. He does however, find Massala, and blinded by rage, challenges Massala at the annual arena "Games". Massala is killed in the games, with his dying breath, reveals to Judah that his mother and sister were in fact released and driven from the city as lepers. With all hope, and all lust for revenge, gone, Judah is lost, but fate is not finished with him. He eventually finds his mother and sister, who are miraculously healed by a preacher, who has recently come to the city........
A historical drama set in Biblical times, the tale of Ben Hur is interwoven with the life and death of Jesus Christ, who appears twice in the drama. This is ultimately a powerful tale of hope and love, set within the dramatic and often brutal times of the Roman Empire.
The script features a wide range of strong, memorable characters, both male and female, with a large age range, carefully crafted into a show which will not only explore ambitious creative and inclusive theatre-making, but also a show, that regardless of any religious or political belief of the part of the audience members, will remain a powerful, beautiful memory for years to come.

Subject to coming safely out of the pandemic, and in accordance with the UK government's expected roadmap to national recovery from the pandemic, allowing for rehearsals and performances from August onwards, the Players expect to cast the show in August 2021, when they will also begin rehearsals, twice a week (Wednesdays and Sundays) in the room they rent in their local community centre. The show will be toured to local & regional venues, including theatres, churches, and other spaces, during the spring of 2022. The team usually perform in at least 4 towns and cities, ranging from their home town of Brixham, up to Bristol, but they are also hoping to expand the tour this time for such an exciting show, and are actively seeking new venues. The team will also be filming the show for online broadcast through our website. Should dates of recovery from the pandemic change nationally or regionally, the project dates may change in line with that, but this project will go ahead.

The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company is an internationally awardwinning theatre company based in the beautiful fishing port of Brixham, in South Devon (hence the company name!) in the southwest peninsula of England. Founded in the winter of 2005-6, to create theatre opportunities for local actors in an area of high poverty and deprivation, the South Devon Players specialise in carefully researched historical dramas; often new writing based on new historical research, Shakespeare, and as in this case, staged adaptations of classical literature. Bringing these stories alive on the stage, brings historical research, and some of the great classical tales, to life in an accessible, colourful, experiential format - so much more different than the black and white of the pages of a book.
An inclusive, female led company, the company welcomes actors and crew at all levels of previous experience, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, education, or other kinds of identities/ demographics. The Players hold the belief that talent and professionalism is everywhere, and needs only a chance to shine. The only requirements of the company is that those who join the team have the desire and drive to create groundbreaking top-quality theatre, work positively in a team environment, developing and sharing skills, and that good manners, positivity, reliability and kindness are paramount .

The Players are launching the crowdfund for this project to help support their return to the live stage, with funds going towards costumes, props, and the costs of production, as well as funds towards payments for the actors and crew, facilitating a high quality and positive project to return from the lockdowns and Covid crisis.

The South Devon Players Theatre and Film Company, are developing a proud tradition of creating world-class historical and classical dramas. In 2019, their production of Macbeth, was booked for a second tour and won an international theatre award in New York for its professionalism and creativity. Laura Jury, the director of that production of Macbeth, & many of the Player's shows, and founder of the theatre company, has returned to lead this new project. Laura has also recently been selected to appear in an online Shakespeare project by the Globe Theatre. With lockdown, the Players have been using the internet to perform and stream digital theatre from Brixham, around the world to global audiences, with growing excellent feedback.

We are relaunching our fundraising stamp appeal

29/12/2020

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

The Big Update!! Shows past & present, casting, and looking ahead.

7/11/2020

Well, it has been a hugely busy autumn for us, and there are dozens of projects, discussions and plannings in the works.

Halloween and a video project.
For Hallloween, supported by Arts Council funding via Torbay Culture, we created Spooky Tales of Brixham, a series of short stories, told in the first person by actors playing Brixham ghosts, based on local folklore. It has gone remarkably well, with fantastic audience feedback.

Coming up next

This side of Christmas, we have two more historical dramas, coming digitally, to our season of online productions - tickets all on sale now: pop over to our box office page to book now.

This is a one-act drama about the life of Sir Walter Raleigh as he manoeuvres his status as a favourite of Elizabeth I to satisfy his political ambitions. Into the Court arrives Bess Throckmorton. They fall in love and marry in secret, to the great and lasting displeasure of the Queen. The Queen dies and the envious James I comes to power and the play ends with Sir Walter's incarceration, trial and execution.

A project by some of our team members, this adaptation of the full, original text, creative challenge exploring 'further developing on the idea of creating digital performance and new techniques of expressing characters, with the roles being split between two actors. Through painstaking character development, innovative performance, video editing, and use of online media tools, this production is going to be one which presents a traditional comedy, in a very new, modern way.

Rehearsal screenshots:

And in addition...
We are also working with Ivybridge Community Arts on a local history production that they have created,
planning ahead for further online theatre productions in the New Year (and as long as Covid nessecitates that we work online. Some very exciting projects are in various stages of planning, from castiing to being written, behind the scenes!

Castings and auditions
We have had a number of casting enquiries recently. We currently have open castings for specific roles within our production of DH Lawrence's The Lost Girl, to complete the compliment of actors. Anyone wishing to audition for those roles, please visit our "auditions" page as we are accepting auditions for the next ten days or so for those roles.

During December/January, the next big show auditions will be made live on the same site, and announced here in the news page as well as on our official company social media.

We have recieved a number of enquiries this autumn seeking auditions and "have a go" acting roles in our shows, specifically for children. As announced back in the summer, and as stated on our website in the audtions page, we were forced to close our doors to accepting new child actors, for the time being, for a number of reasons, including repeated concerns that children working with us were not being correctly chaperoned by their parents, and a deluge of very bizarre social media requests (reported to the authorities) requesting us to illegally traffic children from a number of countries, to the UK. In the interests of everyones well-being, safety and legality, we ended up with no choice to close the doors to new child actors. As always we reiterate; we are not a childrens theatre company, although the majority of our shows are suitable viewing for all ages, and we do only cast child roles, where a child is specifically required for a role, which is not the case in every show.

At the moment, with Covid, all auditions take place using self-tapes. We have found that email systems can be very sporadic in filing submitted auditions sent via file-transfer systems to different folders, including the spam folder. While we do our utmost to be vigilant and pick up the auditions, we are still concerned that some may slip through the net, which is not fair on everyones hard work, and therefore we are working on finding an accessible, easy system which allows for easier submission and more efficient casting director access. If you have sent a tape, but not had a response, please always check in with us.

A commonly asked question

Leaving aside the current second lockdown; a question that we are commonly asked, usually two or three times a week, is why we have not returned to live "on-stage" theatre, when techincally, (outside of the lockdown) the government allow for it.

Ticket sales. - As a professional company, we rely on ticket and programme sales to pay our actor and crew. If, due to social distancing, audiences are cut to 20-30, there is no way that we can even hope to break even on the show, much less pay anyone. The only way in which this could be done, is to charge extortinate amounts per ticket - which would be unlikely to fill seats anyway.

Distancing for cast and crew - The current advice that we have recieved from our Equity contact, is that actors have to be fully socially distanced from one another on stage, which means in turn that we cannot have a natural dramatic dynamic on stage. Furthermore, every actor has to have thier own dressing room (most venues cannot accomodate this), and live in a "bubble" of a hired hotel before, during and after the show - there is no way to afford this. (Also what about families, other work/ committments, etc?)

Venues - Many venues are closed, due to the lack of viability in being open under these circumstances.

And while we are all looking forward to a safe return to the live stage, it needs to be safe for the actors, crews, audiences and venue staff alike; and viable.

Until then, all our work will take place online.

The Friends of the South Devon Players

And we have a message to the Friends of The South Devon Players, a fundraising arm run by volunteers who support our work.

This year did not launch things as planned - while we were planning for social events, and all sorts of "perks" for the membership, Covid, and our scramble to keep the company ticking over, knocked that on the head.

We are however now looking at creatiing "zoom socials" where you will be able to join, socialise, chat, and meet some of the cast and crew. None of these are mandatory for anyone, but will be an option to remain in contact.

We will also be looking at various other "digital" perks, until we can get back into the live spaces, and the original plans, with an emailed announcement soon.

If you would like to support our company's groundbreaking theatre work, and join the Friends, it is only £10 per year, and please pop over to the Supporters Trust . Every penny raised goes into creating new theatre work; costumes, equipment, publicity materialls, venue hire - and when we get to that stage, union-pay-rates for our actors and crew.

Launching new clothing & homewares line

23/5/2020

The Show Will Go On. A new design designed for the Covid-19 pandemic, keeping the lights on for theatre, fundraising for the ongoing survival of The South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company, an internationally awardwinning team based in the Southwest of England, with performing members in several countries. During the pandemic, we are creating new shows streaming online from home, and making lots of plans for when we can return to live touring. Every penny raised from each sale of this design, goes directly into our Covid-recovery programme.

In Memory of Don

11/5/2020

We were very sad to hear today, of the passing of someone who was a fantastic member of our team, Don Percival. A super actor, and for a while, the company treasurer, many years ago, before he moved from Brixham to a new life in Cambodia. We heard that he passed away peacefully last night.
Don was not only a great member of the team, but an adventurous spirit. Aside from being an actor, he was also an amazing scuba-diver, and in his youth a rguby player. We explored the moors and discovered all new prehistoric carvings on a Cornish together. Don will be very sadly missed.

A Lot of News (shows, rehearsals, castings & making online work)

20/3/2020

Shows & Performance dates:

Brixham - As you may have seen, most theatres have closed for the time being (our home venue Brixham Theatre is closed until May, as things stand). We have resceduled our performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream there for August (details now updated on our Box Office page).

Brixham Brixfest - our excerpt performance of acts 2 & 3 of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Brixfest in May, is cancelled, as Brixfest, an annual festival celebrating local arts, culture and business itself is cancelled. We will be working with them to perform in 2021 - discussions have already commenced

Plymouth - We are planning to reschedule oour performance st Stoke Damerel Church in Plymouth also to August, but we are currently awaiting a reply from the churchwarden to discuss new dates. When this occurs, all tickets bought for the current date will be honoured, or can be refunded (no quibble), if the new date does not suit.

Bristol - We have discussed with Bristol Shakespeare Festival, who are working on the best case scenario to run still in July. Both the festival and the venue are very happy to have us, and so as things stand, this date will go ahead. If we are forced to postpone, we will postpone until later in August/ September, and then perform "under our own steam".

We are also exploring the possibility of online broadcasts and readings/ performances.

Rehearsals:
The vast majority of our rehearsals have now moved online, to protect the health of our actiors and crew; using the video-conferencing programm / app, Zoom. Cast and crew should stay in regular contact via email or Facebook with the team, as we send the conference links out to everyone on a twice-weekly basis, and send out updates about online work opportunities for actors for our team.

Castings for Jack the Ripper
Our audition date in late July, remains as-is. We hope that the worst of the crisis will be over by then, but if it is not, we will be looking at alternate ways to cast the show and send out scripts etc to cast. Please keep an eye on our news, social media and the auditions page for any updates. People who have emailed us will be updated as well.

Making online work
In this current crisis, most work for actors and crew has dried up - even big TV series and film shoots have cancelled. This leaves the nations entertainers unable to pay rent or the bills. We are doing our best to help our team with creating various online work opportunities. All we can do is but try, and do our best, rather than giving up.
Our first opportunity for our team is offering online tutoring for adults and children; chiefly in drama and English, but also in other subjects as well, by an expert team of creatives. We are in the process of setting up, but expect to have it done open for business by Sunday March 21st 2020. You can find it at ONLINE TUTORING SERVICE. In the interim, if you would like to be contacted as soon as this service is live, please email us on southdevonplayers@gmail.com.
You or your loved ones will be able to access expert tutoring, and also support some of our nations entertainers and creatives, during this hard time.