Panto Directing Team

After some behind the scenes negotiations, we have established a directing team for this year's panto, "Jack and the Beanstalk - this time it's personal"

Steve Balchin will be the Director/Producer with me (Tim) as Songs Director. Co-directors will be Thos Ribbits and Pete Raggett.

More news on the team as it emerges, but this means we are now confirmed to go ahead with this project.

Branding and Website Progress

Just a note to say that I have been in touch with Nicola and she's kindly agreed to meeting up and talking about branding and logos next Wednesday.

Also, I have started to create some mockups for the rebuilt website, which you can see at http://www.saward.info/woodhouse - they are just a provisional attempt to get a good navigational structure and are in no way final (especially as we haven't had the "design" conversation yet!) I value any feedback...

Woodhouse Summer Picnic

We are going to organise a summer picnic for the group.

You know the sort of thing, champers and strawberries on a heath (role of thunder...no, no, getting carried away with the Macbeth thing). Men in straw boaters...the lilt of classical music and laughter....

Anyway I just want to know if people are interested and when they think would be a good time to do this. I'm proposing some time around the start of August. Saturday the 31st of July, or Sunday the 1st?

Let me know if you are interested in getting involved.

Photos for the Leytonstone Festival

I need digital images of some recent performances that we have been in for the Leytonstone Festival website. Also their AGM is coming up soon and it might be good to send a representative of us as I missed the last meeting. I've left the date at home but will try to post it later or tomorrow.

As director of Macbeth...a call to membership to look for all combat type clothing that you might have. I have to dress an army. Also if anybody has any upper end uniforms I would be interested.

Directing Team for Panto?

On 15 May, a few Woodhousers got together to decide between two possible panto scripts: "Dick Whittington's Cat" by Vicki Harris and "Jack and the Beanstalk" by Nick Pickles.

We decided on "Jack and the Beanstalk", but on condition that we need to know there is someone (or some people) willing to direct/produce the show, so the hunt is on for a core production team by 31 May!

I have said that I am interested in being the Songs Director, creating routines and rehearsing singing for all the musical numbers in the show. However, that would leave us looking for people to direct the main body of the panto and also handle the production (finding props, costumes, budgeting, doing publicity etc.)

We came up with the idea of a PRODUCTION TEAM as a way of sharing out the heavy load that is normally just the panto director's alone, including more than one director. For example, if you had one Songs Director and (up to) four Scenes Directors then the preparation and attention given to blocking, routines and focused rehearsal could be really upped, without leaving just one person trying to do everything.

Although this approach might not be suitable for some productions, we thought that in panto it really is possible to accommodate different styles - they are already a sort of variety show with added plot anyway.

If you had multiple directors, it's certainly true you would need one "senior" director to look after continuity and scene changes, and to take charge of the final set of run throughs, but it would give a chance for some other directors to get some valuable experience, without having to take on the full commitment.

Here is a suggested lineup. We could be looking for...

SENIOR DIRECTOR / JACK's HOUSE SCENES DIRECTOR
GIANT'S HOUSE SCENES DIRECTOR
ROAD SCENES DIRECTOR
ROUTINES DIRECTOR
SONGS DIRECTOR (Tim Saward + maybe one other?)

If you would be interested in taking on a portion of the directing (or quite a big chunk if you prefer) then contact tim@saward.info before 31 May giving an idea of how much you would like to do.

Woodhouse Updates

Hello. We've set up this page as a way of letting members (and interested outsiders) know what's going on in Woodhouse Players. The new committee want everyone to have access to information about what's being decided, and to give everyone a chance to feed back too.

You can feed back by using the "comments" feature below, and if you want to let everyone know about a decision or suggestion or issue you have, then you can do it by emailing either me (tim@saward.info) or contacting our secretary, Thos, and we can make sure it appears here.

This updates page is mainly for any postings you would like to reach the *entire* membership, so isn't necessarily for contacting particular casts or members, which is sometimes easier to do by email. It's also not for anything we don't want to be visible to the public (in theory anyone could view this page).