Trophies are held by the winners in each category for one year – Keith and I actually won a trophy last year for “Outstanding contribution to the Hornsea Speech & Drama Festival”, which was a lovely surprise for us! We have been taking the children there for the past 9 years and I think without the members from BADS, the festival would not exist, so they are probably grateful for our input!

I will report back with the results next weekend. We are having extra rehearsals this afternoon from 2 till 5.30pm so hopefully they will all be ready for it by Saturday!

Set in New York City, 1943. William ‘Fred’ Parsons, a young writer from Alabama, meets Miss Holly Golightly, a charming, vivacious and utterly elusive good-time girl. Everyone falls in love with Holly, including William – but he is poor and Holly needs rich. Will she marry Rusty, playboy millionaire? Or Jose, the future president of Brazil? As war rages in Europe, Holly begins to fall in love with William – and then her past catches up with her.

If you are only familiar with the Hollywood screen version staring Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard and Patricia Neal then you are in for a shock! The story differs greatly in many places with no glossy Hollywood ending in Capote’s novella nor the stage play. A fabulous night out, this play is well worth seeing.

http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/entertainment/Lloyd-Webber-s-lost-gem/article-1437388-detail/article.html#StartComments

This article is great for me on two levels – it promotes my work as an artist, but also provides some useful publicity for the show I will be taking part in at the end of this month with Hull Musical Society!

Tuesday was a day of mixed activities for me. I started the day early as I woke up with a stinking headache at 7am. I have been trying to avoid taking painkillers as I think I have been a bit too dependent on them for my headaches, but Tuesday morning was an exception. I did the usual morning routine of feeding the fish in the pond in the garden, which is when I tend to sit and relax for a while on the bench next to the pond – I love to stare at the fish as they effortlessly move for their food. Then it was cat-feeding time, followed by their daily grooming (I have two long-haired cats so they need regular brushing and de-tangling to reduce the amount of knots and hopefully the amount of fur-balls they inevitably throw up everywhere!!!!).  Then I spent some time doing a bit of painting on my 3rd in the series of abstract geometric designs for the gallery in Bridlington.  By 8.30am I was ready for some breakfast. After that I switched the PC on and made a start on locating various poems for the Junior/Youth section members as part of their entries for the Hornsea Speech & Drama Festival. This took longer than I anticipated, as ever, as I was still at it later that morning, 11am. In between painting I then spent the rest of the day finalising the design of the ticket and posters for the show. This was not as fruitful as I expected, but I managed to complete all by late afternoon. Then I was starting to feel hungry as I had forgotten to get any lunch. I rehearsed a couple of the songs ready for the rehearsal that night, and by 6.30 I left for a meeting with the Secretary prior to the rehearsal.

The rehearsal on Tuesday night was the first “Floor” rehearsal. It is a first for me, as I have never been in a musical show before, but it is very similar to the early rehearsal we have at Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society for our plays. We call the process “blocking the play” and essentially you need to have every move on stage written in your script to remember along with your lines.

I was cast as one of the girls in the “Pro” line (yes, a prostitute!) which actually quite pleased me since it means that I have a little bit more to do than I would have if I’d been a chorus member alone. We had a lot of fun flirting with the male characters in the scene, pretending to steal them away from their “wives” (maybe they’d spotted a talent in me based on my real life experience!) and generally be quite forward! A bit of “movement” was included in all three songs, not really any dancing as such, but it was all choreographed throughout. I found the whole evening was hard work, but lots of fun! The three songs we rehearsed were “Twice In Love Every Day”, which is the opening number, “I’m A Busy Man” (Barnardo’s solo piece) and “We’ll Get Him” . The next rehearsal for the chorus isn’t until a week next Sunday, as the children’s rehearsals are taking place next Tuesday.

I can’t wait, but in the meantime I am busy preparing publicity material for the show in order to ensure we get as much coverage as possible!

We were joined by a prospective new member last night, which is always good news for the Society, but he is testing out several of the local societies to see where he wants to belong, so we are hoping we made a good impression!

This play will most likely be our next production in January 2010, provided we can cast it. I really hope so, as it is such an interesting and thought-provoking play, yet still has lots of humour and emotional scenes for the actors involved.

We will be meeting again next week to finalise the cast.

The second play was called “Sally and Jack’s Death Day Party”, also by David Walker. Set in limbo, where several workers help to staff the place and prepare everything for any newcomers, it told the tale of two young people who had arrived by mistake for a Death Day Party. The Queen of Limbo eventually decided to let the children go back to being alive again after the party, which pleased everyone. Once more, this was a very accomplished performance by them all and it was worth all the hard work beforehand to hear the reaction from all the people who’d come along to support them. The costumes and make-up were well done thanks to Nikki Grannon who directed that particular play, with assistance from Amy Fletcher, Amber Burton and Laura Jones (3 members of the Youth section at BADS).  Another youth section member, Lauren Trim, operated the Sound & Lighting.  A great way to end the summer term!