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#SummerFun | Get involved in your local theatre group

“Come one, come all – we will find your talent and we will USE it!” says Mask Theatre chairman Emma Goldberg

Mask Theatre group is a wonderful organisation, and like many wonderful organisations, that is because a group of highly dedicated and very talented people spark off each other tremendously, and have created flashes of genius and a lot of fun. And when all those flashes come together, we come up with some amazing theatre. And if you’re wistfully twiddling your fingers and thinking, ‘well, it SOUNDS good, but I have no talent at all as an actor, so I simply wouldn’t be able to join in’ – well that, my friend, is where you would be very much mistaken. Come one, come all, we will find your talent and we will USE it.

Take, for example, the talented Mr Slinger. Not a brilliant example, because as luck would have it, Dave’s a credit to the acting community, but up until last year, as far as we knew, he had no talent whatsoever as a director. None. I mean, he’d never done it, so he really didn’t know if had a talent or not. But he successfully directed a rehearsed play reading [where we hold books in hand, and block a play out]; and he liked it enough to give a go to the real thing. He picked a belting play – Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth.

A group of us had seen this play, starring Mark Rylance, a couple of years previously, and it’s a tour de force – their production involved having an entire caravan, and four trees, on stage. I personally thought that Dave had finally lost his remaining marbles, but I like to encourage people in challenges they pursue, so we gave him our blessing, and he got on with it. Needless to say, it was a huge success, although getting the set ready was a nerve-racking experience. Our caravan did not fit through the door of the Key Theatre, and for several hours there was a band of very worried actors hacking bits off the caravan.

And – another example of pressing good talent to excellent use – we had a member pop in and spray-paint a rooster on the door of the fridge, moments before the final run-through started. We learned last week that Mask Theatre’s Jerusalem won the National Operatics and Dramatics Association (NODA) District 1 award for Best Play and Best Overall Show, which is a huge credit to Dave and all the hard work that he, the actors and the crew, put into bringing the production to stage. We’re also confident enough in our ability to entertain that occasionally we’re willing to risk undertaking a show for the pure joy of theatre.

This spring, we put on two productions that are less well-known, and a little darker than most theatre, but wonderful explorations into people and very thought-provoking. Blackbird was wonderfully directed by Matt Clift in mid-March, and at the end of the month, Pillowman, directed by Helen McCay, gave Peterborough audiences a taste of something entirely different. We put Pillowman forward into a Theatre Festival held every year on the Isle of Man, and the cast went out over Easter to give their final performance.

The piece was very well-received and the cast were rewarded with a standing ovation! But not only that, several nominations for Best Male Performance (Pete Unwin), Best Supporting Actor (Carl Perkins), Set Design and Construction, Costume and Makeup, Best Director (Helen McCay), Best Dramatic Moment… But we didn’t win any of those things. We did win…. Best Male Performance (Phil Lewis) who played Tupolski! We’re immensely pleased with the whole production, and very happy to have been considered for so many awards, which reflects what a polished performance we gave. We’re now entrenched in our summer production, and readying to take Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Central Park.

We’re very excited that once again we’ll be on tour, as well as performing for a week in Central Park from 11-15 July, in Moonhenge and Crowland Abbey… AND we shall also be taking this production further afield… We’ve been invited to Bourges to perform there, and will be heading over with our first international performance in some years on 22 July. If schools are interested in the production, we are looking at two offers, and they should get in touch to find out more! However, it’s not our first EVER international performance. After all, Mask has been around for seventy years. In the next Moment, we’ll tell you all about our 70th Anniversary celebrations…

Next Production: Macbeth
● Central Park: 11-15 July
● Moonhenge 18 July
● Crowland 19 July
● Bourges 22 July

● Tickets available for all performances at www.masktheatre.co.uk

Keep up-to-date with great summer activities around Peterborough this summer with our hashtag #SummerFun

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