ACCOUNT : THE BOSBURY PLAYERS
Raymond Honey
This is one one a series of personal “reminiscences on particular themes” prepared mainly for family record.
Amateur Dramatics had never been my “thing”. This may have dated back to 1950 in first year in Malaya when I was involved with the local Christian Youth Council in a Nativity Play. The producer, an imperious lady, ask me : “Would you like to be a wise man ?” l replied “I am already” and she responded “No you’re not”. I was put to operate some very basic lights. For many years I said that there were three forms of life that I feared : Small children, organising women and people who ran amateur dramatics. Some of these fears I have since overcome.
My defences fell after moving to Bosbury in 1988. An amateur group had developed from one within the Women’s Institute and had staged a Christmas pantomime “Little Red Riding Hood”. This was followed in 1989 by “Murder in the Red Barn”. The following year there had been an appeal for people to help in presenting “Jack and the Beanstalk”. Feeling that l could contribute to making the sets, I volunteered and began about ten years of work for what had become “The Bosbury Players”. I have to confess that my interest lay in the opportunity to design and make something to meet a local need rather than in the productions themselves. After a professional lifetime of painfully slowly moving projects, not all built and rarely appreciated, it was truly a joy to work on a simple project, assess what was needed, envisage a solution and actually to make it, given willing help, and to see it used and appreciated. There was little pressure of time - no late night or last minute panics - and enough money. The opportunity to use available materials, to cadge, and to improvise appealed to the Kiwi in me.
My initial contribution was to design and make a proscenium and stage for Bosbury Parish Hall, at that time a room 36 feet square with a timber ceiling following the line of a low pitched roof with 13 feet clearance in the centre and 11 feet at the side. Initially the stage was made of units borrowed from Canon Frome Court. They were made of 12mm plywood each unit being 8 feet x 4 feet and 16” high. To fit around this we formed a demountable proscenium of a line of plywood panels on each side of a 16 feet opening . They were slightly splayed and located about 12 feet from the rear of the hall with a shallow box beam of MDF spanning the opening and carried on box columns at each end. There was a degree of ingenuity in all this - the whole affair was secured to the hall structure only through a few screws into the edge of the architraves to doors at the side of the hall and by two light steel angles from the top of the columns to other angles fixed to the uprights of the windowsthe rear wall. The “flats” at the back of the stage were secured to a framework of brackets from a ledge on the rear wall. Everything else was secured by wedges. The box beam - a two-man lift - was stiffened by cables coming from the top edge at their ends to the lower part in the centre and tensioned. For “Jack and the Beanstalk”, the first show for which it was used, large hop drying sheets of hessian were festooned to form the stage curtain. Space backstage was very limited. There was room for about 100 seats in the remainder of the hall.
The next development was to construct the ‘Players’ own stage. It followed the dimensions of the earlier borrowed stage and was thus perhaps rather lower than ideal, but it formed a stage 12 feet deep. It was made from 18mm plywood panels 4 feet x 23½" wide carried on frames 23½" apart. These were made of 3" x 2" timbers salvaged from the reroofing of Holy Trinity Church, where they had formed row upon row of diagonal braces below the tile battens. In the reroofing bracing was provided by pre-painted tongued and grooved boarding over the rafters. The frames for the stage were held in the upright position with 12mm plywood panels (“webs”) with notches fitting within the frames and secured with turnbuttons. After only one trial, it was realised that the whole construction needed tensioning together with cables. It all required some careful numbering of the various parts and the training of intelligent hands to erect it - a task eventually possible in under an hour. With some additional units it proved suitable for erection in Holy Trinity Church and for a time in Bosbury Primary School, and it remains in use for many “Music in Bosbury Church” performances. Once the Parish Hall had been extended the demountable proscenium was redundant and there was space for up to about 130 seats For a time some box beams were made to raise the level of the stage a little until the Hall purchased a set of stage units a metre square and 750mm (30 inches) high which could also be used as tables. The extension to the Hall incorporated a door through which props could be unloaded at stage level.
And yes, I did design some sets, perhaps rather literal interpretations of what the scripts suggested and devoid of much subtlety or surprise. I admire the imagination of the professional theatre to operate with the minimum of representation and few props, although that required an audience with some imagination themselves. My props were generally faithful to architectural models, notably a Norman archway, a Thai cottage and a Japanese bridge which has since lent itself to much alteration and repainting. There were also Old Mother Hubbard’s Shoe, a beanstalk which could grow visibly, a lancet window through which a fairy could be seen developing to adult size and a baby grand piano.
It would be appropriate to record some of the many sources of materials and of help. Much of the MDF for the proscenium came from off-cuts given by Ridgway Ioinery of Cradley. The plywood for the decking and the webs was supplied and cut to size by Lydney Plywood (a service they later discontinued). The steel angles were provided by Hallmark of Bosbury, located in Temple Court. Colin Shail’s TV agency provided large cartons, and Ledbury Carpets provided stout cardboard tubes for making props. Muraspec, through my son Nigel provided sheet display materials including some in splendid gold. From a discontinued line of a light woven fabric came a quantity of material as dust sheets. From the Lane’s hop growing enterprise came the hop sheets and the cables for tensioning the stage units and the shallow box beam over the stage. More significantly what had started by allowing the kit to be stored in Old Court barns has over the years grown into providing a good fifty feet run of wall space against which years of props are held. More props were stored in the hop kilns at the Townend. Few amateur dramatic clubs can have so much storage space for props and as far as I know, none has been dismantled. Nearer at hand has been the platform in the former barn at Birchlea, next door to me at the Old Chapel on which the large flats could be framed. Painting ~ and re-painting - of sets has taken place in both these barns.
During the 1990s Steve Hopkins and his father had a firewood business behind the Cottage at 1 The Cross. They had a heavy circular saw which helped with some of the heavy cutting in all this construction work. Further, all this work of construction , storage and performing has taken place within 200 yards of the junction of the main road with Catley Lane at the centre of the village. Within the large garden of the Rees’ property, The Dog, was a circular area enclosed by a high hedge. For several summers, with the use of the demountable stage, the Players ran a three day “workshop” there, for local children ending in a presentation of a play to parents. The Rees’ nurseryman’s trolley was a very convenient way for moving light items, some could be moved on a roof rack and a series of farm trailers coped with everything else.
Equally needing mention are the many friends who joined in all this work. Some, but not all, was done by people with no aspirations to acting but very willing to help in practical ways. Tony Cooper helped a great deal from the beginning and he also was a leading performer. With Mick Martin and Robert Hood-Wright they helped making the stage units. Robert Lane was another actor (and later producer) and with some of his workers erected, transported and stored the many items of kit and continue to do so when it is used in the church. After a few years Pat Biddulph became involved not only in the construction work but also in lighting which became much more sophisticated. As Treasurer and Secretary, in 1994 when I was Chairman, he worked with me in framing a constitution for the Players introducing a degree of formality. All this makes no mention of the people with the knowledge to identify likely plays and the skill and initiative to direct the Players’ actual productions and to peform in them. Most notable they were initially Brigid Baber and for ten years or more Alan Soper. That all deserves a separate record.
From village pantomime and for a time a series of simple plays, giving some experience for people of modest aspirations, the Players’ performances ventured into more demanding works such as “Blithe Spirit” and “The Importance of being Earnest”. Latterly a bi- annual Gilbert and Sullivan work has proved very popular and drawn in performers - and audience - from a way beyond the village. Ticket sales - and prices- have risen markedly. It was at this point, at the Millennium, that I “played the Old Age Card”, opted out of doing things for the Players and spent more time at home enjoying the free TV licence to which I had become entitled.* Of course I continued to enjoy the productions, noting the continued improvement in them. My note here merely records my part in some of the “enabling works”. It gave me a substantial body of very satisfying and enjoyable activity in the early years of retirement and attracted an embarassing amount of appreciation. As for acting myself - I was never really attracted to the idea of pretending to be someone else and “getting under their skin.” It took me all my time to be my own self. But at a moment when a production seemed threatened by a shortage of men I was persuaded to take the part of Canon Chasuble in “The Importance of Being Earnest”. I said my lines correctly, dodged the makeup, was reported to have been credible but found there was an awful lot of inactivity between my brief appearances. And it was my lot to have been kissed by the only lady in the cast who was a smoker.
THE PRODUCTIONS IN WHICH I HAD BEEN INVOLVED
1991 Jack and the Beanstalk 1994 Blithe Spirit Temptation Sordid or Virtue Rewarded The Importance of being Ernest 1992 The Old Game (Hans Sachs) 1995 The Pirates of Penzance 1993 Sleeping Beauty 1996 The Joy Ride Gosforth’s Fete 1997 Brush with a Body The Music Cure 1998 The Mikado Bang, You’re Dead 1999 The King and I The Pantomime Play 2006 Charley’s Aunt
* My resolve to retire has weakened from time to time and I have responded to requests to make several items given very long notice. The most notable has been the upright piano for “Charley’s Aunt” in 2006. It gave me even more satisfaction by being made largely from offcuts of materials stored in my “Aladdin’s Cave” .
10 Jan 2007