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Theatre
One thing to establish straight away is that I can't act. At all. Nor do I try, largely for the sake of the theatre-goers of East Anglia. However, the annual Sunday School trip to the pantomime failed (just - only just) to put me off of the theatre for life, and I became a trustee of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, a Norfolk-based professional company, in the 1990s. Although I'm no longer a trustee, I still support the company whenever I can, and often help out with front of house work. Use the links at the foot of this page to see my photographs of the company's productions.
Generally, the company stages a summer tour, which is often an outdoor production of one of Shakespeare's plays. The 2007 tour was Twelfth Night. In the company's early days the tour was confined to East Anglia, but nowadays it has become national.
One of the company's favourite venues is certainly the Minack Theatre at Porthcurno in Cornwall. Unfortunately work commitments mean that I can't usually get there with them, but I did make the trip in 2003, during their Henry V tour. It's a truly amazing theatre, cutas it is from the side of a cliff and with the sea as a backdrop. During one performance during our visit the king and Princess Katherine were totally upstaged by a school of dolphins which passed close to the shore and directly in view of the audience!
Ann Courtney, the company's artistic director, is also a talented writer, and the company uses her own writing for some of its productions. The 2008 tour is Mad and Merry Monarchs, a fast-paced trip through British history in just under two hours.
I can't end my theatre page without mention of Philippa Burt, a very dear friend who I met when she played Maria and Margery Pinchwife during the 1997 dual tour of Twelfth Night and The Country Wife.
Twelfth Night (Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 2007)
Macbeth (Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 2006)
As You Like It (Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 2004)
Henry V (Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 2003)
The Hypochondriac (Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 2002)
Pygmalion (Castle Players - a local amateur company - 2001)
