‘There’s a distinction between talent and genius, and it’s not just that they are spelled completely different...'
EDITED BY MARK WAKEMAN
HTML coding by Robin Hall
Mark Wakeman, BenchPress Editor
Hello and Happy New year to you all. I hope that you enjoyed the yuletide festivities and are now looking forward to another exciting year of theatre.
Like many people I made New Years Resolutions. My first was that no longer would I strive for the spot light, or go so wildly over the top with my characterization. From now on I would seek the more artistic roles that could display my full range and show that I could be a soft-spoken thespian. After this I learned I had been cast as Schmendiman in the next Bench show ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile’ and I think that you will see that my new philosophy has come into play and you will see something very different than you have seen from me in the past.
Ahum.
We have so much news for you this month you should savour your BenchPress like your Christmas Turkey and enjoy it over a number of sittings! Read on!
| DATE | EVENT |
|---|---|
| Thursday 6th February 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
CLUB NIGHT : workshop on Howard Barker |
| Thursday 20th February 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
CLUB NIGHT : ideas for new plays/pantomime discussion |
| Tuesday 24th Feb - Saturday 2nd March 2003. Performances at 7:30. Special matinee performance on Saturday 2nd in aid of the Silver Fund. |
Picasso at the Lapan Agile, Steve Martin |
| Thursday 6th March 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
CLUB NIGHT |
| Thursday 20th March 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
CLUB NIGHT |
| 19th April - 3rd May | Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov |
| Saturday 17th May | 9 Days in May Launch Waterlooville town centre. |
| Saturday 17th May (Hayling Island) Tuesday 20th May (Park Community School) Wednesday 21st May (Havant Arts Centre) Saturday 24th May (Crookhorn) Sunday 25th May (Bedhampton Community Centre) |
Shakers performances (part of 9 days in May festival) |
| 13th July - 27th July | The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard |
Look out for voting soon to select more plays - we have slot dates for November 2003 and February 2004
Sue Dawes
Jasper and I have been charged by the Committee to research ideas to improve Bench publicity. Please E-mail megan@djam.freeserve.co.uk with any information about media contacts which you may have. Also we need to list organisations and institutions where there are opportunities to publicise productions.
You may be interested to know that we have asked a sample of audience members at "Romeo and Juliet" where they heard about the Bench production. Libraries, leaflets from Havant Arts Centre and articles in "The News" were all cited. We seem to be on the right track but need to explore more avenues and expand our publicity machine. Further surveys of audiences will be carried out at "Picasso"Many thanks - Sue
Robin Hall, Treasurer
Following the item in the last edition of Bench Press we will be holding a collection for anyone from the Bench who would like to make a donation to the Arts Centre. This will begin at our club night on Thursday 6th February and will close at the evening performance of Picasso on Saturday 1st March.
If you would like to make a donation please bring it to a club night or Picasso performance or post a cheque to our box office address. Please make sure that it is clearly marked as a donation to the HAC collection. We will collect together all donations and present HAC with a cheque.
If you have any questions please contact myself or Tim.
Robin Hall
The Bench Website has been ably maintained for some years by the marvellous Mr Peter Corrigan but when he stepped down from this role I took over. You can find our new website at www.benchtheatre.org.uk
Please bear in mind that the site is still under development! You might find that some links do not work properly or that patches are very bare.
I would be glad to receive any information that could be presented on our website. Any programs, photographs or memories from old productions are particularly welcome, most of all if they come in electronic format.
All feedback on the new site is most welcome, you can reach me in the usual ways or via the 'webmaster' email address : web@benchtheatre.org.uk
Mark Wakeman with a little help from Damon and Nicola
Mr Damon Wakelin has asked me to inform you all that the current production of ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile’ is going wonderfully well. The cast is a joy to direct especially the fat chap playing Schmendiman. He simply wishes me to tell you that you must all come and see this hilarious production.
Nicola Scadding has asked me to include the following.
This is now cast and……well, they say ‘get the casting right and half the work is done’ but that only makes really good sense when actors of this calibre audition!
Thank you all for your support and welcome to Fiona who, a graduate from Dynamo, will be making her first appearance for the Bench.
Helena - Fiona Fairhurst
Sonya - Alice Corrigan
Maman - Ruth Prior
Marina - Ingrid Corrigan
Peasant/Maid - Zoe Chapman
Vanya - David Penrose
Astrov - Damon Wakelin
Serebryakov - John Scadding
Telegin - John Batstone
My thanks to everyone else who auditioned for this production, I’m really sorry that there aren’t enough characters in ‘Vanya’ for me to use all the talent - a very great deal - that was on offer.
The production team is also looking very healthy so far:-
Producer: Mark Wakeman
Stage Manager: Zoe Chapman
Lighting Design: Jacqui Penrose
Lighting Operation: Richard Le Moignan
Costume: Megan Utley
BUT: There are still backstage and technical vacancies so please let either Mark or me know if you’d like to be involved.
Thanks!
A very merry Christmas and happy new year to you all. Even over the Christmas break your dedicated Artistic Panel/Committee/Drinking Party (insert your own title here) has been beavering away to ensure that all of us in the Bench can get involved in 2003. Nathan Chapman is here to tell you about one major development that is gaining ground even as we speak…
Nathan Chapman
Many of you will hopefully remember that in 2000 the Bench experimented with a short festival of home-grown plays, entitled Supernova. The success of this project surpassed our expectations, with lots of plays submitted and healthy houses for each night. Although not as a direct result of Supernova, two of the plays featured in the festival have now been published, which says a lot for the quality of the work on offer. The cosmic dust from this explosion of talent hadn’t had time to settle before people were saying “Let’s do it again!”
Well, be careful what you wish for, because we are going to do just that. In September 2003 Supernova will return, even bigger that before. With auditions for the next three productions already passed, this means that those of us not involved with Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Uncle Vanya or Shakers don’t have to sit on our hands until The Real Thing with nothing to do.
SUPERNOVA 2 promises to be a very exciting and busy event, bigger in practically every way. For starters, we will have five nights available instead of three, and the Artistic Committee will be making a joint effort to organise the event, meaning more hands to the pumps. But of course, this will only get off the ground if we have the plays and the people to do it. So here’s how to get involved.
Start writing! There are a number of people in the company who already write plays, and probably many more who would like to have a go. If you fit into either category, now’s the time to get your thinking caps on and put pen to paper. Any subject, any style; it would be nice to have a real variety to offer, so pretty much anything goes. However, to keep the event manageable, there are a few things that you should bear in mind if you are thinking of writing something: -
The plays should be no more that 40 minutes in length. We want to give as many people as possible the opportunity to see their work on the stage. We would aim to feature 3 plays each evening, so please bear in mind the stamina and bladder strength of your average audience member.
Keep the cast small. How small? How long is a piece of string? As a rule of thumb, if your cast runs into double figures, you really are stretching things. 9 as an absolute maximum, 4 or 5 is comfortable. By all means write 67 characters, as long as a small cast can accommodate them.
Keep it simple. Potentially we are looking at performing 15 plays in a week, so try to avoid lighting that belongs in the Jean Michel-Jarre show and complicated sets (remember Charley’s Aunt, anyone? A 30-minute long set change!).
We really don’t want to cramp anyone’s creative style here, but these are just common sense, really. How many people would want to rehearse a two-hour play with a cast of 20 for just one performance? We want people to get involved, not collapse with exhaustion.
With these points in mind, all that remains is to come up with the plays. Now that we have two club nights a month, we intend to showcase all the submissions before a final selection is made, so one meeting each month will be dedicated to getting to know the plays and how SUPERNOVA 2 is going to work in more detail.
What else in new in SUPERNOVA 2?
Many ideas have been discussed and are subject to confirmation, but talk has been made of inviting literary agents and publishers to see the performances, inviting our noble patron Sir Derek Jacobi himself and other exciting proposals. One thing we are definitely keen to do, with performance venues in Portsmouth rapidly declining, is to work at forging strong links with other amateur companies such as Humdrum Amdram and the Southsea Shakespeare Actors by offering them some involvement.
Phew! There’s so much to talk about, I simply can’t fit it all in. If you are interested, rifling through your drawers for long-forgotten scripts or merely curious, the best thing to do is come along to club nights and find out more. We look forward to seeing you there.
As Christmas slowly slips away Tim Taylor wants to talk about…. Christmas!!!!!???!!!!???!!!
For some while there has been a growing feeling that we should do another Pantomime. The Bench has not done one for over ten years and I think it is a pity if we do not sometimes do something to appeal to children in Havant and to show them what live theatre can be. Anyone who has done a pantomime will know the enormous fun they can be, because while children are certainly not an easy audience, they are a willing audience and will utterly believe that the wicked witch both CAN and WILL turn everyone to stone if they don't sing loudly enough.
So the thinking is that we should do one again. We have provisionally booked a slot in December 2004 (5th-19th) which is an ideal time to do it and gives us time to prepare. However, we must give the Arts Centre a firm commitment by September this year as to whether we are going ahead to give them time to programme something else if we don't.
The next stage is to see who is interested in working on this, and then to decide whether we buy a script or write one ourselves. Both have advantages and dangers which need to be considered honestly.
At the Club night on Feb 20th we will be looking at this in more detail and would like then to set up the team who will drive this. Get thinking before then, and if you can't be there that night and are interested contact me beforehand.
Thank you!
Paul Millington, Membership Secretary
Following the decision made at the AGM in September, our ticket prices are increasing by 20% in 2003 from £5 to £6. Bench Members and Back Benchers will continue to see Bench shows for free. Concessions are offered according to the usual Havant Arts Centre rates.
There will be a commensurate rise in our membership rates which will now be set at :
Full Members : £30 (waged), £15 (unwaged)
Back Benchers : £20 (waged), £14 (unwaged)
(It is up to each member to categorise him or herself as 'waged' or 'unwaged'; unwaged members include students, the retired, the unemployed and 'homemakers'.)
Raising our fees is not something we do with particular pleasure but the feeling in the company is that the Bench still gives excellent value for money at the new price of £6 per ticket. Our ticket prices and membership fees were last increased in 1997.
Membership renewal forms will continue to be sent out to members whose membership has expired and these will reflect the new prices.
Phil Stoker, Bench Member
You may not have heard about this, but the Government is about to try and bring in a ridiculous new law which will make it far, far harder for pubs, clubs, organisations and anyone else for that matter to promote live music.
The proposals in Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Kim Howells' new Licensing Bill, published a couple of weeks ago, will mean that soon you will need a licence (cost £100 -£3,000) to perform music of any kind almost anywhere!
What's more anyone caught giving an unlicensed performance (and that could even include you and your family singing "Happy Birthday" to your granny at a party in a restaurant!) will be liable for prosecution and a heavy fine or even a jail sentence!
The implications of this extend to a live performance of any nature as far as I understand so it might be in your interest faxing your MP as if it goes ahead it would mean that the Bench would be required to have a license to perform anything they put on.
All the details of how to contact your MP can be found at www.surfless.co.uk click on the "chat" option at the top of the screen, and the licensing bill jumps right into your view then. You can then find all the details of how to fax your local MP and vote in the online poll I have put up.
I feel very strongly about this and have researched it carefully to ensure that it is not some chain letter or over hyped mumbo jumbo. I remain concerned
Please visit our online contact information page for up to date information.
Bench Theatre
Registered Charity No. 291935
Bench Theatre, PO Box 144, HAVANT, PO9 1XB