Extraordinary General Meeting

The EGM held on 27th April voted almost unanimously that Shakespeare Live should apply for charitable status. This will be duly done. Minutes of the meeting were kindly taken by Rosemarie Johnson, as Matt Bragg, the current secretary, was unwell. These will be circulated shortly.

Appearance at RSC

Shakespeare Live have applied and been selected to perform at the Dell, the open air theatre of the RSC. The following is from the RSC website:

The Royal Shakespeare Company is offering amateur and semi-professional theatre groups the opportunity to put on a play at The Dell, the Company's open air performance space in Stratford-upon-Avon, on Saturdays throughout summer 2012. Now in its seventh year, The Dell provides a great platform for these groups to work with the RSC and to present their work to a large audience. Last summer's season of open air theatre at The Dell saw record breaking attendances. Over 6,000 people watched 36 performances by 20 theatre companies, schools, universities and community groups with more than 1,100 people attending over one weekend alone. With the World Shakespeare Festival taking place in 2012 this year's season at The Dell offers a fantastic opportunity for amateur and semi-professional artists to perform to an even wider audience. In keeping with the spirit of the World Shakespeare Festival, where thousands of artists from around the world will perform in the UK, the RSC is keen to see a broad mixture of performers from different nationalities and back-grounds playing at The Dell this year. The Dell Co-ordinator Nicola Salmon said: 'The Dell offers amateur and semi-professional theatre companies the chance to perform at and work with the RSC. 'In addition to providing a stage we also hope to offer different opportunities for companies to promote their performances and to supply skills training with our professional artists. 'We're also expecting large numbers again this year, especially with the World Shakespeare Festival taking place. 'The World Shakespeare Festival is a truly international, culturally diverse event with companies from across the globe taking part and l would really like to see this broad cultural mix reflected at The Dell.'

The performance we have submitted will be called "Shakespeare on Love" and will be a medley of all things to do with Shakespeare and his take on love. Extracts from plays, poems and sonnets.........not all by Shakespeare e.g. from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. The performance will be on Saturday 18th August-this was selected so as not to clash with Twelfth Night. We appreciate that this may be concurrent with some summer holidays but felt that this is too good an opportunity to miss. We intend to have a troupe of 8-10 people for the performance and auditions will be called in due course, Rebecca Whatley -Stokes will be organising these. This is an exciting opportunity for the company and we urge everyone to audition if available. Whether you take part or not, it would also be great to get as many people to Stratford as possible to support our show. Dependent on demand, we may organise transport to facilitate this. More details to follow...

2013 Play - Update!

A closely fought contest to direct the show in summer 2013 came to a conclusion with the committee convinced that both the plays and treatments under consideration deserved airing. Therefore, we are delighted to announce that we have unanimously asked both Christine Partington to split our sides with her hilarious rendition of The Comedy of Errors in 2013 and Rebecca Whatley-Stokes to chill us with her Macbeth in the summer of 2014.