Hello folks, glad to have you all back.
I thought it might be a good idea to write to you all as I am sure the messages that we send back with the kids get extremely distorted by the time they get home, and the fact that we are doing a little festival in Leckhampton on Saturday June 11th, could well turn into the message that we are playing the pyramid stage at Glastonbury by the time you get to hear about it.
I also constantly tell the kids that they need to rehearse at home, as I do not think they understand the timescale of how soon our performances are, so with that in mind I thought I had better hand out a timetable of the last term so everyone can see what is happening. We also have had to write to inform everyone that our venue has cancelled on us so we are moving to another outdoor venue Beckford Silk out on the Evesham road.
April 30th – Normal rehearsal at school 11am – 2pm
May 7th – Normal rehearsal at school 11am – 2pm
May 14th – Normal rehearsal at school 11am – 2pm
May 21st – Dress rehearsal at school 11am – 2pm for the CHELTENHAM BEER FESTIVAL
The Cheltenham Samaritans Fund raiser in Leckhampton put on by the ‘Cheltenham Friends of the Samaritans’ group, please check out their Facebook site for details as this will have times, directions, ticket links etc.
HALF TERM BREAK
June 11th – CHELTENHAM BEER AND CIDER FESTIVAL PERFORMANCE -11am – 2pm
We will treat this exactly like any other normal day at school none of the timings change, just the venue. Instead of coming to the school please go to;
Old Pats Rugby Club, 52 Everest Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL53 9LG
As normal we arrive at 11 – please make your way to the performance marquee, where we will rehearse, we will be the first act performing at 1pm. If you wish to buy tickets for the event they can be purchased through Eventbrite, and also from the Facebook page for the Cheltenham Friends of Samaritans. In theory the event can be accessed for free as it is in the marquees on the field, so parents who are there to drop off or collect kids can stick around and watch without a problem, however it is a fund raiser that provides a large chunk of the funds to run the Cheltenham branch of the Samaritans so, if possible, please come along and buy tickets. The event runs all day, and includes many different acts including Nick performing, and Ross’s band later in the day.
June 18th – Normal rehearsal at school 11am – 2pm
June 25 – Normal rehearsal at school 11am – 2pm
July 2nd – DRESS REHEARSAL at school 11am – 2pm
July 3rd – Performance of the full show in the gardens of BECKFORD SILK,
Beckford Silk Limited, Beckford, Gloucestershire, GL20 7AU. The show will start at 3:30pm as previously planned, so we would like to get everyone on site at 2pm. And the show should be finished and everyone ready to go home by 5:30. There is a reasonable amount of parking spaces, and people are free to bring picnics and sit in the garden before the performance enjoying the (hopefully) very warm sunny day.
As you can see this only gives us 5 actual rehearsals before the show, so please make sure the kids are practicing as much as possible. What we have tried to do this year is give the kids some different forms of performances by doing outdoor theatre and a festival that require different skill sets, different to just always being in a theatre, and this has also meant that they have had to work hard on things like projecting and volume. More importantly they have had to work on improvising skills as this show is their work, they chose the music, they wrote large chucks of the script by improvising scenes, and even some of the choreography was made up by our youngest performers, so you really should be extremely proud of their work this year. Tickets for the performance can be bought by sending the money to Kate (£10 adult or £5 child)
We have told the kids that the script is on our Facebook page, (Mander Hall Academy of Performing Arts) and the backing tracks are all on our YouTube channel which is called ManderHall and has our star logo on it so it’s easy to find, all the songs have been there since November, but do get updated if we have had to change them slightly, so always listen to the latest uploads. If you want to download the songs from YouTube there is a free piece of software called Realplayer that not only allows you to download it, but also convert it to MP3s
The costumes for the show are very simple, and we have sent messages back but just to clarify everyone needs to bring a plain coloured T-Shirt that we are going to paint and draw on, so please do not bring expensive designer clothing, a simple bright Primark T-Shirt will be fine, we will need all of these before Half Term as we need to paint on them.
Hopefully that has clarified and explained everything coming up for the next term, but feel free to contact us if you have any questions at all.