PANTO SEASON: BEHIND THE SCENES - Epilogue

It was 11.23pm when I left the aftershow party at the end of Robin Hood. I had lingered around long enough to hear the speeches given by the producer and the stage manager, but I didn't really want to hang around, concious as I was that I was the only person present with no direct connection to the show.

As I drove home, I got to wondering what my four months or so of following Cubbington Players had told me about the future of amateur dramatics, both in this country and for the group specifically.

The most telling thing, I think, was the audience figures for the show. Despite a disappointing turnout for the Saturday night performances, the numbers were not that far down from those of 30 years ago. There may have been a strange demographic shift away from weekend evening shows, which may be explained by the preponderance of television talent shows on a Saturday night (after all, why pay to go out and see people deliberately make fools of themselves when you can stay in and watch them do it accidentally?). Which suggests to me that there is still an audience there for this kind of thing, if there are people there to put on a show.

And therein lies the rub. Actually getting people to participate in AmDram appears to be harder than ever. In some ways, the brilliant song which John Staton and Barry West performed as the technogeeks Sir Lunchalot and Sir Cumference was not only a hilarious interlude and a highly sacrilegious assault upon 'The Lord of the Dance', but a chilling prophesy. People really would rather spend time with their 'Nintendo Wii, [their] old DS and [their] new Playstation 3' instead of going out and doing things that involve real people.

I have commented before on how small cast for this show was compared to previous years. Of these, three were performing with Cubbington Players for the first time - Cathy McKenzie (Maid Marian), Fay Staton (Janie Oliver) and Janice Wingrove (Witch Hazel) - whilst Ken Beer (Bumbleman) only performs in pantomimes and not in any of the group's other shows throughout the year. Of the three first named, Fay is the latest in a long line of members of her family to join the group, whilst Janice came from a long established local group which had to disband due to a lack of members. That will be a fate which Cubbington Players and every other AmDram group will do well to avoid in the long run.

For Cubbington, the age of their membership is a particular problem. Aside from the three children in the cast, the average age was, at a conservative estimate, well over 45. Two of the eleven adults were over seventy years old, another two in their sixties and I wouldn't like to speculate about the rest. And that is just the actors. There is a whole backstage crew required to put on any performance and, as stage manager Teresa Coles McGee was anxious to point out during her after show speech, they are an ageing crew, with only two members under 50.

The really odd thing about all of this is that you really couldn't meet a nicer group of people than Cubbington Players. There are very few organisations which would put up with someone like me hanging on their every word and move for a third of a year without someone getting fed up with it. Yet, by the end, there were so many more things that I wanted to write about them and remain painfully conscious that I never had the time and/or the opportunity to do so. Things like spending a rehearsal with the backstage crew, attending a rehearsal with music or with the children, or even interviewing people such as Teresa Coles McGee or pianist Jenny Smith (who found herself with her first speaking role in the 30 years she has been there).

The logical conclusion to all this is that AmDram has a market and just needs willing participants. There's an onus upon everyone to do something about this. For the groups themselves, it is about being more professional in marketing themselves (if I have one criticism of how this column was received by Cubbington Players, it is that they didn't use it to their own advantage - for example, my requests for copies of the photographs which they had taken for publicity purposes were never answered, which is why there have been no shots of the show itself). For the rest of us, well, if you are reading this in the UK, there is an AmDram group somewhere near you. Look them up, go and see them, go along to a rehearsal. What have you got to lose?

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.