A Year Is A Long Time In Anybody's Book...
...and it is a year to the day that I last put finger to keyboard and wrote something here.
A week maybe a long time in politics but a year in theatre is a veritable lifetime! And lot has happened in the last twelvemonth...
The reasons for the lack of news (for those of you that care!) are mainly personal and manifold...book published, play written and published and performed and award won and professional theatre company formed, launched and touring. Plug over.
As to the Inn, well we have gone from strength to strength and after 2015's mini-tour of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and the magnificent production of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' at Dartmouth Castle, we launched into rehearsing a touring production of 'Twelfth Night' and started the search for the 2016 Dartmouth Shakespeare Week cast of 'Romeo and Juliet'. We never sleep.
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| Top: A promenade performance of the Dream as part of the 2015 tour Above: some of the cast from the 1950's-set Merry Wives.
We are, as a company, inordinately proud of all our achievements over the past year, not least of which is to see the touring production of 'Twelfth Night' and the DSW production of 'Romeo and Juliet' get in to the Tripadvisor top ten must-see shows to celebrate this year of #Shakespeare400.
We are still affiliated to the RSC for the rest of this year and rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet are well underway, with workshops in voice and text and swordplay on the menu for the pretty-much all new cast, many of whom are not only new to the Castle experience, but new to Will too.
This year's director is the wonderful Jon Miles, who, you may recall, gave such a moving and special performance in the title role of King Lear, back in 2013.
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Jon Miles as King Lear in the 2013 production.
The opening night of the Twelfth Night tour - which is taking the play to some slightly more unusual venues - was at Duckaller Farm in Dawlish...and it was a sell-out. Great news for us and for the Roz and Keith who run Duckaller; they took a punt on Shakespeare, and us, and it was a huge success!
Next stop for the tour (1st & 2nd June) is Torre Abbey in Torquay, a 13th century monastery with bags of atmosphere; it's an almost-perfect setting for any Shakespearean play, and we really hope to be doing something on a more regular basis with the team at Torre.
Then we go to Manor Gardens in Exmouth (3rd June), to be part of the Exmouth Festival. Another first for us and for the Festival.
Off to the Avon Mill Garden Centre on 18th June (said the venues were unusual!) for another first-time venue for Will and us and Cheryl, who owns Avon Mill. This one's already sold out, so we must be doing something right!
And the tour winds up, as it did last year, at Pecorama, Beer, on 25th June.
Tickets for any of these remaining shows can be found here but if you want to see us at Pecorama, you need to go here - but don't delay, they're going fast; and I know everybody says that...but it's true!
A couple of shots from the Dress rehearsal for Twelfth Night, which took place at Hole Farm...and no, Feste doesn't usually have a dog, but he was a special guest appearance!
As you can see, it's been a pretty busy year, and after Romeo and Juliet, who knows what the future may hold!
We have yet to reach a decision on the 2017 production, but we have a few ideas and, if the poll we took is anything to go by, then the front-runners are 'The Winter's Tale' and 'Othello'...but we shall see.
And as for a tour at the end of 2016 and on into 2017? Who knows. It takes a huge amount of work to organise and the people who are involved in getting it all out there have other stuff going on as well. But it is something we enjoy, despite the groans!
If you'd like to buy tickets for Romeo and Juliet
just click on the poster above and it will whisk
you away to our website, where you can find links to
the box office...and have a look at some of the
wonderful pictures from Merry Wives and
all our previous productions.
And we won't leave it another year until we catch up with you!!
Promise.
