Wednesday 24 March 2010

Chickenshed: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Another works outing for the Xorg Collective yesterday evening to the Chickenshed Theatre to see their production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. My cousin Francis has had a long association with this place and is their sound designer, resident deputy composer and assistant musical person. He very kindly wangled a short-term gig for our Phil as 'sound operator' for this production and got us tickets for yesterdays' performance. The actors/singers are mostly BTEC students and their teachers, plus children and young people from their various 'outreach' projects. Chickenshed managed to get sponsorship from 'River Island' clothiers who provided all the costumes - hence the show was in 'modern' dress, in various degrees of smart casual. Francis and his cronies wrote music to go with Shakespeare's stuff so it kind of ended up like a musical but not, as the dialogue remained in the original Bardspeak. Phil's job is to twiddle the knobs on the sound desk at the appropriate moments, which is something he likes doing, and he gets paid for it too.
Any road up, a very energetic show with some excellent performances and dynamic choreography. A  few of the students have still to learn properly how to modulate their voices when using a microphone, but most of them have just about got it, and a couple were very confident. The chappie playing 'Bottom' was loving it, and they all seemed to having a great time. It's great to see all that enthusiasm!
If you are a rich person who likes the theatre then give 'em a donation.

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