So, It’s that time of year again.

It’s all go, here, at WamDram HQ, as we put the final touches to our preparations to host our third main production since our inception last year… But I hesitate as I say those words, as only a week and a half ago, members Jan, Katy, Sondra, Richard, Myles and John W staged “Daley’s Express” in what some may call a Mini WamDram, though having been in the audience I would say that the performances were anything but small.

That production was staged as part of a charity night, and I know that it went down a storm, so a big thanks to Jan Taylor for directing, and John Newall for writing and everyone else involved. It was for a good cause too, so thanks go to the Cinnamon Brow Farm Club for hosting the event on behalf of Macmillan Nurses. I hope that we can follow this up with some pictures from the event shortly.

So, as I was saying,.. our next production is only NINE DAYS OFF! So it’s all hands on deck time. On Friday 18th May and Saturday 19th May at 7:30pm plus a matinee at 3pm on Saturday, we are presenting “Family Spirit” by Pat Wollaston. A play about Love, greed, bad carpeting, dodgy wiring and err.. contacting the dead!

Tickets are priced £5 for evening performances and £2.50 for the matinee. There is also a group discount available on the evening performances.

And as if that were not enough, we are also running a competition to win 4 free tickets!

I hope you will show your support for WamDram by dropping by at one of the performances. Please also share on facebook or link to this post or our main page.

To buy tickets online please goto www.ticketsource.co.uk/wamdram. Tickets can also be purchased on the door immediately prior to the show. For more information about advance ticket sales or the show in general please send an email to the secretary or call 07528 820 135.

More information can be found on the Family Spirit production page at www.wamdram.org.uk/family-spirit

…and so Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland draws to a close. Along with it closes my tenure as Chair of Wam Dram. It’s time for fresher, better heads to take over and lead our acting troupe onto bigger and better things. I’ll still be part of the group but I intend to concentrate more on smaller projects (keep an eye out for an audio play coming soon).

Before I hand my Chairman’s hat onto the next incumbent I’d like to finish the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland blog with a report of our performance. In short, it was wonderful.

Our director Richard, ably assisted by Simon and his paint brushes, created an amazing set, the cast put together amazing performances over both shows and the audience walked out of the theatre smiling, hugging, promising to return for our next production, and demanding we charge more for future productions given the quality of entertainment on offer.

How much of that description you choose to believe is in your hands. The audience did love the performance. The cast and crew did put together an amazing show. And I’d like to personally thank everyone for all their hard work and devotion to the Wam Dram cause.

The full performance is available on our YouTube channel. I’ll leave you here with my favourite part of the play. Paula singing the Mock Turtle song:

At the heart of every actor however self effacing is the hope that perhaps they are the undiscovered greatest talent of there generation. Of course you know that can not be the case , in all honest your probably not even the greatest talent in your own bathroom. I mean that rubber duck probably has more range. So we come to the tricky business of getting an audience.

To be discovered people have to find you. In our previous incarnation as Acting Up we pretty much relied on friends and family to show up. Those long suffering individuals whose support you should never take for granted. Even my own dad refered to them as my “school plays” and believe me shorts and a school tie is a hard look to pull off at 38.

But when we branched out on our own one of our intial goals was to widen our audience. We attempted this tepidly with Sandcastles but many felt we could have done more. So we come to last Saturdays event in town, in costume, in public. You find yourself agreeing to a lot when its weeks off and your sat in a warm room in a club or pub. Yes i’d be happy to get dressed up and parade around my home town in large rabbit ears and a wig. Where do i sign you declare, safe in the knowledge that its so far off its not worth thinking about.

Then however you find yourself outside a costume shop at 1130 on a Saturday morning on the first day winter seems to have decided to arrive. So armed with a set of costumes i met my fellow group members guerilla style outside our old stomping ground The Pyramid. Still not quite sure why i had agreed to give up some quality time on the sofa watching Football Focus. But soon we are in full battle dress and ready to hit the town leaflets in hand.

The banter starts, the commeradre and you find yourself feeling that you wouldnt want to be anywhere else. Ok can we do this in June next time but apart from that you find yourself enjoying yourself. And bless the british public there not as scary as you first think. Nobody met us with pitchforks or tried to chase us out of town. Most people where polite, mainly disinterested busying themselves with Christmas shopping. But a few stopped and engaged with us. The two best comments ranging from an almost expected “hope you getting paid loads”, to an endearing nearly out of earshot young girl saying to her friends “are they sober?”.

I’ve no idea it even one person extra will show up to either performance due to our efforts but at least we tried. And we will be back again this Saturday. Hopefully the weather will be kinder, we nearly lost our Alice to hyperthermia. But i think the wig and ears can hold up to one more afternoon. And remember we are the greatest undiscovered actors of our generations.

And if you dont believe me just ask my rubber duck.

This blog post was written by John Warburton.

This blog is written by Clare Watson.

This is part of the production I like the most, apart from the post-performance feeling that is. With 5 weeks to go, props and costumes are finding their way into rehearsals, whilst talk turns to set design and where we are going to come on and off stage.  Suddenly, after months of sitting around and talking about the far off event, it starts to become real. But thankfully not so close that there’s not time to perfect our lines, or finish learning them in some of our cases!

Tonight we are working on a staging idea which our director dreamed up on Saturday, while we salved for set left behind by another group. I’ll not spoil the surprise by going into too much detail here, but if we manage to pull it off it will be the most exciting production for us and the audience ever. A little ambitious maybe, but I for one think we can pull it off.

So we begin from the start (always the most rehearsed bit), and work through the scenes. Input as ever comes from all angles and is constructive. It really feels like we are making progress and that this is actually going to happen.  We laugh a lot, but it is a productive night and we get a lot done.

With all of Act I rehearsed and marked, things start to wind down, but there is just enough time to finalise the plans for Saturday. We are planning on handing out flyers in Warrington town centre, dressed in costume to drum up some publicity. It should be great fun, and maybe a little cold.

If you’re in town on Saturday come and say hello, look forward to seeing you there.

It’s been a busy few weeks for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the WamDram performers. The performances continue to come together with performances becoming more assured and scenes starting to hang together well.

For me, wearing the costume helps the performer bring character to the performance and it’s great to see people have started to arrive at rehearsals in parts of their costumes. There’s been a smattering of animal ears (White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat) tails, outlandish gowns (Red Queen) and top hats (erm, Hatter). Pictures will follow in a week or so.

Other activity this week saw the first meeting with our set designer. He’s a friend of group member Tansy (Dormouse) and highly skilled, bringing some great ideas and adding an extra air of professionalism to proceedings.

Whilst talking about set design we discovered the stage had an Aladdin’s cave of set parts buried beneath it. Cinnamon Brow Community Centre used to be home to another acting group and the sets we found were left by them. We don’t know how much use we can make of these existing sets but a few of us are heading back this Saturday to have a rummage and see what we can find.

I wouldn’t want any readers of this post to leave thinking everything is running smoothly. There’s still much to do and until we set foot on the stage I won’t believe it’s actually happening, however seeing things come together like this, and seeing everyone’s commitment to Alice, gives me great faith that we can do it.

I’m very excited.

This week’s blog is written by John ‘White Rabbit’ Warburton.

“We could sit here till where blue in the face, talkin’ about it isn’t going to get one Roman removed from Palestine.” to paraphrase, and completely do Monty Python a great disservice, from The Life Of Brian. Whilst talkin’ can be fun and those that know me, I do more than most, at some point you do indeed have to get up from the table and actually do something.

I can only speak for myself but when you get a performance date, in our case for Alice (6th and 7th Jan book early to avoid disappointment), it becomes an almost mythical far off land like Oz or Narnia. As vital weeks pass, time I should be learning lines, collecting props and costume bits, I invariably end up doing something else. Ok much of it is justified work or family but some of it is just removing fluff from my belly button and getting drunk. I have for the most part a great sense of calm and well its ages away isn’t it?

Then there comes a crunch moment, the performance dates loom larger in the rear view mirror. “Hang on.”, I cry, “Why didn’t anyone tell me when the play was.” So we come to this week’s meeting of Wam Dram such a threshold moment has been passed. A constructive meeting, thank you to Tansy for taking unofficial minutes. Also a mention to Katy and Mary-Rose, practical as ever and telling me when needed in an ever so nice way to shut up. Yes time to grab the bull by the horn. So we went through the first Act of Alice figuring out a wish-list of set, prop and costumes. Discussing the practical problem of how Alice will grow and shrink on stage. The use of CGI was discounted early on.

One potentially clever solution was the use of some sort of revolving device on stage I particularly hope I can get to play on. So to Sam who has volunteered an unwitting friend for that no pressure. For my part I need to locate a pocket watch, a large black hole (insert own gag) a fan and some gloves.

The other elephant in the room, as always, is line learning. It is a scary moment when you cut the umbilical cord and place the script down. But well frankly it has to be done I mean even friends and family won’t want to pay around £5 (is that all, yes I don’t believe it myself) to watch us all stand around and read from a book. So a further mention to Karl who was brave enough to be the first off script with only one or two hiccups. I dipped my toe in the water and attempted my first scene without a parachute. I just about made it back to earth in one piece.

So a fun evening as always but one we came away from realising the task before us. Also thanks to Jon Newall who really needs to put his hand up higher as he has some cracking ideas. Michelle for ever being calm and Clair Wright who has the toughest job of all on stage this time. In short the next few weeks is when the phoney war ends and the real fun begins. It will be alright on the night, but only after much hair pulling, sweating and talking of where to put the giant mushroom … but isn’t that why we do it?

This week’s rehearsal, for Alice in Wonderland, started with our director, Richard, asking us to think more about our characters. In particular he’s interested in us developing a visual signature for who we are on stage, based on the way we walk, and idiosyncratic movements.

The idea is to build a character beyond what is written on the page. He doesn’t intend to use all our visual ‘ticks’ (otherwise we’ll look *really* odd when trying to deliver lines) but to pick up little things for different characters.

For my part, The Hatter, I’ve decided to focus less on how he walks (since he spends most of his time sitting at a table) and spend time thinking about how he looks, or more specifically how he looks at other people.

The Hatter makes hats. This involves plenty of concentration and staring at things up close. I’m hoping to bring that stare to my role by fixing my eyes on the focus of my attention, emphasising this through the use of hand movements. How successful this proves to be will come through over the next few weeks.

At the same time as adding this aspect to our performance, we ran, quickly, through the whole play. It was best described as an example of a work in progress. Some things are starting to move together, with the actors responding to each other’s performances. Other bits, it has to be said, are still wide of the mark, with little understanding between the actors.

This is not a criticism. It’s still early in the rehearsals and in many cases the people involved have only rehearsed the scenes once or twice previously and you can’t expect them to have built up a rapport yet.

As time progresses we’ll sharpen up each scene, learn to act and react to each other’s performances, and build a performance to be proud of. It’s an exciting process that I’m glad I get to be part of and see develop each week.

This week, one of the Wam Dram members compared our acting group to a family. The ties that bind are stronger than those internal differences that try to prise us apart.

Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I’ll start with a little introduction to Wam Dram and our current production.

Wam Dram is local drama group based in Warrington. We were formed from the ashes of Acting Up (a story one of us may yet tell, in an attempt to bring down the government).  We’re a large group, with people coming from a variety of backgrounds and age groups.

This diversity is my favourite thing about the group.

Currently we are working on a production of Alice in Wonderland, adapted by Wam Dram’s own Richard Page. The production will be taking place in early January. Being a diverse group means we have skills in many areas and encourage members to expand their skills, trying things they would never do outside of the group.

The way we support each other is my favourite thing about the group.

Wam Dram is our ‘hobby’ and we all believe in bringing a sense of fun to our time with the group, This sense of fun is entwined with a desire to put on the best show we can for our audience. They pay money to see us and we want to feel proud about what we achieve.

This mix of fun and dedication is my favourite thing about the group.

Being dedicated means we sometimes pull in different directions. We all want to put on great shows but there can be different opinion on how to reach that goal. Also, we have outside lives in the ‘real world’ that occasionally interfere with commitment to Wam Dram.

The fact we overcome our differences, thanks to our dedication and shared sense of fun, and put on great shows for our audiences is really my favourite thing about the group.

My friend, correctly, described Wam Dram as a family. The purpose of this blog is to give people an insight into our progress on Alice in Wonderland, but also an opportunity to let you see the Wam Dram family dynamic in action.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy reading about our highs and lows (and you’ll buy a ticket to see Alice in Wonderland).

WamDram is proud to officially announce that it will be performing Bob Larbey’s Sand Castles on Sat 22nd & Sun 23rd July 2011 at Penketh High School.

The cast for this production is as follows:

* The part of Mrs Newman will be played by Sam on Friday and Paula on Saturday
^ Changed due to Phil dropping out

The director for this play is David Tickle


Tickets will cost £5.00 each and can be purchased on the door immediately prior to the show or through our site on TicketSource
Online sales will open at 06:00 am on Monday 30th May 2011

WamDram has decided which two plays it shall stage in its debut season, 2011.

In the summer, WamDram will be performing “Sand Castles” by Bob Larbey:

We all like to be beside the seaside and as everybody knows, an Englishman’s home is his sand castle. Stan and Bernice Billet and William and Margaret Patterson have been taking their holidays in the same resort for years. They don’t exactly rule the waves but they have turned the area around their beach huts into a cosy little fiefdom. And then along comes Doug, with his nubile nieces. They don’t give a hoot for beach hut protocol – they just want to have fun in the sun.

And in December, WamDram will be performing a version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland“. This adaptation is penned by Richard K Page from the classic story by local author Lewis Carrol.