MALDON PANTOMIME SOCIETY
NEWSLETTER 1   2011

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY (all take place in the Town Hall)

A G M & ALICE IN WONDERLAND DVD 7pm FRIDAY 20th MAY
(Note: not Sunday this year!!!)

AUDITIONS FOR PANTO 2012

CHORUS.   7.30pm. Friday 1st July. This year auditions will again be open to all. Prebooking will not be necessary. However the size of the chorus will remain at the numbers which took part in Alice and therefore some attendees may be disappointed. The committee suggest that all juniors who audition are made aware of this before they take part.

PRINCIPALS.  7.30pm. Friday 15th and Tuesday 19th July. Prebooking as normal. Audition information will be posted on the website www.mapspanto.org.uk

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Well the snow managed to cancel one of the Maldon Victorian evenings and made a dogs dinner of our rehearsal schedule but we still made it. Thanks to a great effort by all concerned, the show was fully booked and to the usual high standard. We have had a lot of complimentary remarks, the chorus particularly receiving a good deal of praise. Their standard was high, both the singing and the dancing and they all looked to be enjoying themselves.  This doesn’t happen by accident and we must compliment the directors (stage and musical) and our new choreographer for what they achieved. We were quite ambitious this year in attempting a story that is not a traditional pantomime. The set piece scenes, tea party, Cheshire cat, butterfly etc were very well received but some thought the panto story line was not too clear. We have taken note of this for the future.  Once more we had many new faces both on and back stage. They all played their part well and I hope they enjoyed being part of the team.

Steve Williams set his usual high standard as overall director and some of you will know that he now intends to take some time out. Steve was one of the founder members of the original group and he has played a significant part in the development of Pantomime in Maldon for more than twenty years. He has played the baddy, the goody, the dame and other parts in between as well as directing a number of memorable shows. As Chairman he helped drive the group forward to the thriving team which is now a significant part of Maldon life. The committee gave him a vote of thanks at our last meeting and expressed the hope that he enjoys his break and does not take too long before he feels the urge to join in once more.

FINANCES

You will recall that price rises last year caused much concern and I am pleased to say Alice in Wonderland did manage to balance costs against income. However we made little profit and were not able to make contributions to local charities.
The committee examined the position closely. We recognised that we would lose the £1000 support we have been receiving from Maldon Council and made changes to ticket prices and membership fees to ensure we remained solvent. This, together with parental contributions for costumes and increased advertising revenue has meant that this year’s show will show a profit.  The complete balance sheet will be available at the AGM. However we failed to control costs in the way we had intended and this is something the new committee will need to address.

EXPANDING THE PRODUCTION TEAM

In the last two years we have made an effort to allow the wider membership to become involved with the production. The family members who helped to supervise the chorus seemed to enjoy making a contribution and we hope to develop this process into other areas.   In particular we will be getting a group together to run front of house. This includes collecting tickets, showing guests to their seats, staffing the sweets stall, selling raffle tickets and generally tidying the auditorium between shows. If you would like to help in any way ring 892498 for a chat. 

RAFFLE

A huge thank you to all the people who donated raffle prizes.  We had a great response and a wide variety of items suitable for both adults and children. I believe this encouraged people to be generous, boosting our funds by £600 – particularly useful this year.

Jean and Penny

CERTIFICATES & PLAQUES

Certificates of Achievements for all (in education) who took part in Alice in Wonderland will be available for collection at the AGM.
Also, I will have a number of presentation plaques at the AGM for anybody who didn’t get one on our final production night.

Chris Patching

PANTO 2012

We are already developing the production team for this year’s show. Vickie Cumbers has offered to direct and Kris Rawlinson will be with us again as Musical Director. Its early days yet but I hear this year we are likely to return to a traditional panto story, possibly Sleeping Beauty. If you are not an actor but would like to get involved in the production side of the show get in touch on 892498. 

Keep an eye on the Website (www.mapspanto.org.uk) for more information on this year’s show.

Roy Williamson. Chairman MAPS