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Sam Winder blogs on 

Sapphire’s Christmas Show
Now, I don’t know if you watch the 10 o’clock news or anything, but if so, you might have heard that Sapphire are doing Rumplestiltskin as our Christmas play this year. It is what one might call terribly exciting phenomena. So, I have decided to make that the topic of my blog as a way to spread the word for those of you without an interest in current news.

It surprised me throughout the developmental stages of the play the amount of people haven’t heard the story of Rumplstiltskin. Speaking to people at school, they generally had little idea of the plot... Perhaps it is because Disney never got round to it? Maybe. So, from that perspective it has been a joy to play around with: a few extra characters here and there; an abundance of creeping, springing and frolicking; an awful lot of fun. 

The ridiculousness of ‘Rumplestiltskin’ has been a challenge for us all to rise to. Letting go of ourselves enough to sufficiently portray the lack of sense that the story has is something that many of us are still working towards. At the same time though, the amount of progress that has been made is worthy of a cheer. Take Beth, Isabelle and Bethany, quite new to the company they are already doing a fabulous job at boasting. And Toni, who I hope won’t be too embarrassed at my mention of her name, has done so well in terms of showing emotion about her story telling, Ellen too. Not forgetting me as well, I’ve done pretty well.

Humm, moving on. This year we are double cast. For me, being double cast is great because I think that watching the way other people act is a great way to learn. One person can bring a lot to a character but at the same time there is so much you can take from observing the way someone else does it. Once you start thinking about how other people go about doing your role, you begin to notice what other people are doing too and I think that this year more than any other I realised that the best teachers are the people around you. Another thing about being double cast is that the two performances that we will come out with in the end each have a distinctly different flavour, if you will; the motivations of the characters change and their relationships with each other.

Sneaky Mini Blog:
I thought, having left it a day before sending this off that a little addition about the connections auditions would be worthy of mention... I can’t say that I am used to this style of acting, so watching the way everyone played their parts was wonderful. I will not deny that I was, for the zombies of Nostel “Bricking it,” and I look forward to seeing how everything is going to go. Of course, I already know that it will be amazing after the auditions, but no doubt there is an endless amount of ground to be covered and so much to see and learn and enjoy.

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