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Sam Winder with the guest blog for this week

With less than a week until the Christmas shows, I think it is fair to say that things are hotting up (in stark contrast to the plummeting weather conditions) in terms of rehersals for Sapphire’s Christmas shows. Note the plurality of shows; as with last year, Dick Whittington and His Cat has been split into two casts for each night and, in some ways, this has reduced the amount of work each actor has to do but, in others, we have had to work especially hard to perfect two separate performances. I have to say, it all seems to be steadily getting there and we are just working with the usual changes like keeping up the pace and making sure the ball is not dropped (to use the analogy that we often talk about). With some of the gags and the overall performance, a lot of it is about keeping on time with cues and letting it all flow so, with a little work on lines, all should be well.

Not wanting to give too much away, one of the main challenges with this year’s play is keeping up with the rapidly changing roles and making sure we have a strong, versatile chorus. We have a range of different personas to take on and this can be difficult at times. Quick costume changes have become standard.

All this links nicely to the other thing I wanted to talk about. Having just come back from a Hacktivists rehearsal (Our Connections play this year for those who didn’t know), the way our Connections journey is only just beginning made me consider the contrast between this and all the excitement of the Christmas shows. With Hacktivists we are still exploring, playing, finding new things about the text and it still feels like we have lots of time before the performances. When a play comes so close to being performed, it is easy to lose this sense of enjoyment and playfulness and so, this is what I will take away from today: it important to try and carry the light heartedness of early rehearsals and throw it into your performance; we only have one opportunity to perform it and so if we make the most of it then so can the audience.

I may get stressed and worry about wrongly said lines and understanding my characters intentions but I feel as if I have, along with the rest of the Hacktivists cast I am sure, made progress in each of the rehearsals so far. I am well and truly thrilled with the way it is all going so far and I am sure we will continue to fly onwards with the scenes and exchanges… Make sure you come and see it! If you don’t though, you will probably be able to hear it as we have all become masters of breath and voice. You will enjoy it more if you actually get to see it though.


So, that is all really… Christmas shows are happening, rehearsals tomorrow, connections is all lovely and new and it is important to be all lovely and new with our Christmas performances too, Hacktivists is great and you should come and see it when it is done and all is well in the world. The only other thing is that on Wednesday, we had a quick YT Writers session for an event in Eller’s Coffee in Ossett… Writers just makes me happy and we wrote some interesting stuff so maybe you should pop along to this too if you are feeling Christmassy and fancy appreciating some spoken word with a hot drink and a smile on the 17th December!

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