Our most recent workshop entitled ‘Finding the character …achieving the truth on stage’ used physicality, voice, emotional memory and semiotics to explore the many ways an actor can bring truth to a role. A mixture of improvised exercises as well as much loved text was used to help actors gain a greater insight into how to achieve a better performance. We were very lucky to get Helen Haliday who has a wide experience of acting on the professional stage, script writing, directing and teaching drama to adults and children to support us for this day which was a great success.

Previous Village Players workshops have included themes such as directing, acting and singing. One of our acting workshops focussed on performance of Shakespearean drama in general and ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ in particular. Stevie Thompson, from the Rude Mechanical Theatre Company, ran another acting workshop for us which covered ‘character development through the body’, which helped those who attended them to develop techniques that will enable them to play younger or older character roles and also learn the basic techniques of ‘Commedia dell’Arte’ based on music and mime. A Singing Workshop was run for us by Aanna Colls, the Artistic Director of Counterpoint Arts and a graduate of The Guildhall School of Music.