Hi Everyone, I hope you’re all well. Thanks to all who have visited us last year and our January Panto, we look forward to welcoming you again and we hope you have a wonderful 2023. We’re heading into the next production now, so it is time to give you an update.
Beauty and the Beast
We had a very successful production, nearly full capacity. The cast, stage team, sound, lighting and not to forget the front of house and bar staff worked extremely hard and I am sure you all had a real treat.
Next Production
We are now thinking of our next production, so keep looking on the website and social media for updates.
New Website
As you will have noticed we have been working on our new website, giving the old one a freshening up with some new colours, lots of images of both the theatre and our productions, plus lots more, some of which are listed below:
Home Page. Presents an insight into what is going on at the theatre covering: our own current productions and external events, which we saw a few of towards the end of last year.
About Us. Provides not only details and links to what we do, but also a visual timeline of the life of the theatre, which has now been 98 year in the making.
Find Us/Contact Us. Gives all the information you need to find us and talk to us including our new contact form.
News. Not only does it provide a list of News articles but also a social media wall giving you easy access to our active socal offering. In addition, it also has our new Newsletter Subscription Service where you can sign up to receive regular newsletters and updates.
Whats On. Here we hope to give you an overview of the coming season covering both our own productions and that of our visiting entertainers. Plus links to “what on” now and what’s coming soon.
Archives. Offers a timeline of our past productions linking to graphical narratives for each event. With a history of 98 year you would expect some gaps but our aim to try and fill as many of them in as we can.
Facilities for Hire. If you want to hire our facilities, auditorium and/or bar area, for a production/show/event or a social event then this is the place you get all the details you need and how to make those arrangements.
We have also add some features we thought very important to you when using the site. These include accessibility features for the visually impaired, and data protection features to ensure any data you provide or we collect is stored and used in accordance with a relevant data protection legislation.
Finally, we have a membership page. If you are interested in becoming part of the Little Theatre then this is the place to find out what is on offer and how to get in touch.
Recent Hosted Events
We have had a number of visiting performances at the theatre, all of which were highly entertaining and enjoyed by the audiences that came to see them (see the list below). We are planning to have more of these events throughout the coming year. We have also ready started with a show booked for August this year (Rent – The Musical). Keep your eye out for what’s coming or let us keep you up to date with our Newsletter.
“Winter Woolies Tour” – The Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican – Music/comedy
“End of tour gathering” – Merry Hell – Music
“The Homecoming gig” – Fine Lines – Music
“LoL Christmas Bash” – Lol Cheshire – Comedy
“DOTS” present Jim Berry (Houghton Weavers) – Music
That’s all for now, I hope to see you soon at “curtain up”. Break a leg! Jim Broughton
Hi Everyone, I hope you’re all well. We’re heading into the next production now, so what better time to provide an update.
Lady Killers
We opened the show on Tuesday 8th November, hosting a Charity performance for “Christie Bears” a local charity set up to raise funds for the Christie Hospital. This is a cause that is dear in the hearts of many of us at the Theatre and it was a delight to host them. The show opens to the public on the 10th November and looks fabulous. All of the hard work and effort both on and off-stage over the last 8 weeks has really paid off and this is set to be another outstanding production. Tickets are still available.
Educating Rita
What a brilliant season opener for the year! Cheryl and Paul were outstanding with their performances and Rachel expertly put together an amazing evening of entertainment. You can read the review from the Association of Community Theatre here: https://www.actuk.org/ACT%20Reviews%202022-2023/ACT-Reviews-2022-2023-Season/9/
Beauty and the Beast
We have held auditions, see Auditions for the pantomime, however we are still short of a few people, namely:
Prince/Beast – Played by the same actor 18-30
Gustav(Gaston) – 18-30 (ish) imposing and comical male character
Flora – Fairy Godmother role
The show will open on 19th January 2023 and tickets are on sale now.
2023 Directors
We still have 2 slots to fill for the remainder of the 2022/23 season, so if you have a play in mind, we’d love to hear from you. The likely dates will be in March and June/July, matching our usual season schedule and hopefully we will be able to continue with the extended runs over 2 weeks.
Upcoming Events
We’re continuing to run external lets, serving two purposes for us. Firstly, it establishes us as a great place to visit in the town and cements our role as a provider of great entertainment within the community. Secondly, it provides us with additional, much needed funds as we rebuild following our temporary shut-down. Current dates include:
November 26th – “Winter Woolies Tour” – The Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican – Music/comedy
November 27th – “End of tour gathering” – Merry Hell – Music
December 3rd – “The homecoming gig” – Fine Lines – Music (Highly worth watching in my opinion…)
For all those who are a bit theatre curious, we are looking for budding debutants and directors and those of any theatrical disposition!
Introducing a new venture for KLT, we will be hosting an information evening to discuss our upcoming 22/23 season where we will invite you to come meet prospective Directors and other members to hear the upcoming plans we have.
To keep you informed about the events are planned in the Theatre.
At the present time, we have penciled in the following performance slots:
September
14th – 17th
EDUCATING RITA
November
10th – 12th
17th – 19th
January (Pantomime)
12th – 15th
19th – 21st
March
16th – 18th
23rd – 25th
May
18th – 20th
5th – 27th
Performance slots for KLT
As you can see, we are thinking of running extended performances for the forthcoming season, building on the success of Hobson’s Choice.
This is a new venture for us, so we’re aiming to make it a great season and place ourselves back in the centre of live entertainment in Knutsford. Also we welcome new directors and cast members and a backstage team to come and join us on Thursday evenings as we still have 2 slots left that need filling.
We do hope you can all make it, so we can involve you as the community in the discussions moving forwards on how you want your theatre to look like moving forward.
When looking back though the theatre archives it appears that the upcoming production of Hobson’s choice is only the second time that it has been performed on our little stage. The previous production was held over 30 years ago in May 1991, in which the piece took us right back to the 1800s when the play is set.
Tony Turner the production’s director has taken the time to write a short Biography of Brighouse and to outline his vision into what to expect when coming to see our new production of this classic piece.
Tony writes,
“The playwright, Harold Brighouse, was born in Eccles in 1882. His father was the manager of a cloth mill and Harold followed him into the textile industry. Gaining a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School, he began his studies but left at 17 years to take up a position in London. During this period Brighouse was active in theatre, in Manchester, The Gaiety Theatre was an acknowledged portal for many fine Northern repertory companies. His first production, The Doorway, was performed at the Gaiety in 1909.
During his time in London, he visited the Court Theatre in Sloane Square, later the Royal Court, and undoubtedly witnessed more radical productions by Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and Shaw. In the 1960s, the radical tradition was continued with performances by Pinter, Beckett and Osbourne et al.
It is inconceivable that, given his sharp ear for a sub text, he was unaware of the Suffrage movement in Manchester and the radical nature of The Court productions. Our contention is that all these concepts are there in Hobson’s Choice but have often been overlooked in favour of a more “broad comedic “ appeal.
In our production we have attempted to pull together the disparate strands of the three sisters and as the women grow in strength, now refusing to be cowed by Hobson, Maggie grows in confidence and righteous anger as she confronts and overcomes her misogynistic father.
We hope you appreciate this other light we are casting on Hobson’s Choice.”
After a long break our theatre is finally getting ready to reopen. We are delighted to announce that our full reopening is scheduled for April 2022 for our spring production, our first since we closed for the pandemic in 2020.
It’s our great pleasure to announce that the first production will be Harold Brighouse’s classic play, “Hobson’s Choice”.
We look forward to holding auditions very soon, and of course this will be preceded by the play reading! The play reading is open to all who are interested in the theatre, no previous acting or theatre experience is required, and all are welcome.
The reading is due to take place at the theatre, at7:30pm, 26th November. This is a tremendous way to get into community theatre, and introduce yourselves to the KLT team!
I hope that you’re all well and enjoying the weather we’re having at the moment, all 4 seasons in one week!
Firstly, thanks to everyone who came to help with some of the maintenance tasks last weekend. It’s very much appreciated and it really does make a difference, the theatre exists for its members and our members make the theatre what it is.
Educating Rita We’re well into rehearsals now for our first production of the new season; “Educating Rita”, directed by Rachel Perrin and featuring Paul Baston and Cheryl Chamberlain in the starring roles. The cast and director are working extremely hard to stage a great show for you and the set is taking shape, thanks to the great work being done by the Thursday evening crew. Please do come down and join in if you can.
We’d still like to finalise on a lighting operator for the show, we have the sound and stage management roles filled, so if you fancy “pulling back the curtain” and seeing how some of the technical side operates, this is an ideal opportunity. The workload for lighting in this production isn’t huge, so it will be the ideal learning opportunity, for anyone wanting to help us out.
We’re also collating the group of volunteers for Front of House and Bar for the show. Thanks to all who have volunteered so far, it really helps us out and greatly enhances the audience experience for a production.
The Ladykillers Hopefully, you will all have seen the previous email relating to the read-through and audition dates for the November production of “The Ladykillers” Friday 2ndand Saturday 3rd of September are the initial dates for you diary, with the second audition dates coming soon.
AGM We’ll be announcing the date for the 2021/22 Annual General Meeting soon, which is likely to be held on Saturday October 1st. Don’t worry if “Strictly” has started by then, we promise not to reveal the results!
Membership Membership subscriptions will become due at the AGM. We’re considering returning to using membership cards, however we’d love to know your opinions on whether these are of any use to you. We’re also trying to improve our membership listings, as it became a little difficult to manage over the last few years of virtual meetings.
Pantomime We’re hoping to be able to return with our annual Pantomime in January and will be announcing the production very soon. This is set to be a great show and, as a teaser, one which I certainly can’t remember us ever staging before. It’s a classic story, which I’m certain you all will know.
2023 Directors We still have 2 slots to fill for the remainder of the 2022/23 season, so if you have a play in mind, we’d love to hear from you. The likely dates will be in March and June/July, matching our usual season schedule and hopefully we will be able to continue with the extended runs over 2 weeks.
External Lets We’re continuing to run external lets, serving two purposes for us. Firstly, it establishes us as a great place to visit in the town and cements our role as a provider of great entertainment within the community. Secondly, it provides us with additional, much needed funds as we rebuild following our temporary shut-down.
Current dates include: October 7th/8th – “Roles we’ll never play” – Together for Theatre Productions – Musical Theatre November 26th – “Winter Woolies Tour” – The Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican – Music/comedy November 27th – “End of tour gathering” – Merry Hell – Music December 3rd – “The homecoming gig” – Fine Lines – Music (Highly worth watching in my opinion…) December 9th (subject to confirmation) – “LoL Christmas Bash” – Lol Cheshire – Comedy
If anyone is interested in volunteering to help with sound/lighting, bar staffing, or general FoH for these productions, please let us know, it really helps us to provide a great and varied programme of entertainment.
Engagement Survey We’ve created a survey to understand how you would like us to engage with you and the link is below. If you could possibly take a couple of minutes to complete it, it would be of great help to us. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/3RH885M
Whatsapp group Finally, we’ve also created a Whatsapp group for the theatre, aimed at providing relevant, up to date information and general theatre conversation for members. If you’d like to be added, please get in touch with me via 07894 881360, or another committee member and we can add you to the group.
That’s all for now, I hope to see you soon at “curtain up”. Break a leg!
