South Solihull u3a Play Reading Group - Blithe Spirits
INTRODUCTION
Unleash your inner thespian and join our friendly group, to read aloud everything from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night & Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard to Joe Orton’s Loot and Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus.
We are a small group, who meet once a month, in each other’s homes, on a Monday afternoon. A different member of the group gets to choose the script and 'direct' for each session, providing a background to the play and assigning the roles. We break for tea and a discussion of the play, which continues at the close of the reading, if time allows. The emphasis is on exploring a range of plays and developing our individual ‘voices’.
We have organised a number of theatre visits, in association with the plays we read – recently, for example: Playboy Of The Western World at the Loft Theatre in Leamington. The group occasionally provides entertainment at the monthly ssu3a meeting – for instance, a snippet of a Noel Coward play for a 1930’s themed meeting and a mini pantomime at Christmas.
SEEKING NEW MEMBERS
Come along to a meeting and give us a try; we’d love to welcome you. If you are interested, please contact Kris Clark
FORTHCOMING MEETINGS
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MONDAY 15th JULY 2024, 1:45 p.m.
Reading: Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling
Venue: Kris’s House
Written in 1987, Steel Magnolias is concerned with a group of gossipy Southern ladies in a USA small-town beauty parlour. The play is alternately hilarious and touching and, in the end, deeply revealing of the strength and purposefulness which underlies the antic banter of its characters.
Reading: Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling
Venue: Kris’s House
Written in 1987, Steel Magnolias is concerned with a group of gossipy Southern ladies in a USA small-town beauty parlour. The play is alternately hilarious and touching and, in the end, deeply revealing of the strength and purposefulness which underlies the antic banter of its characters.
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MONDAY 21st AUGUST 2024, 1:45 p.m.
Reading: The Sound of Murder by William Fairchild
Venue: Cherrie’s House
Charles Norbury is a successful writer of children's books, but he doesn't like children. An unlovable man, he has no friends, is arrogant, controlling, sadistic and cruel. His wife, starved of love and denied children of her own, has met another man. In their cottage in Surrey, a tape recorder has been left on during a conversation between his wife and her lover in which the latter plans the author's murder. Inevitably, it is heard by a third party!
Reading: The Sound of Murder by William Fairchild
Venue: Cherrie’s House
Charles Norbury is a successful writer of children's books, but he doesn't like children. An unlovable man, he has no friends, is arrogant, controlling, sadistic and cruel. His wife, starved of love and denied children of her own, has met another man. In their cottage in Surrey, a tape recorder has been left on during a conversation between his wife and her lover in which the latter plans the author's murder. Inevitably, it is heard by a third party!
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MONDAY 16th SEPTEMBER 2024, 1:45 p.m.
Reading: Quatermaine’s Terms by Simon Gray
Venue: (t.b.a)
Set in the 60’s at a school where English is taught as a foreign language. The play follows the relationships between seven teachers, in particular that between Quartermaine and his colleagues. The dominant theme is loneliness and during the course of the play, all the characters experience the pain of being or feeling alone.
Reading: Quatermaine’s Terms by Simon Gray
Venue: (t.b.a)
Set in the 60’s at a school where English is taught as a foreign language. The play follows the relationships between seven teachers, in particular that between Quartermaine and his colleagues. The dominant theme is loneliness and during the course of the play, all the characters experience the pain of being or feeling alone.
![Picture](/uploads/9/5/4/4/9544812/published/2024-10-21-prbs-conways.jpg?1720608257)
MONDAY 21st OCTOBER 2024, 1:45 p.m.
Reading: Time & the Conways by J B Priestley
Venue: Mary’s Home
This is the second of J.B. Priestley’s Time Plays, dealing with different theories of time and how time is experienced. It focuses on the Conways, a wealthy family living in a prosperous suburb of the fictitious manufacturing town Newlingham, and their declining fortunes between 1919 and 1937.
Reading: Time & the Conways by J B Priestley
Venue: Mary’s Home
This is the second of J.B. Priestley’s Time Plays, dealing with different theories of time and how time is experienced. It focuses on the Conways, a wealthy family living in a prosperous suburb of the fictitious manufacturing town Newlingham, and their declining fortunes between 1919 and 1937.