The play's the thing

In the beginning was Richard III at The Ritz.  Only it was The Beehive.  So when we had the Ffestival we invited the Swindon Players along to do it all over again. 

At the ffirst Ffiesta we decided that we'd do something a little different so John and Jo chopped Shakespeare about a bit and we had an extremely condensed version of Richard III, with added audience participation.  We pulled names out of a hat to see who would play which part - I was first messenger I remember.  It went down very well, although it was a little stilted because everybody had to read their lines.

Then last year Jasper came up with the idea of Hamlet, Prince of Zombies, which was all very well, until about a week before the Ffiesta it became apparent that nobody had done anything about it.  We decided that as we had advertised this as one of the main attractions we had to go ahead and write it ourselves.  Somehow I found myself volunteered for this job.  Doing 'Name That Fruit', the quiz, writing the rule book, swan warnings and translating the menus into Ffiestaspeak wasn't enough it seemed.  Anyway, glutton for punishment that I am I agreed.  Matt came up with some really good ideas and in line with my usual talent for procrastination I wrote 'To be or not to be', (you didn't know that was all my work did you?!) together with an introduction, came up with a plot line of sorts and decided that we would do it as improv.  And thanks to all the brilliant Ffiesta-ites it worked! 

We had the footnoterphone, Jasper and others doing the dance from 'Thriller' an extremely cute zombie baby (unbiassed opinion here!), Danversclones, extreme knitting and some serious misspelling.  Jordan was a very theatrical Hamlet and, amazingly for a tragedy, it had a happy ending.

This year we are doing 'A Midsummer Night's Dream - The Panto' rewritten for minotaur and Danvers.  It could be a tragedy.