Funtington Players set to honour fondly-remembered stalwart

They haven’t been able to do what they had planned to do, but they have created new opportunities and kept the group going across a wide range of activities. And they have even started planning a production in memory of Funtington Players stalwart Leafy Scott who died of cancer two years ago, as Players chairman Barbara MacWhirter explains.

“She was one of our members for 20 years and was just coming up for retirement when she was diagnosed with cancer. But she wrote a full-length play that we very much want to put on as a fundraiser.

“She called it something different, but we are calling it Full Moon at the Bridge Street Café. It is about young people… which has stretched us a little. We are slightly older! But we have got a lovely cast together. Leafy’s play has been adapted by Suzie Wilde.

“It is a play about young people, about a girl who runs a café and meets up with a chap by the lift shaft on her way home. It’s set in the café and it is about these people and their relationships.

“Leafy herself said she wanted to reflect her own optimism and her outlook on life. It is a lovely little piece and will be just long enough to do as a fundraiser for the hospice. We were hoping to do it this May or June. We will be hoping to do it perhaps May or June 2021.”

They will also be hoping to pick up a couple of other pieces they didn’t get the chance to do in 2020, their spring production of Our Country’s Good and their autumn production of Hugh Whitemore’s Disposing Of The Body: “ We are just putting the year on hold and what we would have done in 2020 we will do in 2021.”

Which doesn’t mean that 2020 a wasted year. Far from it: “I know that some groups have literally shut up shop, and we just didn’t want to do that. Most of our members have been doing this for years and years and really love doing it. It is a huge part of my life and of the lives of so many of our members.”

And so 2020 was the year that Zoom came into its own.

As Barbara says, sadly there are a number of people who aren’t online, aren’t interested in Zoom, don’t have the technical ability or don’t have a computer that is up to it. But that still left a busy core of Players: “We have had two evenings of café theatre. We had one in June and one in September. We did a series of play sketches and one-act plays by Zoom, and we have also had quizzes. It has been good fun. It has been about keeping our eye in and keeping drama alive. That’s what this society is all about, and that’s what we have been doing.” Barbara suspects it is possible that a number of groups which have lain dormant might not be able to come back: “But by and large I don’t fear for the future of amateur dramatics at all. Being amateurs, we don’t have to worry about the money side if it. We are not having to worry about keeping our theatre going. That’s where we are so different to professional theatre which I really really fear for.”

http://www.funtingtonplayers.org.uk