Arundel Festival’s theatre trail returns

It will be a reduced version which takes to the stage as Arundel Festival’s theatre trail returns this year.
Bill Brennan by Jonathan WilsonBill Brennan by Jonathan Wilson
Bill Brennan by Jonathan Wilson

In the past the trail, run by Arundel’s Drip Action theatre company, has always been able to boast the chance to see eight plays a day for eight days.

But this year, a shortage of actors has meant Drip Action artistic director Bill Brennan has had to limit the trail to five plays with a lengthy “intermission” as he calls it, between play number three and play number four.

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With fewer plays, this year the company won’t be selling season tickets; instead each play will be individually ticketed online via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/drip-action-theatre-company. Seats can therefore be guaranteed.

The trail runs from Saturday, August 20-Saturday, August 27; 11am, Arundel Town Hall, Maltravers Street. Stand Up To Putdowns by Simon Brett; 12 noon, Arundel Football Club, Mill Road. The Mockingbird’s Nest by Craig Bailey; 1pm, The Victoria Institute, Tarrant Street. Mourning Glory by Rich Orloff; 5pm, The Cathedral Centre, London Road. Provenance by Ian Patrick Williams; 6pm, The Victoria Institute, Tarrant Street. A Class Above by Jamie McLeish.

Bill said: “The difficulty has been getting the actors. We've been searching early but we just couldn't get them. I do think it's getting harder and I really don't know why but I suppose it was always amazing that with eight plays we were able to get maybe 20 actors to do them which was great for a non-professional company and considering that the plays, a lot of them, were during the day. Usually we've had a lot of teachers doing them but it seems that maybe this year they are taking time off and not wanting to rehearse. It has been a long, long struggle but you have to take the view that every play is a bonus.”

The irony is that the number of submissions was phenomenal: “We got more than 500 submissions and I have a team of five people doing the preliminary readings and just getting the numbers down to something reasonable. We had a shortlist and we got down to the final eight and we were hopeful for the eight including Simon's play (Simon Brett always contributes a piece to the theatre trail).

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"As always we were looking for something a bit different, but something that has got to be manageable. So many of the submissions so often missed the point offering something that was not practical or just not possible in terms of the subject matter. Perhaps also people have just been saving up their plays during the pandemic.

As for next year, Bill concedes that maybe it is time for a rethink: “I wonder if we got together a hard core of actors that could commit and we actually made them part of choosing the plays… maybe that might bring more actors in, maybe making it more of an ensemble, a group of actors who would perhaps commit to more than one play.”

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