by Debbie Keyt, President

Here we are in July, halfway through the year. What a delightfully busy six months we’ve had. Throughout the last few months, we’ve had three shows overlapping and Beaumaris Theatre was abuzz with theatrical activity, which is just the way we love it.

Steel Magnolias finished on a high with full houses and the most wonderful feedback from our audiences. As the final applause died down, every nook and cranny of the theatre was being utilised with actors and directors fine-tuning performances for our inaugural Monologue Festival and rehearsals for The Bridges of Madison County were in full swing.

What a triumphant success the Monologue Festival has been. Playing to a sold-out two-performance season, our captivated audiences were treated to a marvellous smorgasbord of theatrical excellence. We received an overwhelming 45 submissions and 10 outstanding, original scripts were brought to life with passion, humour and sincerity by 10 exceptional actors and guided and nurtured by their dedicated directors.

*Stuart Anderson in Things to Do by Melissa Forge, directed by Stephen White*

The foundation of theatre is storytelling and our writers wrote evoking tales based on personal experience or imagination. Our actors and directors took the characters and their wonderful stories from page to stage with great care and heart and soul to create a program that was funny, moving, entertaining, thought-provoking and soul-stirring.

Heartfelt thanks to Festival Director Andy Payne for his inspirational idea and vision to showcase the incredible talents of the creative writers, directors and actors. Special thanks to our amazing selection panel of Andy, Lynda French, Cheryl Threadgold, Kristina Doucouliagos and Trevor Osburn who meticulously chose our final monologues for performance.

*Mason Frost in Villain, written by Stuart Anderson, directed by Natasha Rayner*

Our extraordinary producer, Lynda French has done a magnificent job of organising and implementing every aspect of the festival as well as casting, procuring directors and crew, acquiring props and stage managing the event with prowess and precision. Ably assisted by the fabulous Steve Morris and Tracey Mitchell who made sure the show was slick and flowed beautifully.

We’re very grateful to our technical team of Adam Solomon, Emma Brown and Jayden Naimo for all their hard work in the bio box and to Sally Fleming for her beautiful artwork.

The entire festival was a marvellous collaboration and we are thrilled with the accomplishments of the entire team and the favourable way it was received and enjoyed by our audiences.

Colin Armstrong and Sue Fletcher and their remarkable cast are getting ready to tantalise us with The Bridges of Madison County next which has a stunning score and a heart-breaking, poignant story and we simply cannot wait.

The second half of the year promises to be every bit as exciting, exhilarating and as irresistible as the first through the magic of storytelling and the splendour of theatre to come…