A useful, how-to guide for staging any play A practical handbook for directors, producers, local community groups, youth theatres, amateur players, universities and colleges, students of Community Theatre/Theatre Studies and others wanting to stage a successful community play. Drawing on a wealth of personal accounts, and useful historical background information, How To Put On A Community Play is full of detailed advice concerning the preparation, planning and execution required to achieve success. Including essential tips on: casting the rehearsal process administrative hurdles technical headaches that must be overcome This is an invaluable guide to the myriad tasks and decisions facing any community play organiser. About the author Sarah Burton has written and produced five community plays, one of which became the longest-running community play in Britain. She teaches creative writing and has taught undergraduate courses in the Theatre Studies Department at the Royal Holloway and in the English Department at Goldsmiths. She was for many years a television drama script editor and also read and reported on prose submissions for Eastern Arts’ Write Lines scheme. Sarah is also on the board of tutors for the University of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education, having completed with credit their course in Effective Online Tutoring. She has published two non-fiction titles for adults: Impostors: Six Kinds of Liar (Viking hardback, 2000; Penguin paperback, 2001) and A Double Life: a Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb (Viking hardback 2003; Penguin paperback 2004). Impostors has been translated into four languages and A Double Life was short-listed for the Mind Book of the Year. She has also written extensively for BBC History Magazine and reviews books (fiction and non-fiction) for the Times, Spectator, Guardian and Independent. Her first children’s book was The Miracle in Bethlehem: A Storyteller’s Tale (Floris paperback, 2008) and she has contributed a short story to the Wow! Anthology (Scholastic, 2008). She recently completed a second children’s book and a novel for adults.

Addresses fundamental questions about the social and political purposes of performance through an investigation of post-war alternative and community theatre. A detailed analysis of oppositional theatre as radical cultural practice.

Good evening. I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock. After benefitting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. They are delighted that neither casting issues nor technical hitches currently stand in their way. However, hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure, but can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls? The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Theatre Mischief. It was first published as a one-act play and is published in this new edition as a two-act play.

Written as a community play for the people of Dorchester. It covers 40 years of history and contains over 170 speaking parts. Centres on a battle of wills between the Reverend Henry Moule, vicar of St. George's Church, and Sarah Eldridge, proprietor of the Dragon Brewery - both of whom are challenged and changed by the great cholera outbreak which afflicted Dorchester in 1854.

From the bestselling author of Tides of Honour and Promises to Keep comes a poignant novel about a young couple caught on opposite sides of the Second World War. In the fall of 1939, Grace Baker’s three brothers, sharp and proud in their uniforms, board Canadian ships headed for a faraway war. Grace stays behind, tending to the homefront and the general store that helps keep her small Nova Scotian community running. The war, everyone says, will be over before it starts. But three years later, the fighting rages on and rumours swirl about “wolf packs” of German U-Boats lurking in the deep waters along the shores of East Jeddore, a stone’s throw from Grace’s window. As the harsh realities of war come closer to home, Grace buries herself in her work at the store. Then, one day, a handsome stranger ventures into the store. He claims to be a trapper come from away, and as Grace gets to know him, she becomes enamoured by his gentle smile and thoughtful ways. But after several weeks, she discovers that Rudi, her mysterious visitor, is not the lonely outsider he appears to be. He is someone else entirely—someone not to be trusted. When a shocking truth about her family forces Grace to question everything she has so strongly believed, she realizes that she and Rudi have more in common than she had thought. And if Grace is to have a chance at love, she must not only choose a side, but take a stand. Come from Away is a mesmerizing story of love, shifting allegiances, and second chances, set against the tumultuous years of the Second World War.

As researchers are increasingly taking their research from the campus to the public arena, what are the ethics of, and expectations for, social impact? Going Public responds to the urgent need to expand current thinking on what it means to co-create, to actively involve the public in research, and to reconceptualize research for public consumption. Drawing on conversations with over thirty practitioners across multiple cultures and disciplines, this book examines the ways in which oral historians, media producers, and theatre artists use art, stories, and participatory practices to engage creatively with their publics. The authors provide an overview of community-engaged practices and present case studies that grapple with issues of class struggle, gentrification, violence against women, and Indigenous rights. Going Public offers insights into long-standing concerns around voice, aesthetics, appropriation, privilege, power dynamics, and the ethics of participation. It reveals that the shift towards participatory research and creative practices requires a commitment to asking tough questions about oneself and the ways that people’s stories are used.