Our Christmas break approaches so it’s time for a news update on what we’ve been up to.

Tuesday night was our annual Charity Carol Singing event, although in our case even the word ‘singing’ is charitable. The lovely people of Brough willingly gave donations, no doubt in the hope that we would stop soon. In our defence, we are actors not singers but we do it all in a good cause.

This year the charity we are collecting for is YoungMinds. Our choice has special meaning to the Petuaria Players as it is a charity that meant a lot to Kate Lloyd, a dear member who passed away recently so she was very much in our thoughts and inspired us to sing heartily.

YoungMinds is the UK’s leading charity championing the well-being and mental health of young people. We believe Kate’s time as a Primary School teacher inspired her choice of this organisation. If you would like to make a donation please feel free to contact us.

The Brough and Elloughton battle of the Xmas trees took place in the Village Hall and our team undoubtedly produced the best decorated tree by far. Unfortunately the voters chose a different tree as the winner. But then no one is ever happy with the results of public votes these days. I’m talking ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ obviously, we avoid politics on here…..

The baubles featured characters from past plays

We also had our Annual Christmas Dinner, this year a meal at the Buccaneer in Brough where we made our own entertainment – not least discovering less well known Christmas songs that never made the charts – with good reason.

Rehearsals continue for RolePlay. (Have you booked?) Recently we did our audio recording of the script. This is a technique we have used for a while. Having an audio recording allows cast members to practice their lines when we are not at rehearsal, essential when we are fitting in work, homes, kids or… even busier, retirement.

Hopefully all that line learning has worked because this week is our first ‘books down’ when we all try and fly solo for the first time, stumbling through the play, straining our memory for those elusive lines.

Meantime we continue to put our next production together and the posters are already out for printing before the Christmas shutdown.  And we’ll show you that in our next post…