Tale Valley Community Theatre

TVCT held its AGM last month and discussed possible future projects. Artistic Director, John Somers, briefly recalled the original work undertaken in a great variety of sites since he was invited to create a production to mark the arrival of the new millennium in 2000, resulting in the multi-site performance of ‘Parson Terry’s Dinner’. The most recent was ‘They Dream of Home’, a walking performance to commemorate the Parish’s involvement in WWI. The aim is to create new work of various kinds and to widen participants’ experience of different forms of community theatre. Details are being worked out and news […]

You may be interested to know that Caius (Cai) Nicholas, a member of Tale Valley Community Theatre and who played the lead role in They Dream of Home last September (pic attached) has, in the face of great national competition – around 5,000 people are auditioned each year, been accepted into the National Youth Theatre. He will work in London this summer and take part in a performance at the end of the summer-school. Well done Cai! John

BBC Radio 4 programme Open Country is to broadcast an episode focusing on aspects of the Tale Valley. In addition to items on Hembury Fort and the Tale Valley Trust, there are interviews with people associated with the Tale Valley Community Theatre (TVCT) and the eyewitnesses who contributed to the research on the 1941 crash of a Junkers 88 German bomber in the Valley. This incident was the focus of Foresight, a 2007 play by Rose Watts, performed by  TVCT in a marquee at Tuckmill. The play sold out and the audience exited the marquee near the play’s end to […]

In a car-free village centre and on a battlefield-disguised school playing field, an inspired cast gave memorable performances in Tale Valley Community Theatre’s challenging and emotive outdoor autumn production of “They Dream of Home”, directed and written by John Somers, reflecting the lives of two young soldiers, killed during WW1, whose names are on Payhembury memorial. After reading the script, their relatives had given permission for use of the young men’s names in the play. The young actors who played the central characters – soldiers, Bertie (Caius Nicholas) and Tom (Mark Rose), and village girl Gwen (Catherine Davies) – were […]

They Dream of Home is a promenade production which takes place at a number of village sites, thus requiring the audience to walk between scenes. I need to ask for people’s co-operation in parking elsewhere as the sight of modern cars will undermine our attempt to transport people’s imagination back to the early 1900s. Parked cars will make the scenes on the Green and at the Memorial impossible to stage. Also, if driving when the audience is transferring from the site of one scene to another, please tolerate a short wait whilst the audience moves on the road.   Parking […]

Following Tale Valley Community Theatre’s recent and very successful ‘Here we are again – an evening of songs and poems from WW1’, the company will take a short summer break before resuming rehearsals for ‘They Dream of Home’. This unique performance will be staged at a number of sites around Payhembury village on September 19th and  20th. An original play written and directed by John Somers, it captures the excitement amongst the young men of  the parish at war’s declaration and the progression through recruitment, intense battles and the awful consequences of warfare. Two of the characters are based on […]

They Dream of Home is a promenade production which takes place in a number of village sites, thus requiring the  audience to walk between scenes. Compared with, for example, when the roads were closed for the first TVCT  production in 2000, Parson Terry’s Dinner, the cost has multiplied and the procedure for achieving it hugely  complex. I need to ask for people’s co-operation in parking elsewhere (the sight of modern cars will undermine our attempt to transport people’s imagination back to the early 1900s) and, if driving, tolerate a short wait whilst the audience  moves from site to site. In […]