Auditions for ‘An Inspector Calls’ will be held on Wednesday 29th September at the Methodist Hall, Hartley Wintney at 8.00 p.m.

• Arthur Birling – a pompous, self-congratulatory, self-made business man
• Sybil Birling – his wife.  Of the ‘County’ set, ‘old-money’
• Eric Birling – their son, in his twenties
• Sheila Birling – their daughter, also in her twenties.  A spoilt, selfish girl
• Gerald Croft – also of a ‘County’ family, ‘old money’.  He and Sheila are to become engaged
• Inspector Goole – An enigmatic figure who imposes himself on the celebration
• Edna – ‘The Maid’

Our latest show is on its way. Here is the poster:

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum

Book your tickets now!

To spread the workload and to make our time together more effective the committee has decided to spread the workload into various teams that will be responsible for various areas of the HAG workload. The aim of these teams is to work together to achieve more and not to place the burden of any one job on any one individual.

These are the teams:

• Accommodation: David Walton, Lesley Parish, Tony Davies.
• Fundraising: David Walton, Lesley Parish.
  Also in this group are other members who have volunteered their time for the fundraising: Angela Davis, Bill Hansell, Helen Lewis, Iain Eggeling, Janet Headley.
• Governance & Finance: David Walton, Jason Farrow, Keith Robertson.
• Membership & Social: Jo Long, Lindsay Elliot, Lottie Wilson, Tony Davies.
• Productions: Gary Wales, Jason Farrow, Lesley Nicholls, Lesley Parish.
• Technical: Gary Wales, Tony Davies.

It is our intention to ask specific members who have expressed an interest in helping in these areas to work with these teams. If you would like to help, or if you have suggestions, then please contact any of the team members.

The aim is to meet around once per month, or as appropriate, to go over the work of the group and ensure that nothing is forgotten, missed or goes undiscussed. The teams will meet in any location that suits them best and that might even be the local pub. As members of HAG please give these teams the help and support they need.

We can now report that the newly formed HAG Co. (Hartley Arts Group Company) has been awarded Charity Status. The HAG Co. charity number is 1136586 and you can look for us on the Charity Commission’s website here.

This successful application now removes another obstacle. Our next major milestone will be the transfer of all funds and assets from the current HAG (HAG Assoc.) to the new HAG (HAG Co.)

This will be done at an EGM which will be announced separately when all remaining processes and procedures have been arranged.

This Charity status is good news as it will enable us to raise funds for our Drama Studio from donors who have previously declined our requests because of our lack of charity status.

Good news all round.

At the AGM last night the new committee for the Hartley Arts Group was elected.

The three officers of the group are:

• Chairman – Jason Farrow
• Secretary – Lindsay Elliot
• Treasurer – Keith Robertson

The seven additional committee members are:

• Tony Davies
• Jo Long
• Lesley Nicholls
• Lesley Parish
• Gary Wales
• David Walton
• Lottie Wilson

A short committee meeting will be held on Monday 21st June at 8pm to establish roles within the committee and to make progress with the signing off of the 2009/10 accounts and putting in place a tightened accounting as will be needed for our future move to charitable status.

All members are invited to propose anything that would help the group, ideas for plays, for fundraising, social events, to any committee member and it will be discussed during one of our normal meetings. These typically occur on the first Monday of a month.

This is your group and we want your thoughts.

Every year the village of Hartley Wintney in Hampshire has a festival. There is a parade, a fair, stalls, food and drink. The village is twinned with Malle in Belgium where the local monastery brews some great beers.

There is a Double (6%ABV) and a Triple (9%ABV) both of which are best served in their own particular type of glass. Well worth turning up for.

The Hartley Arts Group have a stand quite near the main arena and all are invited to drop in and say hello and find out more about what we get up to. We will have some displays from our more recent few shows and items about our plans for the future.

All members should follow this link and read the HAG AGM 2010 Guidelines

2010 AGM Guide

This will refresh members’ on the rules and procedures that will be followed before and during the AGM on 15th June 2010.

These rules are an extract from the full Articles of the association which can be found on our main website

And so another show has come to a close. Soon we will be concentrating on our next production – “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” which runs at the end of October.

So how did the last night go? Very well indeed, but not perfect.

The audience certainly enjoyed themselves but towards the end, probably because of the warmth of the auditorium, it was a hot day, a bit of audience participation fatigue set in and Cinderella lacked its usual oompf!

There was one error in Moby Dick and the Great White Whale was a little reluctant to leave the stage on its very last performance. Balance this with good comments about the male chorus in Moby as everyone had their own individual character that came through.

With a title like “Classic Acting Coarse!”, and the apparently lesser know topic of Coarse Acting, the box office numbers were not as high as we would have liked but we are fairly certain to have covered our costs.

Overall from a cast and audience point of view this was a successful and enjoyable production from HAG. We are unlikely to cover this genre again any time soon. Our next productions are:

• A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (Oct 2010)
• An Inspector Calls (Jan/Feb 2011)
• Kiss Me Kate (May/June 2011)

What comes after that will be for the next committee to decide after the AGM on 15th June.

If you saw Classic Acting Coarse! then please give us your feedback by commenting on this or other posts in this blog.

The Hartley Arts Group is changing into a Charitable Company.

For more information on the changes and what it means for the group and its members please follow this link – HAG Charitable Company

We have now performed show four and five of our six show run. We have had a great response from both nights.

The cast have done well and the audience have been much appreciative of our efforts and the great comedy before them. We had the area NODA representative in last night and so a review will be about in due course (and hopefully not too coarse!)

With the last night beckoning there is the temptation to let things get a little out-of-hand and perhaps lower the standard. Personally I do not like that to happen as it can introduce mistakes which can prove fatal. The shows are coarse enough without diving into the rough.

There are tickets available on the door for tonight. See our website for details on how to get there. www.hartleyartsgroup.com

If you are interested in following this blog then we have developed a new iPhone/iPodTouch web app.  To add this to your iPhone or iPod Touch follow these instructions.

1. Open Mobile Safari and navigate to:
   hagblog.hartleyartsgroup.com/HAGBlog/
2. In Mobile Safari tap the + icon
3. Save the item to your Home Screen
4. Close Mobile Safari

You should now see and icon on your iPhone or iPod touch that looks like this:

Tap on this icon and the app will open taking you into the application. Enjoy.

And yet another audience. The reception of the plays, compared to previous nights, lead to a post-show discussion amongst the cast and crew and produced an important question.

Are some audiences embarassed to laugh out-loud?

There were certainly less laughs last night. More titters and giggles than guffaws. For those of us who spoke to some of the audience after the show the responses were positive. They liked the show. Some took some time to get to grips with what coarse acting is all about but they did enjoy themselves. They just did not express it as much as previous audiences have. The audience finally started to liven up in Cinderella when, as it typical with a pantomime, there is participation. Oh yes there is!

So, do we have to change what we do? Do we have to explain coarse acting?

I think no. There is an explanation in the programme regarding the nature of coarse acting but I do not believe that we should stand up and explain the concept before it is presented. There should be an element of surprise. Right from the off in the first of our plays is a big surprise. To do otherwise would be to lose the element of anticipation as to what may be coming next.

Thursday and Friday showed that what we have created is good and funny and is understood and accepted by the majority. There are perhaps the very few who even at the end of all five plays just do not “get it”. However we know that we have done our best and the majority of comments are good. So we continue on and hope that next week’s audiences will feel more open to expressions of enjoyment.

Will you be there to give us your comments and feel free to laugh with, or at, us? Order your tickets now via our online Box Office

Last night was a different show. Each audience has a different response to every show that we do and the first-Friday crowd were just that. The were laughing but in sometimes completely different places to Thursday’s.

Cherry Sisters was very well received and it did appear that this audience “got it”. This play, sandwiched between Moby Dick and Cinderella, is a quiet and sombre piece and the genre, in its coarse version, is quite stilted. Within this almost gothic setting is precise comedy hightened by the failure of a key prop which undoes all the hard work of the actors.

There is one more show this week with three next week. Don’t miss your chance to see a great show. Everyone I’ve spoke to has said how much they have enjoyed it.

Order your tickets at http://boxoffice.hartleyartsgroup.com

The first run of our six show production was a great success. We had lots of good feedback at the end but more importantly was the validation right at the start when from the word go there we great big laughs from the audience.

There is nothing that lets you know you have hit the nail on the head better than the sound of a big bunch of people all howling with laughter at the sights before them.

We have five more of these to do and there are still some tickets available. If you are uncertain then you should throw off your doubt and book your seats now. You will surely not regret it.

Goto http://boxoffice.hartleyartsgroup.com and order now.

Before we started the Director’s had some serious words with the cast regarding the state of play and the let down that was yesterday’s dress rehearsal. This paid off.

The shows picked up the concentration levels and the technical crews all came together to produce the sort of show that we have been looking for.

The difference was noticable both to those on the stage as well as those off the stage. The plays were more snappier where needed and there were no errors of note. We finally have a show.

We now have a day off to rest, after four solid evenings of work, before the first week of shows with a live audience. We have high expectations of how well this will be received. If you are coming, and you should, be prepared to laugh out loud and laugh a lot.

Book your tickets at boxoffice.hartleyartsgroup.com

Well, now we know why dress rehearsals are so important. Last night’s rehearsal brought out a lot of issues. It was the first time we had everything we needed for the show. It was not the best rehearsal we have done but we still have the trial rehearsal to validate the fixes.

We had actors cracking up with laughter at other cast members’ costumes. We had dodgy light cues and sound cues. We had actors forgetting lines. We had actors walking off stage about five lines too early. Stage pyrotechnics that did not go bang when band was needed. We had misbehaving props; notably a wandering whale.

The list goes on.It is not all bad news.

There were some things that were good. The changes to some of the lighting was good. The sound fx are working very well and for the most part the plays proceeded well even if some minor components did not. What we really need is an audience for that added bit of feedback.

It was very warm last night (28C high temp) and it should be cooler tonight for the Trial.Hopefully with cooler heads everyone will be more able to concentrate on what is supposed to be going on and the show will work. When this show plays as designed it will be one to remember.

Tickets are still selling but there are still tickets available. Visit boxoffice.hartleyartsgroup.com and order yours. See you there.

The technical rehearsal last night showed you just how much difference the full ensemble of stage, lights, sound and monster-sized props can make to a production.

Imagine five different plays, each with their own sets, or in the place of a set some six-foot high props, each set needing its own lighting plot, remembering that we are in Berlin, Greece, The Atlantic, Russia and Fairy-land!

Add stage pyrotechnics and you have a grand old time. All of this taking place on probably the warmest days of 2010 so far in Hartley Wintney.

And how did we do? Very well indeed.

We ran through all the plays, and although the dress rehearsal is Monday night, we did include costumes and some of these changes and set changes took up a little more time than we expected. So just a small timing change for tonight.

Personally I was up at 6am this morning making the final changes to the lighting computer based on our observations during the technical. So it’s going to be another long day. (I’m such a luvvy. Or so I’ve been told)

The rewards will be worth it. Let’s hope that we sell the tickets we need. Have you bought yours. Do so now at boxoffice.hartleyartsgroup.com.

Are you are thinking about our current show (see the current show page on this blog)? Are you wondering what exacly *is* coarse acting? Let’s try to explain.

“A Coarse Acting Show is the closely observed imitation of a stage disaster. It is not a competition in hamming it up or doing funny walks. Stage disaster, of course, may involve performancess that are Coarse for one reason or another, but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily hammy” – Michael Green

In our show we have picked five of the best. Each one demonstrates an example of what can, and indeed does, go wrong on the stage. These things are more likely to happen in amateur dramatics but can happen to the professionals as well.

For example: Coarse Stage Management; where by some bizarre reason the set has been installed upside-down. Coarse Direction; where everyone has to get to their mark before saying their lines. Coarse Props; where a vital prop misfunctions and the cast have to improvise. Coarse Acting; where every line in a classic play is accompanied with a guesture or facial grimace.

In one example in HAG’s history, in a play that was otherwise proceeding nicely, a prop, a chair used by a cast member, actually fell apart just before the actor was due to sit upon it. This chair was also due to be removed by another cast member. All this is performed in reverse lighting where the stage lights are on but the actors believe that there is a blackout, and visa-versa. Imagine groping for a chair which, normally in one piece, is now in many pieces and trying to continue the belief that this is perfecty normal.

Amongst all these trials and tribulations the cry, or the blind denial, from the coarse actor is: “Don’t worry old chap, the audience never noticed a thing.”

The Classic Acting Coarse! is looking to be one of the best, and down-right funniest shows, for some time. Don’t miss your chance to see it. Book your tickets online – boxoffice.hartleyartsgroup.com

This blog is the new official blog for the Hartley Arts Group.See out main website for more about us at www.hartleyartsgroup.com