Watch this space – events appearing throughout the year!
Throughout each year, the SSA will provide workshops and events for its members in addition to the main productions, so please check here regularly for what’s coming up. If you are thinking of joining, you are very welcome to come along to any of these events to meet us and experience how we work.
Whether you are interested in acting, directing or working behind the scenes, we hope some of our events will help build confidence and generate ideas.
Have an idea for an event?
Please do contact us via thesouthseashakespeareactors@hotmail.co.uk if you have an idea or would like to run an event or workshop.
Workshops will usually begin at 7.30 in the SSA HQ and finish somewhere between 9 and 9.30.
New Event – Tuesday 19th March 2024 at 7:30 – The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Join us to read a ground-breaking piece of theatre which broke the fourth wall and parodied chivalric romance – and all in 1607! Following the workshop last year in which we explored several scenes from Francis Beaumont’s play, a buzz began to build around what is an astonishing predecessor to the meta-theatre of the 20th century. The SSA is keen to produce Pestle in the near future, and we’d love you to come along and read it with us to begin the creative process. It’s funny, it’s silly and it’s very surprising!
The play begins as a performance of a completely different play, The London Merchant, which only just gets started when the audience begin to interrupt. A local grocer and his wife think the story will give people the wrong idea about the middle classes and decide to rewrite the action as it goes along. What’s more, they think Rafe, their apprentice, would make a lovely leading man, and he becomes the Grocer Errant of the action with a burning pestle on his shield. The new play and the original play become intertwined, and Rafe gets very confused about whether he should stay faithful to the milk maid from down the road or marry the fictional princess of the play. Mayhem ensues.
After a brief introduction, we’ll read around the room and change parts in each act to ensure everyone who wants to read has the opportunity. If you just want to come along and listen, that’s fine too! The more, the merrier!!
Venue address: The Barley Mow, 39 Castle Rd, Southsea, Portsmouth. PO5 3DE