About
Stamford Shoestring celebrated 80 years of amateur drama!
History
In 1943 a new Stamford drama group performed 'Man of Destiny' in the High School Hall. Membership of Stamford Music & Drama Club was 7/6d for adults and 3/6d for junior members. The group performed two plays each year at a variety of venues - Stamford School, George Hotel Gardens, Bourne Corn Exchange before finally working mainly from the Darby & Joan Hall in Stamford’s Broad Street.
In September 1959 Stamford Music & Drama Club became Stamford Amateur Stage, performing up to five productions a year. In March 1963 the company's name was changed again to Stamford Shoestring Theatre because it seemed that every production was run on a shoestring budget! Shoestring finally established a permanent home in the delightful Georgian Stamford Theatre in 1978 where it remains to this day as the resident company at Stamford Arts Centre.
Today
We offer a wide range of drama from classical to contemporary and try to incorporate a rich variety in our annual programme. We stage four productions a year together with occasional roadshows, workshops and play-readings. We are lucky enough also to be part of the roster of visiting companies to the beautiful Minack Theatre in Cornwall, and in summer 2019 we had a sell-out run with our 40-character play set in the plague village of Eyam, The Roses of Eyam. We look forward to being back at Minack in the fourth week of July, 2024.
During the Covid lockdown we did a rehearsed reading of extracts from Under Milk Wood via Zoom in March and another Zoom film based on extracts from Ariel Dorfman’s play, Widows for the launch of the Stamford Festival of Social Justice on May 19th 2021
Our first live theatre production after the lockdown was Richard Bean’s version London Assurance, performed to sell-out socially-distanced audiences from 19th-24th July 2021. In September 2021 we returned to full-capacity with My Mother Said I Never Should by Charlotte Keatley. Our production of A Christmas Carol by John Mortimer ran for two weeks in December 2021. In March 2022 we produced I Am a Camera by John Van Druten and in June, Blackbird by David Harrower. Our September 2022 production, curtailed by the Queen's death, was California Suite by Neil Simon, and our pre-Christmas production was Rules for Living by Sam Holcroft.
The productions for 2024 are: March – Visitors by Barney Norris; June – Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare; September – The Sweet Science of Bruising by Joy Wilkinson; December – Jack Absolute Flies Again by Richard Bean and Oliver Chris
We like to ring the changes and our public seem to like it too: the leading actors in one production will often be found selling programmes or sweeping the stage in the next. We are proud of the wealth of talent amongst our members; not just in acting, direction and stage management but also in stage design, set construction, lighting, sound and costume. To find out more about Shoestring email us at stamfordshoestring@gmail.com