I first got involved with WCT when I got a panicky phone call as one of the WCT actors was unable to perform and the show opened in just a few days. I spent 24 hours cramming the lines and then took the part of Suzie Funnell, school mistress in the play Enquire Within at Allendale House.
At the time I felt that the group was fun to be part of and a great opportunity to act with my husband again and with his daughter for the first time. I was made to feel very welcome and felt any ideas I expressed were listened to and considered. It was also refreshing to be in a theatre group that wasn’t a clique.
Since then I’ve acted in Enquire Within the second time around when it was updated by a new director. I’ve also recently been to a workshop about the forthcoming WW1 project and hope to take part in this. My mum and dad helped to contribute to ideas by going along to the session at Priest’s House Museum so I’d like to help them see their memories come to life.
Being a Wimborne girl born and bred, WCT has shown me very familiar locations in a completely new light with its site specific work. I’d always wanted to get inside that pumping station in Wimborne to have a nose and The Great Rinsing allowed me to do just that as a member of the audience. It’s also meant I’ve been to places I didn’t even know existed in the county – like the stunning Hambledon Hill when the group performed Bare Bones.
I think community theatre has an important role to play. It has to remain inclusive. It has to remain inexpensive to join (unlike many other theatre groups) so people from all walks of life can take part.
It should be a mouthpiece for the future of Wimborne and a time machine for whisking Wimborne residents back to the past.
And on a final note the social activities like the skittles nights are always fun and inexpensive and I’d like to thank everyone for always being so friendly and supportive to my mum and dad when I have brought them along to these activities.