STAGE FEVER IN MILLS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 21 February 1931, Page 9

STAGE FEVER IN MILLS

fewer than five hundred amateur theatrical societies, the “Sunday Chronicle” learns, are producing plays this winter in Yorkshire, which claims to be the home of amateur actors and actresses. Thousands of millgirls, ploughboys, typists, milkmaids, shop assistants, railwayman, and tramway workers! figure in the choruses of operettas and pantomimes. The cost of production varies from £2O to £IOOO, and many efforts axe being given for charity. In the West Riding mill districts “lines’ ’are being read by the mill lads and lassies during “laiking” time. T Business girls, too, are studying their V parts over glass-of-milk-and-bun lunches

Keen Girls ' for 500 Shows

and in scores of barns, village institutes, and schoolrooms the country folk are gathering nightly to rehearse plays.

Amateur societies are springing up like mushrooms,, and new talent is being found everywhere. At Burley-in-Wharf ecfale, where a play-writing competition has been hold, there is a chauffeur who creates plots as a diversion from driving a motorcar and mending punctures; at a Bradford ‘mill a “Jack and Jill” pantomime is being produced; and the famous village players at Cloughton, near Scarborough figure in a new production by ’the village author. In many cases members of the societies arc making their own dresses and designing the scenery for the shows.