2006 Trustee's Report :: Posted 08-06-2007

At last years AGM on Monday 9th May 2006, all the Trustees were re-elected. Sue Goddard [Chairman], Louise Robinson [Treasurer], Patsy Ingold [Secretary], Ann Baker, Claire Hawes, Suzannah Platt, Lynne Small and Tracey Wisdom.
On our Parents’ Committee we have Manon Clark, Phillip Everson and Barbara Langley as well as the trustees. We are there to offer support to Louise Camplin, our Club Director, on all things connected to the efficient running of the club. We would always be pleased to welcome new parents or interested people on the parents committee. Please speak to any one of us if you are interested. We meet about 4 or 5 times a year in an informal way.

The first event of the year was a Japanese workshop which took take place during the February half term. There was an enthusiastic response from club members and fifty eight children signed up for two days of drama, art, cookery and karate. Mary Goodrich who was in charge of the cookery, went to the Japanese supermarket in Edgeware with Louise before the workshop and they struggled back in the underground rush hour laden with bags full of dried seaweed and miso paste.
Phil Shires from the Sizewell and Leiston karate club led the karate and James Nowell shared the drama teaching with Louise. Mel Pike, who taught art on both the Mexican and African workshops, returned to lead the artwork.
We were very fortunate that Mary Grace Browning brought a group of Japanese students to share the first day of the workshop with us. They showed the children how to write their names in calligraphy, helped teach them a Japanese song and played Japanese games with them which used the Japanese language. The children were very keen to talk to the students and the students enjoyed talking to the children. The teacher from Japan said he was amazed at how much detailed preparation had been made by all the workshop leaders.
We were also pleased that eight previous club members volunteered to come and help the younger children take full advantage of all that was offered and join in the fun
The children had a wonderful time making kites and doing origami, preparing and eating Japanese food, learning karate and involving themselves in drama activities which covered Japanese industries, traditions (such as the tea ceremony) Shinto, Buddhism, Sumo and the Samurai. They looked at the climate and natural environment and listened to Japanese stories and music. At the end of the second day, they dressed up, ate the food they had prepared over the two days and shared skills that had been learned.
Japan 21 very generously helped fund this project.

In May, the GCSE students performed their pieces firstly to the families and friends of the candidates and the following day to the examiner. There were two pieces this year, both set in America, one about British emigrants who settled in Montana in the 1850s and the other set in New York in the 1930s on the set of ‘Girl Crazy’. The six students achieved excellent results, 3 As, 2 Bs and a C.

In July, Class 2 presented ‘Through the Mirror’ at The Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, as part of ‘The Wolsey Festival of Youth’. They were supported by some older girls in the club who are also members of the Wenhaston Girls Choir. The weather was in our favour and we were able to eat our snacks in perfect sunshine before we had a technical rehearsal on a professional stage with the Wolsey staff. The children behaved and performed beautifully and lots of parents came to the performance.

We were very pleased to welcome back some real favourites to our annual Summer Camp this year. James Nowell (Widget) came to teach again and was helped by Emily Cook who came in daily. They managed to stage a performance of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in less than 20 minutes which parents enjoyed when they collected their children after the three day holiday. ‘Nutmeg’ (Meg Amsden and Steve Peck) returned with ‘Heat Wave’ which would have been very appropriate earlier in the year, but the day they came it rained relentlessly, which meant we crammed into the dining room to see the show. It was well worth the squash! Mary Goodrich treated us to meat balls, pavlova, sticky toffee pudding and other gourmet delights and there was plenty of night time activity! The students (Zak Walters, Esther Clarke and Joe Everson) ran a very successful party on the last evening, with the theme ‘creatures of the night’. Thank you to them and to everyone else who helped it all run smoothly.

On the last day of the summer holidays some of class 1 caught the bus from Halesworth to Southwold and back to tie in with the theme of ‘The Big Red Bus’ which was the play class 1 were preparing. Despite a dismal forecast, the sun came out as we arrived in Southwold and continued to shine until we went home. Suzannah met us off the bus and we went to the play ground first and then took our packed lunches to the beach where brave people swam, a large hole was dug and ice creams and cups of tea from the beach café were enjoyed. The children managed to ‘bag’ the back seat on the bus both on the way there and on the way back. When they started to sing, Louise did have to remind them they were on public transport!

The Rats of Nimh was the main production this year. We were very lucky to receive funding from Awards for All and Heveningham Hall Country Fair Trust for this production. Barbara Langley wrote an excellent review of this play which is included in this report:-

THE RATS OF NIMH

Should Halesworth, like the old city of Hamelin, send for the Pied Piper? Nearly every evening for a week in October, rats and mice of various sizes, all with ears and tails, some white, some brown, some grey, could be seen making their way to the converted maltings building, The Cut. But these rodents were no threat to children - they were children themselves, about fifty of them, members of the Laxfield Children’s Drama Club, coming to perform a play adapted from the book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien.
Especially in some powerful and carefully rehearsed movement sequences, imaginatively choreographed by Caroline Mummery, they showed how scientists developed a new breed of super-rats who then turned the tables on them by using their increased intelligence, and the help of the smaller white mice, to escape from the laboratory and from dependence on scavenging from humans, planning their own civilization. In turn, the rats helped a family of field-mice to move their home from the destructive path of the farmer’s plough. A very entertaining crow, with a weakness for shiny things, carried Mrs Frisby, the mother mouse, on his back to escape the large and fearsome cat, Dragon, who was hissed at by audiences like a pantomime villain. Even a dignified old owl guided Mrs Frisby with wise advice, in honour of her dead husband’s unselfish bravery. So, with mutual help and co-operation, the smaller creatures triumphed over larger and more powerful ones, Timothy, the ‘terribly sick’ youngest mouse in the Frisby family survived the dangers of the move, and the play ended with hope for ‘a new day’.
‘We don’t write the script, it just happens’, sang the animals in one of the delightful and often witty songs specially composed by Nick Murray Brown. But a production as complex and ambitious as this doesn’t ‘just happen’. For months the children had been working to build up all the elements of movement, speech, song, and the confident use of splendid props with the leadership and inspiration of their director, Louise Camplin, with her team of loyal helpers, all learning to work together co-operatively like the creatures in the story they presented with such vigour.
Perhaps it was tempting fate that one of the most memorable songs was the rats’ joyful celebration of ‘Light, light, light’, thanks to stolen (or ‘plucked’) Christmas tree lights in their underground home. An important run-through rehearsal was lost to a power-cut which plunged Halesworth into darkness. In spite of this, and further technical hitches with lights and sound, the children carried on with commitment to create a spirited and engaging production.

The final project of the year were class 1 and 2’s performances of ‘The Big Red Bus’ and ‘Through the Mirror’, not only at The Cut, Halesworth, but the following day as part of a schools tour. We played this to five primary schools. Three of them, (Cookley and Walpole, Wenhaston and Bramfield) came to Bramfield Village Hall to watch the first performance. We then went in a bus to Reydon and performed to St Georges School before eating our lunch there. Afterwards we went to Reydon primary and performed again.

The second half of 2006 proved rather a struggle for Louise and Patsy for personal reasons and in light of this and with a view to slowly retiring from the club, Louise decided to take a sabbatical from Thursday nights from January 2007 until after the GCSE exams in May 2007. We also decided not to enroll any new year 1 children in the future. There is too small a group for a GCSE class for a 2008 entry so we are going to run two classes together (as we have done before) for a 2009 entry.

This year we have had many exciting things to offer the children and over 100 have benefited each week. Each year the Club has found that more and more parents work and due to this, voluntary work seems to take second place. But we are continually grateful to the support of our worthy band of volunteers who are lead by our trustees. Finally we are indebted to Louise for her single mindedness and dedication for all her commitment to the Club.