Ron Drew's Music Page - Activities
Singing - South Shields Amateur Operatic Society
Chapter 5.24 - Snippets of Chorus Lines
From Issue No. 24 (August 2003)
(an extract from)
THOSE WERE THE DAYS ...
by
Graham Jordan(describing the work of the stage crew in the preparation for
and during the Amateur Show week at the
Regent Bingo 'Theatre', South Shields)
.We had to get up at 3.00 o'clock on the Saturday morning to get to the Regent for five past, remove all the bingo equipment either into the flies or over the 50ft wall and into Pratts storeroom, tack down a 'stagecloth', remove the spare tacks from our shoes, palms, knees and everywhere else for that matter, clean the place from top to bottom, attend to injuries sustained and get to bed in the early hours if we were lucky. We were up again at 5.00 on the Sunday morning, unloading the biggest truck in the land, hanging the cloths, stacking the scenery, getting the 'tormentors' down from the highest grid in the known universe and generally getting ready for a technical rehearsal at 4.00. We had a slice of dry bread with a flask of industrial strength tea between 150 of us given to us by our Mam the day before, if we were lucky!
We would then get wrong/scowled at for applauding and whistling at the dancers too loudly while they were rehearsing ( ........) do a dress rehearsal at 7.30pm, go through some scene changes again and again after the thesps had gone home until Uncle H (Harry Halliday) was happy-ish, get home in the early hours, get up at 6.00 to be consciously at my school desk (yes it was that long ago) complete my homework by 8.00, get beaten by the teachers for falling asleep, limp back to the theatre for the opening night at 7.30, do shows all week (Groundhog Day comes to mind) then when the last show was finished and the speeches were finally over, reverse the whole process by turning the fabulous theatre back into a Bingo Hall again on the Saturday night/Sunday morning. Oh aye we were trying not to whistle/sing whatever catchy tunes we'd had to listen to all week and praying for Saturday night for it all to finish! Of course in the mind of us kids we thought that Sunday was the last night 'cos Uncle H. used to tell us it was double pay on Sunday! .............. Aye them were the days; great days and we were happy 'cos we had a book token for our trouble, courtesy of the Committee (..................) but what a frightening bunch they were - what with us lot not being proper members 'n that!
Tell you what though, something about those days still puzzles me to this day, 'cos no one ever explained it, is how my Dad, Uncles, older cousins and the rest of the crew aged over 18 managed to use their book tokens in the Westoe Public House and not in the bookstore ............... very strange that!?
[Ron Drew's Home Page] [Music Page][SSAOS Index]
[History] [Shows] [Highlights] [Personalities] [Chorus Lines]Copyright (c) 1999-2001 Ron Drew.
Last revised: February 05, 2004.