We have launched a We Fund campaign to try and raise money for the design element of our show. We have worked out that we need to raise at least £2500 to pay for costumes, set, and puppet materials, and we’re hoping that any supporters we have out there might want to help us out and donate anything form £2 towards our campaign. The idea with crowd funding is that lots of people donate a small amount of money and that raises a nice chunk towards the show. The link for this campaign is:

http://www.wefund.com/project/secret-garden

There’s even a little film of some of our research and development for you to have a look at.

Talking of design, we had a great meeting with our designer, Jodie, and Polly who is making the puppets and we tried out some prototype fox, robin and Archibald puppets and we are really excited about what she’s coming up with so far. Jodie has some beautiful designs which she will be taking to Arts University College with her on Monday to start working on with the students.

It’s all go! In the meantime, 3 of us are touring in a production of Macbeth with Platform 4 company, so do drop by and see us if you’re in the area.

http://www.platform4.org/macbeth.htm

Gwendoline and Marjory, our tea ladies, served a fine selection of cakes with a garden theme including lavender shortbread, courgette muffins, floral vanilla cupcakes, rose pink meringues, lemon loaf, lavender macaroons, rosewater shortbread, banana bread, carrot cake and spiced sugar palmieres.

Tamsin and I were up early making the 80 scones required for the day and many helpers were on hand to assist with the making of tea, sandwiches and plating up on cake stands. We honestly couldn’t have done it without certain special people who worked their socks off all afternoon. Thank you especially to Simon, Heather, Jodie and Shoween!

Marthas and Arthurs sang some lovely songs to entertain our guests and I loved it when Hazel’s son Arthur said to them “My name is Arthur! And my best friend is Martha!”.

We managed to rustle up a raffle last minute (inspired by Miss Frances Millar’s birthday raffle the night before!) and plenty of tickets were sold for this and the Guess the Name of the Robin game. This game will carry over to the Dorchester Fundraiser this coming Sunday 24th and you can win a stunning Hattie Pom Pom Secret Garden themed fascinator or beautiful hand made Secret Garden necklace.

Gwendoline and Marjory would also like to thank all of our guests for coming to the Tea Room on Sunday and thanks to their most generous donations on the day we raised £300 which will go towards The Secret Garden. Gwen and Marj are very excited about the Dorchester Pop Up Tea Room especially as their dear friend Dotty will be there and their long lost cousin Humphrey.

Please come and see us at Dorchester Arts Centre Garden from 2pm until 5pm this Sunday 24th for more tea, cake, clotted cream, raffle, live music from Marthas and Arthurs (who are playing at the Frankstock Festival in Dorset the night before) and fundraising galore.

Hope to see you there.

X Lynne

I had such a lovely week in Bridport with Angel exit Theatre! I am currently working with the company as their designer and together we are realising a production of The Secret Garden. I stayed in the most beautiful farm-house. Myself and Matt got a tour of the farm and Ingrid made us feel very welcome for the week! We were based at Bridport Arts Centre and the week was spent exploring the story, characters, and how this can be portrayed on stage. The cast being Tamsin, Lynne, Simon, Henry, Caroline, and Ollie worked together to create some brilliant characters. They have given me lots of inspiration for my illustrations and design concepts.

The week for me began by hiring some costume of the period from The Arts University College At Bournemouth. The students from the third year will be creating the costume as part of their live project. Once the visuals and cut outs were up on the wall, I began creating some head pieces, adapting some hats, and getting the costumes prepared for our photo shoot at the end of the week. We also went through each scene, exploring the possible set layouts by using objects, tables, ladders, and some draped fabric to replicate what we may have in the final show. I also did a little shopping! I found some great second-hand shops and Pam’s was particularly useful. I found some antique tools and a little leather suitcase for the character Mary

Our week ended on Saturday at the lovely Abbotsbury Gardens for a promotional photo shoot. Alastair came and took some great shots of the chorus jumping around and running through the gardens generally causing mayhem! It was a successful week of creativity and exploration, I cannot wait to start realising it all for the show!

Jodie x

It was indeed picturesque, the perfect commencement on the road to what will be the most fabulous “The Secret Garden” that the world has ever seen (well, the venues we are touring to anyway, but I’m sure they’ll spread the word). The setting was the wonderful Dorset coast, the picturesque Bridport, good food, great company, early morning swims that made your insides alive and your outsides unappreciated and the copiously characterful Arts Centre. The surroundings of which would inspire anybody, even if you were doing a play about getting splinters in your feet! I jest, but it is a truly a wonderful setting and I’ve good memories of our performance of “Moonfleet”, but may be that is the problem.

When the pressures and distractions are against you…that is when things reach there most challenging and I don’t just mean the stomach churning situations such as having Simon’s mangled toes on my shoulder or the threat of Lynne head-butting me again during our ever expanding list of games not to mention Caroline’s description of the costumes she has had to wear! The fact that no-one disturbed our open rehearsal almost brought tears to my eyes and after accidently soaking myself with something called cider being forced to it a pizza with Roast Lamb on it started me wondering whether I should listen to the wanna-be Baptist version of parson Glennie who crying in the streets proved that he thankfully could not live up to the aforementioned legend! Of course one is left blushing whilst witnessing Tamsin and Simon’s warmup contortions and salvaging some pride in mine own paltry effort which is dissipated when sat on  a 2 metre high rocky stone wall as I feel those tears returning…Oh please take the picture soon!!! No wonder Olly didn’t come back up a second time! One might go-on, including Matt’s reiteration of “he didn’t come here on the Moonfleet tour!” and Jodie’s forlorn desire to be poked on Facebook. However the worst possible disturbance the week could have provided was cry of the airborne rat the seagull as a serious dramatic scene played out between Mary and the irrepressible COLIN, was ruined as I suddenly couldn’t separate John Trenchard from COLIN Craven (clearly George has the same problem0. THIS ISN’T MOONFLEET! THIS ISN’T MOONFLEET! THIS ISN’T MOONFLEET!!!!! One wonders why people haven’t tried baking Seagulls in a pie! Maybe in that there lies the answer!

Can’t wait till December.

Henry Douthwaite

Last week was spent working on a new Angel Exit show, The Secret Garden. We researched the book and developed ideas and scenes and tools and lots more as a good starting place to make the play in December. We spent the week creating and learning some delightful new songs, playing with a lovely fox and robin puppet and getting an idea of the world we want to create. It was marvellous to be back in a room with the Angel Exit family again and get to work with people I love.  If this week is anything to go by, then I reckon The Secret Garden will be the most joyous play I’ll have the pleasure of working on.

Simon Carroll-Jones