Drama for Old Ladies

Over the last year or so, I have had a growing urge to try drama, but a weekly two-bus trek to East Oxford (I don't drive) for the type of courses I was interested in deterred me.

So, what do you know, only a five, maybe six-minute walk from my house is the Dukes Theatre that offers - as well as plays and arthouse cinema - all sorts of drama courses: ones for kids, one for people with autism, one for gypsy children.....

Unfortunately, I didn't fit into any of the categories. The closest was the Over Fifty-fives group.

"I'm almost fifty-three," I said in my best old lady voice to the guy on the phone. "Do you think I might possibly be allowed to try it if I promise to wear my most frumpy clothes?"

"Oh, go on then," he said.

So today I tried it - and really liked it. A bunch of feisty and far-from-frumpy people from 55 to 70 (plus?) and a very enthusiastic male teacher from The Wirral. His plan is to team us up after a few weeks with.....eek.....the teenage group (Year 11s to be precise) to work on an inter-generational piece and perform it at the theatre at the university. ("There's loads of funding for this sort of thing," he told us. That's an advantage of living in a more socially diverse area, I guess).

The theme is going to be Time, using true stories from our lives: us
rewinding to our lives as teenagers and them fast-forwarding to their lives as old people.

I'm not sure how excited the teenagers will be about working with old gits, but I'm well up for it!

*Newsflash* Jim had had to leave Lancaster prematurely today and go back to Witney on a rescue mission involving Fred and cars and money and stuff. Fred is fine (if an idiot) but it's all a bit messy.