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Willersey Footlights Society

We produce regular stage plays in the Village Hall and are run by a committee with Beccie Williams as the current Chairman
852011 and Mary Gittings as the current Secretary 858601.

We are now shaking off the dust of the past problematic months and gearing up with future events in mind. We know we have many new residents in the village and some of you may wish to share your talents and skills with us. With this in mind, we invite you to come along to our newly polished village hall on Monday, the 4^th October at 8pm to exchange ideas and meet the existing team. You will be Very Welcome! If you need to know more about us do look online on the Village Facebook site or just key in Willersey footlights. Any queries just contact our secretary Mary Gittings.

Things are happening:
Well.covid did get in the way a bit, but we are now up and running towards another fabulous Footlights Show on Friday March 31^st and Saturday April 1^st Tickets were on sale on March 1^st contacting Alan Gittings by email on agittings@talk21.com or tel.858601/07734363670 to ensure you are not disappointed.

We present THE TV SHOW

This is an amusing take of some of our regular TV shows with plenty of music
Willersey Village Hall Friday March 31^st and Saturday 1^st April 2023 at 7:30 pm

Tickets - Adults £10, Children (Under 16) £6 from:
Alan Gittings 01386 858601/07734363670, Willersey Garage or The Bell Inn 01386 858405
Pay Bar (Cash only) Raffle
Proceeds to Charity

Plans are now underfoot for new production to take place in November 2022. With a sideways glance at Covid and our take on it, mixed in with a little romance, the usual song and dance numbers, the show is now coming together. We have happily welcomed a lot of new faces that have joined Footlights. A lot of the old faces are still there, looking a bit older now, Cathy is back as producer, Cissy and Ada are back, making their inspired appearance and doing something interesting with miles of fabric and yards of strong elastic. Tom Jelfs’s IT skills are bringing a new look to the show and putting a theatrical twist on things.

Yes you’ve guessed it, its all going to be its usual irreverent comic based nonsense!

The Company are now putting together ideas and thinking about planning rehearsals. As it stands, we plan to start fully committed rehearsals in September.
We shall keep you informed re our progress and in the autumn tickets for the new show will be available. Anyone out there with a yen to tread the boards we are still looking for help on stage or behind the scenes. So do get in touch you would be most welcome. Contact Mary. Secretary. marys.badger@btinternet.com Tel: 07711936976 01386858601

The Best of British

All those associated with Willersey Footlights would like to express our appreciation for the splendid support we received through tickets sales, raffle prizes and community support for putting on the show. As ever with Footlights performances, profits for the show always go towards supporting a worth cause. This year the village hall refurbishment is being supported, with the amount to be announced when the accounts are completed.
The illustrious Willersey Footlights took to the boards again with performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings 25^th to 27^th April in Willersey Village Hall. The show “The Best of British” was a miscellany of pure entertainment based on our National treasures. Tickets wwere available from February 1^st and could be obtained from Alan Gittings (tel. 01386 858601 mob. 07734363670) or from Willersey Stores.

Some photographs from Best of British. Click on the thumbnails for a larger vesrion.

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Poster for Best Of British Show by Willersey Footlights in April 2019.

The Story of Footlights......So Far!
In the summer of 1985 an appeal was put in the Parish Magazine inviting local organisations to “do a turn at the” forthcoming Harvest Supper. The school Parents and Teachers Association immediately took up the challenge and got busy organising a sketch, and after much ‘we could do better’ the Football Club committee decided to have a go too. The PTA's version of ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ was very entertaining if somewhat risqué for a Harvest Supper, the Football Club's rather pathetic attempt at Barbershop Singing was, at best awful but nevertheless extremely funny. Both attempts at entertaining were to leave the audience in tears, thankfully from laughter.

In the audience were the new postmaster Philip Simpson and his wife Trish, who thought as newcomers to the village they should be seen to support the local event. Well, after going along to what they thought was going to be a rather typical grin and bear it evening, they left having had a jolly good time and still chuckling at what they has seen. A few weeks later Phil met the ‘would be’ Barbershop boys in the Bell Inn and expressed his enjoyment at their performance; he also expressed his desire to join in on any future performances. The truth was that no one would ever ask them to perform again, so it was decided to form Willersey Footlights to put on their own show. Three months later our society was officially formed.

Phil's influence was enormous. As a former professional musician he had been there and done that, but loved the easy go attitude of the local enthusiasts. His bizarre scouse humour was at the root of most of the early Footlights shows. As you can see by our list of shows, we have had a go at most topics all of which have one thing in common; all have been a mixed bag of humorous sketches sprinkled with the odd attempts at trying to be serious. Our audiences who have supported our shows over the years do not come to witness artistically great performances. If so, they would go away disappointed but they do however come to see the cock-ups, the ad-libbing and people totally prepared to be made fools of.

The 22 shows put on by the Footlights have sold well over 5000 tickets and donated more than £16,000 to various charities. (Nearly 100 cast members over the years have performed over 300 sketches and attempted to sing over 100 songs.)

The Shows... 1986 - 2019

    Date

    2019          Best Of British

    2017          A Christmas Cracker

    2016          FootLights Through the Ages

    2014          FootLights at the Movies

    2013          Anything Goes

    2011          The Best of 25 Years

    2010          The Four Seasons

    2008          London

    2006          The Lost Secret

    2005          Footlight Follies

    2004          The Next Generation

    2001          The Best of Footlights

    1999          2000 A Real Oddity

    1997          The Wafta Awards

    1995          A Very Rough Guide to Britain

    1993          As Time Goes By 5000BC to 1993

    1992          End of the Pier Show

    1991          Around the World in 80 Minutes

    1990          Cinderalla 2

    1989          Hooray for Hollywood

    1987          39/45 War Show

    1986          Old Time Music Hall

A Christmas Cracker

Footlights Presented “A Christmas Cracker”.
Footlights performers were busy rehearsing for “A Christmas Cracker”, a pre-Christmas Spectacular performed on Saturday 25^th (7.30pm) and Sunday 26^th (3.00pm) November 2017 in Willersey Village Hall. Tickets were available from the Village Stores priced at £7 for adults and £5 for children. However tickets for children for Sunday's matinee performance, which were geared more towards a ‘family entertainment’, were priced at £3.00.

All those associated with Willersey Footlights would like to show our appreciation for the splendid support we received for our recent seasonal offering A Christmas Cracker'. We are delighted to be able to report that as a result we have been able to make a donation of £500 from our proceeds to Campden Home Nursing Trust.

Willersey Footlights Rehersal 2017