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So what will you be doing for your summer holiday this year?

Most people will opt for a couple of weeks on the beach, relaxing in the sun.   But each year the Riverside players rise with the lark to spend their annual leave setting up a show that’s rehearsed, staged and performed in just two weeks.

The Riverside Players are no ordinary theatrical company. Each year they meet to live and breathe all aspects of mounting a production.   Its a great burst of innovative energy and effort…and a race against time. We have a few precious days to build the set, make the costumes and learn the lines.

One year the set was still being painted as the audience were taking their seats!  Formed in 1951 by former students of the Central School of Speech and Drama, the Riverside Players have expanded and changed over the years, members now include politicians, airline pilots, and engineers. 

The Riverside Players are fifty-six years old this year not bad for a company who have no permanent base, whose members live all over the world (we have members living in Denmark, Australia and the USA) and who do one production a year! 

The Company was founded by students of the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1951. 

The Riverside Players began as a barnstorming group who played in the villages of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.  Changing circumstances and larger productions led to the present system of living and working in a single venue and over the years we have played at Culham, Stamford, Bognor Regis, Bloxham and Pangbourne.  We have also taken productions to Copenhagen. 

We think our company is probably unique.  Each summer a group of people from many walks of life and of ages from six months to over eighty come from all over Britain (and beyond) to spend two weeks living and working together with the single, shared aim of staging a large-scale piece of theatre.  We start with a green field site when we arrive on our first Sunday afternoon and two weeks later we depart leaving only memories and a few marks in the grass. I believe that theatre is one of the greatest team efforts of all and our way of working means we have to be a very efficient team indeed. 

The whole experience is exhilarating, stimulating, satisfying, exhausting and thoroughly enjoyable. The Riverside Players has grown because members have brought their families along and have introduced people who they feel would enjoy and contribute to the company.  Many of us come back year after year and lifelong friendships have been formed. I am sure many of our faces are familiar to you. 

Inevitably the company is changing all the time and sadly we have lost several of our earliest members over the last few years or so but, as you will see, the next generation is coming along nicely!We do like to establish good links with the local community so, if any of you think that you are potential Riverside Players, I would love to hear from you. If you would like your name to be added to our mailing list, please let one of the front-of-house team know.