January 1, 2006

“I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play.”

- Albert Einstein, New Year's Greeting to Americans, 1931

The Spitfire Grill team is looking for assistance with costumes and makeup. Please call or email Sally Bull at (978) 369-2042) to be a part of this exciting show.

John Small will play one of the two Venticelli in Amadeus at the Vokes Theatre. Performance dates are March 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, and 18. Visit Vokes' website, www.vokesplayers.org, or call (508) 358-4034, for additional information.

Sally Bull has 35 tickets for Wicked at the Opera House for Sunday, May 7, 2006 at 7:30. The cost of each ticket, which includes bus transportation to the Opera House and back to 51 Walden Street, plus refreshments, is $98. Email Sally.

Leslie Wagner plays the role of Madame De Volanges in the Hovey Players production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.  Performances are January 13, 14, 20, 21, 26, 27 and 28 @ 8pm and January 22nd @ 2pm.  Hovey Players (www.hoveyplayers.com) is located at the Abbot Theater, 9 Spring Street, Waltham.  For tickets please call 781-893-9171,

Our Back Pages

10 years ago: Our current president, Judith Broggi, makes her Concord Players debut in George Washington Slept Here.

25 years ago: Dorothy Schecter directs John McAuliffe as the Chocolate Soldier in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man.

50 years ago: Yet an earlier incarnation of the Hibernian Bard of Barbed Observation: The Concord Players puts on GBS’s You Never Can Tell.

100 years ago: Ibsen is buried and Beckett is born. The second largest theater district in the country (after New York’s Broadway), is destroyed in the San Francisco Fire. Eight theaters are incinerated.

Corrections

Contrary to our announcement last month, Sarah Telford, of the cast of The Spitfire Grill, is not a newcomer to The Concord Players.  She played the part of Snow White in the Players' June 1983 production of Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, back when her maiden name was Sarah Robinson.  Telford is her married name.

Omitted from The Concord Players’ new directory: Chris and Susie Davies, 109 Nimrod Drive, Concord, (978) 369-3594, cd2321@aol.com.

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“It is not your business to be happy tonight, but to carry the flag to victory. It doesnt matter if you are tired, frightened, hurt, miserable: it wouldnt matter if you hadnt slept for a week and were heartbroken and desperate. Tonight will never come again. If you come on with seventy-seven sharp swords sticking in your heart, I should still say you must play as if you were never to play again even if every word drove one of the swords an inch deeper.

After all, do you suppose you play the worse when you are not enjoying yourself? Ask the audience, and they will tell you that you play better. Ask me, and I will tell you that every mood has its value, and that the failure of inspiration, though it may take the happiness out of a few passages that are little secrets between some half dozen of us, gives force to other and perhaps harder passages. But whether or no, you are in for it now; and if anyone dares encourage you, WITHER him.”

- George Bernard Shaw to Ellen Terry

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The deadline for In The Wings is the third Tuesday of every month.

Thomas Caron, editor