Press Officer Rick Purnell writes ….

Teignmouth Probus club is fortunate to have enjoyed several outstanding and interesting speakers for 2023, thanks to our speaker finder Terry Jackson and Brenda Loosemoor’s amusing and entertaining lifetime aspirations and successes of her experiences with the local and regional amateur dramatics scene and her talk ‘Life on the Wicked Stage’, was no exception. As a child, she was always ‘among theatre folk’ at her Mum’s boarding house in Bristol. On moving to Torbay, having been rejected at audition for a ‘King & I’ production, an advert from the then newly formed Shiphey Amateur Dramatic Society caught her eye and was awarded a part as a pantomime fairy.  Then followed promotion from being the back-end to the front-end of the pantomime donkey. Always hungry for better and leading parts, Principal Boy came some 20 years later. In between times, amusing incidents were shared among many parts played with the Shiphey Stage, Toads, Dartington Players, Babbacombe & Princess Theatres.

Brenda only became ‘professional’ when invited to be a roleplay character for a local ‘Murder Mystery’ Company and was paid for each event and is still so doing. This gained her the chance for an Equity Card to have parts in commercial theatre. Our press officer, Rick Purnell, picked up his ears as a practicing lawn green bowler with the story about being an ‘extras’ in the Film ‘Blackball’ a comedy about a local ‘unorthodox’ lawn bowls player filmed at Kings Bowling Club Torquay in 2003. Brenda's other TV adventures included being a playground teacher in ‘Casualty’ and a cleaner in ‘Wycliffe’.

It was interesting how parts enjoyed had moved on as age advanced and now attracts more comic oriented and roles of ‘that older age group’ like ‘Mrs Slocombe’, grannies and more mature ladies.

Brenda did say that she never did find that ‘den of sin and iniquity’ and concluded with a rendition of Noel Coward’s ‘Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage Mrs Worthington’

The vote of thanks was complimentarily amusing given by Life Member Harry Sullivan, who also echoed some of his thespian adventures. The meeting concluded with hot pasties and a pint.

The next meeting on 15th November at Richard Newton Hall Community Centre, will be a talk by Pauline Dean about “The Lost Pubs of Teignmouth”.