Red Sauce Theatre Company teamed up with Film Crew 4U CIC and Global Music Visions CIC, and Owl XL CIC to stage a performance to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
The free show was performed across June 6 and 7 in Portsmouth and Drayton, and the majority of the cast was made up of adults with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Titled The Promise, the show was based around the speech that the then Princess Elizabeth gave to the Empire and Commonwealth on her 21st birthday.
Extracts were also included from a poem written by a Portsmouth woman who, as a young girl, met the Princess before she became Queen.
The collaboration, which received funding from the Arts Council England Let’s Create Jubilee Fund, and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Foundation, gave the cast members an opportunity to learn more about the whole process of putting on a performance.
Film Crew 4U, which teaches people from disadvantaged backgrounds how to produce films, filmed the rehearsals and the final show and and taught the cast more about video production.
Global Music Visions offers visually impaired and disabled people music workshops and produced the audio for the performance, showing the cast through the whole process.
The idea behind the performance was to help the inclusive theatre group, the professional actors, and the collaborative partners to learn new skills and meet people while building their confidence.
Founder of Red Sauce Theatre Company, Rachel Goodall said: ‘We’ve seen the cast come leaps and bounds over the six weeks of this project, their confidence has improved, they’ve become great friends and have learned so much about the entire production of a live performance. Without this collaboration, this would not have been possible, so I’m hugely grateful to Billy Stevenson and the team from Film Crew 4U, and David Shervill and the team from Global Music Visions for their hard work during this project.
The shows took place at the Studio at Portsmouth Guildhall on Monday, June 6 from 2pm until 3pm, and at The Drayton Centre on Tuesday, June 7 from 4pm until 5pm.
