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The Good Old Days Before the mists of time
swallow us all up completely, I have been asked to set down a brief account
of the origins of Pirate Productions a.s.b.l. It all started with a performance
of - guess what - "The Pirates of Penzance" by the Quite a few of the jokes in that show were engendered in the same way, but this one stuck. "Aladdin" was staged in the Casino, which became our spiritual home for the next several shows. It had several disadvantages, not least the acoustics, which inspired some most ingenious schemes to improve the audibility of the chorus. There was only one changing room , which was perforce communal. Ladies and Gentlemen politely averted their gaze, while the rest of us feasted our eyes, but there were no complaints. Peter Carr-North used to award a prize for such achievements as "the biggest pair of underpants" and that sort of thing. You can imagine. The next show was "The
Beggars Opera". It was a noble effort, but so much depends on the
audience hearing the words that efforts were redoubled to improve the
acoustics. The next show was "The Mikado", which was dominated
literally by a huge Japanese fan on stage. This acted as a sounding board,
which really helped us to put the show across. The previous shows, including
"Pirates", had been directed with professional skill by Jackie
Caminer, who then went back to We have always given the
proceeds of our shows to some charity. I'm sure this was a big factor
in securing a audience in those days. We were
operating on a shoestring, but people used to comment that we were all
obviously enjoying ourselves on stage and that came through even if the
words didn't. The money mostly went to the charity general fund, but two
specific projects I recall were that we built a school in
We have always been blessed with good musicians. I shall never forget waiting for the curtain to go up on "Pirates of Penzance" and being amazed by the quality of sound that the conductor, Robin Alder, elicited from the orchestra. Like the actors, those musicians stayed together, and are now known as the highly successful Luxembourg Philharmonia. The committee meetings and the AGM's were lively affairs, lots of enthusiastic people all putting forwards their ideas. The main difficulty was to obtain a consensus on which brilliant suggestion to adopt, as we couldn't so everything as once. It was a proud moment when we graduated to the theatre in Esch-sur-Alzette. At last we had a setting which was worthy of our talents, which had improved considerably over the "Casino" years. Most importantly, our faithful audience followed us to Esch, which we hadn't been sure they would do. Pirates had always been a team effort, and so I tried not to mention too many names. However, I must pay a tribute to our gallant helmsman Edward Seymour, a founder-member like myself, who was very far-seeing and guided us in masterly fashion in those early days when the pirate ship was a very small craft, and not nearly as seaworthy as she is now. There has been a great turnover in the people involved in Pirates since those early days, and it is good to see new member appearing all the time. The Grand Old Duke of York climbed another mountain, and so it goes on. Break a leg, everyone! [* For those who don't know the scrolls joke, here it is: 'Have you got the scrolls?' 'No, I always stand this way' ] Roy Green
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