Click here for past productions

Skegness Playgoers was founded on November 24th 1937 by a former member of Boston Playgoers.

The Society introduced performed playreadings to Skegness which had no scenery though they were costumed. The play was performed by reading from the script instead of memorising lines which enabled six plays to be presented over three months at an inclusive charge of five shillings (25p).

Monthly 'readings' continue in the present programme.

The original membership was 58 and rose steadily to over 100 in a very short time.

The first full length memorised production, "The Constant Nymph", took place in the Arcadia Theatre, Drummond Road, in March 1939.

With the outbreak of war in September 1939 the society moved to the Baptist Church Hall, where the 'readings' continued in the much smaller space which allowed scenery to be installed cheaply. Service personnel stationed in the town swelled membership including men billeted at H.M.S. Royal Arthur (The Butlin's Holiday Camp).

1946 saw a return to the Arcadia Theatre and a membership of over 800.

In 1949 an open One Act Play Festival was launched in the Pier Theatre. Fourteen drama groups entered and there were four awards: Best Group, Producer, Actor and Actress. The adjudicator was Mr Charles Thomas of the British Drama League.

In 1961 the Festival was extended to include full-length plays and since 1966 has been for full-length plays only.

Over the years competing teams have entered from seven counties, some as far away as Bristol and Manchester and regularly from the RAF stations in the area. Lincolnshire teams have however, been the mainstay of the Festival, some still competing after forty years.

Since 1949 the number of trophies has risen to thirteen, covering the whole spectrum of theatre, ranging from individual and group work to awards for backstage work and innovation, many donated by the competing teams themselves. The Festival is now held in the Embassy Theatre, Skegness.

The Skegness Festival is a member of the National Drama Festivals Association (NDFA) and since 1974 many of the winning teams have competed in the NDFA All-Winners Festival, including Skegness Playgoers who were runners-up with Uproar in the House, in 1979.

In later years Pantomimes were introduced into the repertoire, allowing the Society to raise funds to cover future programmes and productions. The highlights were two wonderful Cinderellas. The pantos grew to be a major commitment (with rehearsals on Christmas Day even!) and so were very reluctantly abandoned.

The demise of the Pier Theatre and the Arcadia Theatre has meant the Embassy is the only theatre available for our present productions, of two per year. The four monthly 'readings' take place in St Clement's College Hall.

For several reasons the season of 1997-1998 was remarkable:
Playgoers celebrated 60 Glorious Years with many old friends.
After many years of wanting to extend our activities to children's theatre there was an amalgamation with Skegness CADS (Children's Amateur Dramatic Society) to produce Skegness Playgoers CADS (Children's Amateur Drama Section).
The first evening of Youth one-act plays in the Festival began in 1998.
The 50th Festival took place with Scott Marshall adjudicating.
We got our first Grant Aid: £6000 from the National Lottery, to develop the youth festival and associated workshops.

Since then we have continued our membership of NDFA, NODA and DAW plus subscriptions to Amateur Stage and visits to professional and amateur productions. These have enabled members to keep abreast of changes and developments in theatre.

We put in a successful bid for £32000 from The European Social Fund for Adult Workshops and an Outreach Programme which went to three villages in 1998 with the Little Grimley Plays and 6 with Soapsud Island in 1999. The Community Play for the Millennium was Embracing Tides written by Margaret Dickinson and was funded with £10000 of Lottery money and £3000 from the Millennium Fund.

We have continued the performed readings enabling the Society to try out new ideas and innovations leading to a more exciting programme to offer our audiences. We have developed links with local writers by including the works of Margaret Dickinson, Joyce Smith, Micheal Cooper and Ken Blankley in our schedule, and we hope to do more. We entered the Bourne One Act Festival in 1998 and 2000 and have entered the Hull and Lincoln Festivals. We continue to 'Play Go'. We visit the Stamford Shakespeare most years.

Members' Evenings have become a recent popular feature, giving a chance for many of the 100+ members to perform in sketches, monologues, poetry and songs. Just such an evening celebrated Playgoers 65th birthday in 2002.

The major event of 2003 was a world Amateur premiere of Andrew Taylor's adaptation of Brief Encounter. This play co-incided on October 17th with the reopening of the Tea Room at Carnforth Station where most of the greatly-loved 1945 film was made. 2004 brought the performance of Oh What a Lovely War in May and June with a grant of over £400 from the Coastal Regeneration Fund and over £1000 from Awards4All to enable us to integrate music and sound effects more easily into this, and future productions.

We decided for 2005 to re-introduce One Act Plays into our festival without success, but in 2006 we had three entries. The Full Length Festival had Horncastle winning with "Brassed Off" and going to the NDFA finals to win the adjudicators prize for their atmospheric opening of the play.

The 2006 Youth Festival had six entries and a high standard judged by Jeff Brailsford of GoDA.

We continue to present our plays and Festivals and hope to do so for many years to come.

Next year sees our 59th Play Festival, our 70th Year and our 10th Youth Festival.