WOW!! 4 NODA’S!!

Our award for Best Musiacal Show

You could say that, after one of the best evenings that the JTC has ever known.

We are delighted that we won 3 NODA AWARDS for our recent production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

These included Best Musical Show, Best Actress in a Musical for Aimee Horwich and Best Poster for Howard Yaffe.

We also won 1 NODA AWARD for Best Programme, again for Howard Yaffe for our recent play, Hobson’s Choice.

A real clutch of awards you might say.

The black tie event was held on 26th January 2013 at The Place Hotel in Manchester and was attended by 180 members of over 23 other amateur societies. So to say we had stiff competition is an understatement.

At no other time would you have a room full of such talent, both in acting and singing, unless of course you are at the Oscars!!!

We will now be attending the North West National Award ceremony in Blackpool in May 2013 where our 4 winning categories will be entered again. Very exciting stuff.

Well done to all the deserved winners and to Robert Margolis and Debbie Hilton for helping us achieve our unprecedented Best Musical Award.

A delighted Aimee Horwich with her Best Actress in a Musical NODA Award

The grateful recipients were:

The Nicky Alliance Day Care Centre

The Christie

Bury Cancer Care Unit

JADDS

Langdon College

The standing ovations that were received every night could not have been more deserving. Aimee, Ashley, Serge and Merton were all outstanding and with a superb all singing and all dancing chorus behind them this was a recipe that just couldn’t fail to please everyone.

From ages 8 to 88 no one could have left the theatre without the biggest smile on their faces and tunes buzzing around their heads. Thanks must go to a wonderful production team too. Robert Margolis and Debbie Hilton were truly amazing as director and choreographer respectively. David Wilson put together an awesome 12 piece orchestra and with staging by yours truly the results speak for themselves.

Sold out houses every night were the norm and with the last 2 shows also claiming this amazing feat, maybe live amateur theatre is having a revival in these modest, economic times. Hopefully we won’t get complacent, but will continue to pull out all the stops in giving our wonderful audiences plenty to go home and tell their friends and neighbours about.

Shelley Blackston, Phil Greene, Howard Yaffe, Deborah Finley and Becky Brown receiving our award

We were thrilled to be nominated for 2 NODA North West awards in the “Best Staging” category for our production of Ghetto and for “Best Programme”. Ghetto was staged in January 2011 at the Martin Harris Centre in Manchester with a wonderfully talented cast. Directed by the very talented Arden Sills who, by the way, is going to produce our next play, Hobson’s Choice, in November this year.

The Award ceremony was held at the Hilton Hotel in Blackpool on May 6th and we were very excited at the prospect of adding yet another well-deserved award to our Trophy shelf!

What a joy and honour to receive the Best Programme Award.

Well done everyone but especially Howard Yaffe for his superb brochure design.

Go JTC!!!!!

Some of the Joseph cast in rehearsals

Welcome to the first post on the JTC’s blog. In an effort to push, pull or otherwise drag the Theatre Company into the 21st century we’ve decided to embrace the latest in social media by revamping our website, creating a facebook page thingy (whatever that is) and sign up for Twitter. We hope that you enjoy reading our escapades and support us by attending our productions.

As you may know by now, our next show is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which is licenced to us with the kind permission of Lord Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group.

In mid December 2011, a casting call was held and many old and new faces attended our rehearsal room to find out details of the production. Joseph really is a truly amazing show, a complete musical with no dialogue at all.

Ashley Margolis and Aimee Horwich who play Joseph and The Narrator

Competition for some of the leading parts was fierce and inevitably there were one or two disappointments. We always try and accommodate everyone’s wishes but sometimes there are simply not enough parts to go around. Despite this, everyone was eager to be a part of the production and rehearsals are now well under way.

Robert Margolis our veteran Director returns in his truly unique style to lavish his years of experience on the cast and shape them to perfection. If you haven’t ever worked with Rob before it can be quite an eye-opener and many are intimidated by his style. But his bark is much worse than his bite and underneath it he’s a bit of a pussy cat. We’re truly blessed to have the benefit of his directorship.

Lord Vader Margolis is ably assisted by our resident Choreographer Debbie Hilton, who co-incidentally, happens to be the Dark Lord’s sister. Debbie has helped the JTC many, many times and has ship- shaped and Bristol fashioned many a cast into performing some amazing dance routines for us. Having the two of them work together is a delightful experience.