"This February saw the annual return of the Rostra Old Guard to Bangor for their 17th annual reunion. Once again old friends reunited, and new friendships were forged in a week of nostalgia and sightseeing. We all know it is hard to leave Bangor, and the fact Rostra alumni have been coming back ‘home’ every year since 2010 shows this.
On Thursday 19th February we met as arranged in the Menai pub on College Road to commence our 12th 48 Hour Shakespeare Project. This began way back in 2012 with an abridged performance of Henry V, but while participation has increased over the years, the ‘rules’ of the project have remained remarkably similar. Each year a selection of pre-edited Shakespeare plays are submitted in identical brown envelopes. Only the editor of each script knows what they have prepared and typically shows are edited to a still-hefty hour and a half to two hour running length. Once the play is chosen it is cast, with nobody allowed to play a part that they have played before, and with the show having to go on, ready or not, 48 hours later at 7:30pm on the Saturday.
Just before 7:30pm members of Rostra (both current and former) gathered around as a script was randomly selected and charities were chosen to be beneficiaries of 100% of the door takings for the show. This year’s charities included Jersey Hospice Care, Shelter Cymru, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, the Stroke Association and Cerebral Palsy care. Each charity had a personal importance to at least one member of the group which added both meaning and a genuinely moving atmosphere to the moment. We were all determined to raise as much as we could for these charities.
As the countdown hit precisely 7:30, author, co-founder of the Rostra Reunion and the 48 Hour Shakespeare Project, tore open the envelope to reveal that the group would be performing Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night! This was a very happy choice indeed for the twelfth such project. Editor of the script, Julia Hall, was especially delighted as she was also cast as Viola. The play was to be directed by Rachel Dunbar, assisted by current Rostra members Avery and Daniel in co-direction and production, symbolic of the collaborative effort between past and present. Within 15 minutes all parts had been cast by a variety of current and former Rostra members and the group settled into its first read-through of the script.
And so, as has become tradition over the last decade and more, the familiar pattern of frantic line-learning and urgent production meetings proceeded with just about everyone going to bed late and rising early to make the most of the limited time available. Just as traditionally, the cast and crew reconvened in Mike’s Bites for breakfast and more line learning as the staff looked on bewildered at how the entire Café had been taken over by a bunch of chattering am-dram veterans. For the remainder of Friday the group used any available space to begin rehearsing the play. By the time the sun had set that evening there had been a full run-through and we relocated to the actual performance space in JP Hall, College Road. On entering the actors found a hive of activity as stage crew painted backgrounds, rigged lights and sorted costumes. It was a perfect example of organised pandemonium, with Old Guard veterans like Andy “Buzz” Burrell leading the lighting rig, giving lessons alongside the very newest alumni like Joely Sharpe-Harris. More than 20 years separate the youngest and oldest Rostra Old Guard, showing what an extended family it has become. Incredibly, just over halfway into the production process another full rehearsal was held, with a surprising number of actors off-script, if shakily so.
As Saturday dawned a number of us, the author included, awoke blinking and exhausted into the dawn’s light, wondering if they were still young enough to put themselves through the process once more. Before the mind could conjure a response the whole crew were back in JP Hall for more rehearsals, lectures curtailed by the weekend to allow us full use of the space. Lines were stumbled-over, songs were sung, mock-combat engaged in, with only minimal harm caused by martial artist Jade Davey’s Sebastian to the author’s Toby Belch. Imitation hedgerows were assembled and dis-assembled in pitch darkness with a precision that would impress the RAF’s Red Arrows under the able command of Julie Walsh, who knows every inch of the JP stage down to the squeakiest floorboard. With all that done the show would go on.
At exactly 7:30 on Saturday 21st February the house lights dimmed on a good-sized audience, all of whom knew that what they were about to see would be as polished a performance as had been possible but with the added thrill of it all being performed on the knife’s-edge of under-rehearsal, sleep deprivation and a healthy amount of stage fright. In an adrenaline-turbocharged blur the performance went by with everyone (almost) hitting their marks, entering on cue and reciting lines that might not always have been in correct iambic pentameter but nevertheless got each scene from one plot-point to the next.
Tickets to the performance are always free, with audience members only paying what they think the performance was worth, and happily this audience was as generous with their money as they had been with their laughter. During the curtain call, the bittersweet realisation came to all involved that the end of the show also marked the end of another brilliant reunion week. Once the stage had been vacated it could finally be revealed that the show had raised a record-breaking £960 for our charities, a sum that we hope will have a tangible impact on the causes they support.
The 48 Hour Shakespeare Project, and the Rostra Old Guard will return in 2027!"
Tim Cloke (Modern & Contemporary History, 2007)
