Rose Street Theatre Club will shortly celebrate its 25th Anniversary.
Rose Street Theatre Club celebrates 25 years in 2023 – how did it all come about?
Timeline:
20th March 1998
Rose Street Theatre Club was formed when a letter was sent to members of Rose Street Methodist Church setting out proposals for the formation of a Theatre Club providing there was enough interest. We received over 100 positive replies.
The original committee was Brenda Gulliford (Chair), Tony King (Secretary) and Neville Amos (Treasurer) soon to be joined by Tony Weston arranging theatre bookings. The membership fee was set at £5.
27th May 1998
The first trip was to High Wycombe Swan Theatre to see ‘Sleeping Beauty on Ice’ - we didn’t manage to fill a 35-seater coach but the trip was a great success.
June 1998
We soon realised that to fill a coach we needed a wider membership so invitations were sent out to other churches in the area from which came another 50 members. From then on, although we never advertised, membership grew until it peaked at 535 around 2015 and remained about that level until the pandemic hit in early-2020. At one time we had a ‘waiting list’ for membership as on some occasions we could fill three coaches - but realised that going above this number was difficult to manage.
March 2020
Like many organisations we were badly hit by the pandemic which caused us considerable work in either repaying members for seats they had booked to shows that were now cancelled or obtaining credit notes for future shows. It took time and effort and a lot of patience to obtain the refunds and credits – but we succeeded.
October 2021
When we came out of the pandemic and started to arrange events again, we realised how things had changed. A lot of our members were no longer wanting to go out in the evenings along with which, sadly, many of the elderly had died. As a goodwill gesture, we decided to extend membership without an additional fee until August 2022.
January 2022
Resuming after the pandemic, we managed - often with considerable additional effort - to fill a coach but it became obvious that we needed new members to make things run more smoothly. Hence, membership was offered to the wider community from which we had a good response and membership stands at 320 in late 2022.
We are confident about the future as we realise what RSTC means to so many who have formed friendships that have extended far beyond the club’s activities. It’s also the only social life that many of our members enjoy; they have told us ‘it’s a lifeline’. If, therefore, you have friends of neighbours who would like to join then please contact Tony King via the Contact Form on this website.