Our Committee
Our committee is voted in each year at our March AGM.
CHAIR
Janice Keith
VICE CHAIR
Elaine Carpenter
SECRETARY
Jane Lindekam
TREASURER
James Tolputt
Jane Elliot
Elaine Horne
Pete Korabik
GUS – Boxford Drama Group Mascot
I started my illustrious acting career with my stage debut in A Letter from the General when I fell out of the cupboard. Since then, I have been the leading light in every BDG show. But darlings, being the BDG mascot isn’t as easy as it looks. OK, I get to go to all the parties, fun days, annual BBQ, the AGM and even listen in on all the goings on at the committee meetings, but they keep begging me to be in every play, panto and theme night. I guess it’s because I know my lines and all my entrances and exits with no rehearsals. Like all consummate professional bears, I am always word perfect and never put a paw wrong. Anyway, let’s face it, I’m clearly the star of all the shows!
How It All Began
William Laurence Macauley French
1932 – 1997
In 1972, Laurence French, having just moved with his wife Doreen and 5 children into a new home in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, was posted to a new job in Ipswich, Suffolk!
He had been moved by his firm to take up a senior position and was forced, for the time being, to commute home for weekends, living at the Fleece in Boxford during the working week.
Eventually he and Doreen did commission a new house in Edwardstone but in the intervening time Laurence missed his life long hobby and interest – acting.
Since university at Oxford and even at school he had been a member of various amateur groups and life in Boxford was missing the vital ingredient of an am dram group. Never dreaming what it would spawn he inserted an ad in The Boxford News, (now the Box River News) requesting those interested in joining a new Drama Group to contact him.
The response was encouraging to say the least and after an initial meeting at the Fleece of those interested the first tentative steps were taken to formalise the group.
Thus Boxford Drama Group was officially formed with an elected committee and a legally binding constitution on 23rd October 1974.
The following people responded to Laurence’s advertisement and all paid the first set of subscriptions that Autumn of 1974:
Laurence French, Herbert Beven, David Jones, Bente Connellen, Patrick Connellen, Jane Burnes. Mary Penson, Jack Robinson, Ann Kingsbury, Karen French, Viv French.
The following summer Boxford Drama Group put on its very first production Temptation Sordid – Virtue Rewarded.
This melodrama/comedy was performed in the courtyard of The Fleece with the audience on bales of hay on a hot Summers Evening, and Boxford Drama Group was born!