Tideswell Community Players
Tideswell Community Players, the amateur theatre group of Tideswell in the Peak District, United Kingdom was formed in 1929. They performed their first play, Ambrose Applejohn's Adventure, by Walter Hackett in 1930. Their first logo was the woodblock print pictured.
First performing at The Oddfellows Hall, they subsequently moved to the Methodist Hall. In the 1970s TCP moved to the United Reformed Hall and performed there until 2010. Proposed sale of the URC Hall and Church meant that in Spring 2011 they vacated the Hall with plans to perform in other venues until a revamped Fountain Square Hall (formerly the Methodist Hall) became available.
The group has performed about two plays every year since 1930, sometimes more, with only the occasional break. Celebrating 75 years of productions in 2005 with the classic thriller Wait Until Dark, and 80 years in 2010 with Happy End by Bertolt Brecht and Dorothy Lane (Elizabeth Hauptmann), with music by Kurt Weill.
European funding helped bring about a professionally directed production of Romeo and Juliet in Tideswell's Parish Church in the autumn of 2001.
Since 2002 the group has promoted professional theatre and music in the village as Tideswell Theatre by contracting directly with performers and has been leading part of the rural touring scheme for Derbyshire Live and Local.
Tideswell Community Players have formed spin-off groups such as the Tidza Guisers (mummers plays and tales and songs of old Derbyshire) and tours productions to festivals under the name of T-Pot Theatre Company, taking plays such as Art by Yasmina Reza 'Art' (play) to Buxton Festival Fringe and other venues.