Saturday, March 10, 2018

CURTAIN ABOUT TO RISE ON BRIGG MUSIC & DRAMA FESTIVAL 2018 IN BRIGG




North Lincolnshire Music and Drama Festival 2018 will open in Brigg on Monday, March 12th. Music classes will run from then until Thursday the 15th.
Drama classes will operate from March 19th to the 22nd.
The traditional end-of-festival concert is to be held on Saturday, March 24th, when the Mayor of North Lincolnshire, Coun Peter Clark, will be in attendance from 2.30pm.
Venues being used are the new Vale Academy, off Atherton Way, and St John's Church, in the town centre.
The festival can trace its history back to 1900.
Find out more about this major feature of the Brigg cultural calendar through this link...


Many of us who attended Brigg County Primary School, in Glebe Road, during the 1960s were 'persuaded' to enter the verse speaking classes at the music festival at this time of year. You had to learn a particular poem and run through your performance a few times with the hard-pressed class teacher, who probably had much better things to do with a class of well over 30 to look after.
Then, on the big day, you walked (with parent in tow) ever so nervously to the Corn Exchange - now sadly gone - and awaited your turn to perform.
Pitted against you would be children from Brigg Prep and the Catholic School, plus (and this was always a mystery to me) one or two from the tiny village of Nettleton (near Caistor).
Eventually, your turn would arrive and you had to climb wooden steps at the side of the hall before inching your way across to the exact centre of the stage to await your cue from the adjudicator.
He, or she, would be sitting some distance away - in the centre of the Corn Exchange - still busily writing comments about the last 'performer' onto a special sheet.
Then it was time to start your rendition - hoping desperately you did not 'dry' as the acting profession calls it - and have to be prompted with the next line.
For that would mean a swift end to any hopes of glory - a bit like hitting the kerb while trying a three-point turn on the driving test.
With the eyes of all those mums on you in the audience, it was a nerve-racking experience. 

Years later, when working for the Lincolnshire & South Humbeside Times at 57 Wrawby Street,  it was necessary to report on the music and drama festival, offering a complete results service, plus comments from the adjudicator. This was, after all, a major event for the entire area.
For many folk still living in Brigg, their main memories of the Corn Exchange will relate to the music and drama festival.
It was not the world's most attractive building, and not particularly old - only dating back to Victorian times. But it could stage big events...lots of room for 'bums on seats'.

It was removed early in the 1990s by Glanford Borough Council.
 

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