Sessay Drama Group has a history that stretches back over 25 years. During this time, it has produced one act plays and revues but has recently settled into an annual pantomime, usually performed the first week in December.

Pantomimes are an almost uniquely British genre can trace its history back to the street theatre of the middle ages with its clowns and harlequins. A mixture of comedy acting and songs, bright costumes and sets, and where cast permits, cross gender role reversal all come together into a single, usually full length, production. One thing is constant throughout all productions. Good will always triumph over Evil.

Enough theorising, pantomimes are meant to be fun, and in the main, this is the case, but not always. Believe me when I say that I have watched shows that were so bad they were funny and some that were so bad that they weren't! Before anyone asks, none of these were produced by Sessay Drama Group. The group in question, which shall remain nameless did provide my favourite pantomime joke to date. It went something like this.

Dame You're room is up the stairs first on the left. (pause) And watch the cat!
Man Why?
Dame Well, we haven't got a television, so you may as well watch the cat.

Marvellous!

Sessay Drama Group now has its own website!

It's located at www.sessaydrama.org.uk. The pages there are of a more generic nature than those here which are the result of my own observations.

If you go there now, then you will find that almost all of the pictures are the same as here. This is only temporary as I intend to make a clear distinction between the two. I have started by using unique pictures for the 2000 pantomime on both sites. It's not fully completed yet as I am in the process of coercing members of the group to provide comment on some of the earlier productions.

That being said, it's definitely worth a visit.

The links to the side are to details pictures and in some cases other resources of the pantomimes over the past seven years. Current has 2002-, while Archive 1 1997-2001 and Archive 2 has 1993 to 1996. Following the link to The Vaults will show pictures from before that time. The first has pantomimes while the second has mainly one act plays and revues. Both hailing from the '80s.

I hope you enjoy some of them.

On a personal note, it has been loads of fun looking back at the books of photographs that were kindly loaned to me by Heather Corner. Without them there would be a whole lot of text with no pictures. And rather boring that would be!

I guess that the following paragraph could be written about any of the hundreds of amateur dramatic groups throughout the country. If anyone, who lives in the Sessay area would like become involved at any level then please mail me here and I will pass on the details to our chairman.