Saturday May 20th

In 2012 at the Sandisfield Arts Centre some 20 people took to the stage [many for the first time] to perform in a play written especially to celebrate Sandisfield’s 250th Anniversary. As a result of this experience the Sandisfield Players, a genuine community theatre, was born.

Since then the group has been augmented by players from Otis, Great Barrington, Egremont and Norfolk. In our short 5 year history, in order to keep as many actors as possible on stage, we have focused on plays with large casts such as Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”, Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood”, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, and excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays.

In June 2016 the Players took “Our Town” to Cornwall, England where they performed at the beautiful open-air Minack Theatre.

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953

Under Milk Wood was probably the Welsh poet’s greatest achievement and one of the great plays of the 20th century. Completed just before his death in in 1953, aged 39, it was written as a play for voices commissioned by the BBC for radio.

The play encompasses one day in the life of a small fictitious Welsh fishing village full of eccentric characters. The village is Llareggub, fictitious Welsh, spell it backwards and you get the joke!

The play begins at night when the narrators guide us through the dream worlds of the sleeping villagers and then into their waking daily antics until dusk and night once more descends.

It is a work of dazzling poetry and full of sly and bawdy humor. And shinning through it all is the love Dylan Thomas has for the eccentric characters he created.

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