Children make magic in West End garden

 More than 60 children – with some adult help – transformed a West End Garden into the magic world of Peter Pan. The musical production on Saturday 6 August, held captive, a wide variety of residents and friends in the Banavie and Turnberry Rd Gardens behind Hillhead Secondary School.

After only five days of rehearsal, the summer school pupils of Theatre Studio performed a version of Peter Pan’s Adventures. First indoors at Partick Burgh Hall on Friday and in the private gardens on Saturday where early showers demanded brollys but the sun soon came out.

With a full complement of Victorian family, Tinkerbell fairy, Indians, Pirates, Mermaids, Lost Boys and even an Alligator, the cast sang and acted with great gusto. They also helped create the music, props and costumes. Ages ranged from 5 to 16 with some likely talents showing.

Said Producer Joanna Harte, founder of Theatre Studio: ‘ This is the third year we have done a summer project. Previously we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tales of Alice. Each year the children amaze me especially with how quickly they learn and develop their parts.’ Added Joanna: ‘I write and direct the shows and try to make sure each child always has at least one thing to say or do so each participant feels truly involved the whole time. This year we had Rebecca Oliver as our morning school supervisor and assistant director, Katrina Nimmo as Musical Director and Joanne Fullarton as morning school assistant and props maker.’

Under musical director Katrina,who composed the music for the hour long production, a key board, several xylophones, 2 cellos, 3 violins and 3 drums as well as percussion provided by the 5-year-old Indian tribe and a bell for Tinkerbell were all tunefully played by the young music makers.

Said one of the children afterwards: ‘It was great fun to do this. And I made new friends.’

The large audience of parents, grandparents, relatives, friends and neighbours all agreed this was a very fine production – you could even say a magic one!

 The Theatre Studio was set up three and half years ago in the West End of Glasgow. It runs weekly drama and musical theatre classes, a children’s and adult choir, an adult jazz class, and holiday projects in February, Spring and Summer. The children go from scripts to performance in a week! See website www.glasgowtheatrestudio.com

Hit the ground running and win a copy of Played In Glasgow

Football grounds, bowling greens, dog tracks, ‘doocots’, racecourses, blaes pitches, athletics tracks and swimming clubs; our city has had them all. Ged O’Brien’s book, Played in Glasgow, is a modestly-sized but mighty anthology that covers every sporting nook and cranny since Victorian times.
This is part of the superb Played In Britain series,  backed by Historic Scotland and English Heritage. The volume is subtitled ‘charting the heritage of a city at play’, and is a store of information for those of us who choose to look beyond the elegant stone facades, towering steel skeletons and pretty, manicured lawns.
Beyond Hampden Park, the home of Queen’s Park and Scotland’s international team, there are retrospectives on the homes of Rangers, Celtic, Partick Thistle, Clyde and the bullish ranks of Glasgow Junior football.
O’Brien also looks at the homes of the city’s many rugby teams and enjoys our rich bowling heritage, all recorded with excellent photography and detailed with the care of a first-class reference work.
Played In Glasgow has a section on swimming baths and clubs, from the elegant but forgotten municipal pools of the late 1800s to their 21st century heirs and the architectural wonders of the Western and the Arlington Baths clubs.
The book also strikes a nostalgic tone with a look at the city’s remaining red ash ‘blaes’ pitches and takes a flight into the world of the Glasgow pigeon fancier and their home-built doocots. Neither does it neglect cricketing heritage nor pass by the huge achievements of our many athletes over the years.
With one eye on Glasgow’s place as host for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, this book is a roadmap that shows us how far we have come, what we have won, what we have lost and hints at what could yet be.
A blend of social and cultural history and a treat with archive and modern photography, sometimes evocative and occasionally controversial, Played In Glasgow is an essential addition to the book collection of anyone who has an eye for their city’s sporting heritage.

LOCAL NEWS GLASGOW has three copies of Played in Glasgow to give away.
For a chance to win your own copy, just write and tell us which football teams play their home games at Hampden Park.

Send your answers by email to competitions@localnewsglasgow.co.uk. Please put ‘PLAYED IN GLASGOW COMPETITION’ in the header field and remember your name, address and a daytime telephone number. You can also enter by snail mail, please write with your answer to Played In Glasgow Competition, Local News Glasgow, YAM Publications, Third Floor, 142 West Nile Street G1 2RQ. Don’t forget all your contact details.

This competition closed at 9am on Monday, May 24.