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The Kelvin Players have always set the highest possible standards and they can surely claim that, over the years, they have counted among their members "the brightest and the best" of amateur talent in Bristol. At the same time, finely balanced against this has been the constant endeavour to encourage and train less experienced members in both acting and backstage work. Nowhere in the Club's achievements is the pursuit of excellence better illustrated than in the properties. The Club has been fortunate in the staging of many Kelvin productions: sets, costumes, lighting, sound and over the years have had many talented set designers who have produced many .imaginative and artistic sets and good carpenters who were able to turn those designs into reality. Kelvin have also been blessed with talented scenic artists - magicians, who with a paint brush could transform timber and canvas "flats" into three-dimensional materials and scenes creating illusions which were completely believable.
The attention to detail which has always been paid to costumes and properties has contributed in no small measure to the reputation for excellence which the Club enjoys. Painstaking research to achieve authenticity for the period and geographical area of the play has led to such details as an American rocking-cradle in "The Miracle Worker", the ladies' head-dresses completely covering their hair in "The Lion in Winter" and even the type of teapot used in "Spring and Port Wine"! In "The Corn is Green" four actors learnt the Welsh words of a song they had to sing. Endless trouble has been taken over lighting and sound effects and some remarkable results have been achieved : the small YMCA stage was successfully divided by lighting into five separate acting areas for the Harold Pinter sketches in "Triple Bill", while the piano-playing "Duet for Two Hands" - by an actor who was not a pianist sitting at a dummy piano - was brilliantly achieved by disguising a loudspeaker as the piano stool.
The club purchased its own premises in November 1986 to allow for the ever expanding membership and which presently stands at well over 130 members and patrons. They currently put on six productions throughout the year, three at the Redgrave Theatre in Clifton and three at their own studio premises in Gloucester Road. Kelvin Players offer a wide variety of activities, and keep their members and patrons fully informed with a bi-monthly newsletter “The Jester”
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