Category Archives: Events

Events

Send in the Clowns: Thursday 11th July, 7.15pm

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An evening of theatre, comedy, poetry, music and stories…. “30 laughs or your money back!”

For 30 years, David Robinson has toured around the world with productions including ‘The Screwtape Letters’, ‘The Hiding Place’ and ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’. After 22 years with Saltmine he co-founded Searchlight and has pioneered the use of professional theatre in churches. Adrian Plass has written over 40 books, and he and Bridget have performed in every kind of venue you can imagine and some you probably can’t!

Over the years, tens of thousands of people have enjoyed David and Adrian at Spring Harvest, The Keswick Convention, Greenbelt and on their hilarious joint tours. Together with West End singer Amanda Watsham-Dunstall, they have created an evening of theatre, comedy, poetry, music and stories.

Thursday 11th July, 7.15pm

Redbourn Village Hall

Tickets: £10 available from the Post Office, Enchanted Tea Rooms and Ashtons, or book tickets online via Searchlight Theatre Company

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Events, Special Services

Redbourn Remembers

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At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 2018, it will be exactly 100 years since the treaty known as ‘The Armistice of Compiègne’ came into effect, ending the four long years of the First World War, and bringing peace with Germany. The death toll had reached an estimated 11 million troops from all the countries of Europe as well as from other countries around the world.

Many from Redbourn had been called up and yet only some returned. This was the same for every village and town up and down the land. The centenary on 11 November – Remembrance Sunday – gives us the opportunity to remember them and, given the extra significance this year, we’d like to mark this in a number of special ways:

On Saturday 10 November we will be showing two films in the Transept, one using archive material, stories and photos from across Hertfordshire to give an insight into the sacrifice made during the First World War by local people, the other the film of RC Sherriff’s classic and powerful play Journey’s End. Admission is free – come to either or both.

On Sunday 11 November, we replace our usual 9.30 am service with a special Service of Remembrance to which members of the public, our uniformed groups, veteran service personnel and our local Councillors are warmly welcome. From there we will parade up to the War Memorial for the Act of Remembrance.

For those who need transport from the church to the War Memorial this will be available.

The Act of Remembrance will include the lighting of a special beacon which will burn for the rest of the day, and will be followed be refreshments and a special exhibition. The details of the schedule are as follows:

Saturday 10th November

St Mary’s Transept, 6.30 – 7.20 pm:  Film: A County at War directed by Howard Guard

7.30 – 9.15 pm:  Film: Journey’s End  directed by Saul Dibb

Sunday 11th November

St Mary’s Church, 9.30 – 10.30 am:  Civic Service of Remembrance – All welcome

St Mary’s Church, 10.30 – 10.50 am: Parade to the War Memorial

War Memorial, 10.50 – 11.15 am:  Act of Commemoration, Two Minute Silence and the Lighting of the Beacon

Fish Street, 11.15 am – 12 noon:  Refreshments at ChristChurch, Fish Street

Parish Centre, 11.15 am – 4.30 pm:  Exhibition ‘Redbourn and the First World War’  by Gareth Hughes

We hope that you will come to as many of these events during the course of the weekend as we remember the fallen and give thanks for the sacrifices made so many for our liberty.

Will

Events

We Will Remember Them: Vaughan Williams’ Secret Salute to the Dead of the Great War

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A talk by writer, historian and broadcaster Andrew Green.

Tuesday 20th November, 7.30pm in the Transept at St Mary’s Church, Redbourn

Free admission with light refreshments during the interval

Like so many who served on the Western Front, Vaughan Williams barely described his experiences – as an ambulance driver and then as a commissioned officer. We have to examine the music he wrote in the years after 1918 for clues.

Writer and broadcaster Andrew Green has researched the background to Vaughan Williams’s hauntingly beautiful yet barely-known short 1922 opera, The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains. The text comes, of course, from John Bunyan’s legendary Pilgrim’s Progress. Andrew is convinced this opera is a carefully constructed memorial to those who died and an offering of consolation for the bereaved. In this talk, we’ll be taken back to those years after the Great War when the nation struggled to come to terms with an appalling catastrophe.

About Andrew Green

Andrew Green has been writing and broadcasting about music for over three decades. Before then he was an artiste manager in London, where his client list included Mitsuko Uchida, Julian Lloyd Webber and the Alban Berg Quartet. His broadcasting began in 1985 with a radio feature on contralto Clara Butt. Andrew has gone on to present and produce around 300 music programmes for BBC networks, including presenting In Tune and BBC Proms broadcasts on Radio 3, Music Review on the World Service and many documentaries for Radio 4.

As a journalist, Andrew has written for many UK newspapers and most leading musical journals, including Classical Music, Early Music Today and BBC Music – in the last case covering subjects as diverse as JFK and music, Vaughan Williams’ Great War, the history of harmoniums and music heard at the Battle of Waterloo. The life and music of Vaughan Williams has intrigued him since his teenage years.

Andrew is also a research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, where he teaches and devises projects in the area of oral history – work featured in a recent BBC radio documentary, Instant History.

Click here to download a printable poster for the talk