The Geneva English Drama Society

Performing English language theatre in Geneva, Switzerland since 1933

The Geneva English Drama Society provides a diverse theatre programme with a wide variety of styles and periods. A typical season includes 3-4 full stage productions and 20 fortnightly staged playreadings, plus workshops and social events. The play readings normally attract 50-100 people, and provide onstage roles for both experienced and aspiring actors.

Playreadings 2012-2013

Playreadings are a great way to experience a wide range of plays which one may never be able to see in a full stage production. Playreadings normally attract 50 to 100 people, and the atmosphere is informal and sociable. There are opportunities onstage for both experienced and aspiring actors. Playreadings are held at 8 p.m. in the downstairs hall of the English Church of the Holy Trinity, 14 bis, rue du Mont-Blanc. (map)

Admission is free for members, CHF 5 for others. A cash bar is available. If you would like to be in a playreading, you can sign-up in the playreadings book at the Church Hall on any playreading night. Or, call or e-mail the playreadings co-ordinator. (see Committee) Experience is not essential.

updated 17 May 2013

2012
Tuesday 11 September	Opening Event - Passion, Poison and Petrification by George Bernard Shaw To be performed by the GEDS committee. Food and drink as from 19:30.
Tuesday 25 September	Dealer’s Choice by Patrick Marber
Tuesday 2 October	Mrs. Dot by W. Somerset Maugham
Tuesday 16 October	At Home at the Zoo by Edward Albee
6-10 November	STAGE PRODUCTION: As you Like It by William Shakespeare
Tuesday 13 November	The Price by Arthur Miller
Tuesday 27 November	Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang
Tuesday 18 December	Quiz Evening: In place of our regular end of year play-reading, this year we will be hosting a fun Quiz evening. GEDS hasn’t had a Quiz Evening like this for (how many ?) years! On December 18th, bring your pens, pencils and brains for an evening of wassailing (what does that really mean?) on mulled wine, mulled apple cider, mince pies and fancy goodies – AND your extensive knowledge of things theatrical and otherwise. We’ll sit and/or stand, drink and/or abstain, eat during the interval only and Diane Simmance will lead us into the wild unknown! Winners of the Quiz will have a WONDERFUL gift, losers too! Usual time, 8.00 pm start at the English Church Hall, and team up with your best mates to ponder the unknowable! The organisers welcome all donations of mince pies – just bring them along on the night.
2013
Tuesday 15 January 20h	Evening of Monologues by GEDS writers Arranged by: Siân Ackroyd Telephone: + 33 450 41 53 41 email: ackroyd@ilo.org Cast: Various Synopsis: An Evening of Monologues by GEDS writers. - We've got some amazing, talented members. Come for a sampling of their talents. Siân Akroyd has assembled a selection of monologues, each one written by a member of GEDS and performed by another. Come and meet an array of characters: - Stanley, who finds something rather odd in the freezer of his new flat, left behind by a previous tenant; - Doreen, who has retired to "rural bliss" and shares with us the ups and downs of her life in Britain; - Rosie, 87, who gives us an insight into the mind of a resident in a retirement home; - Estelle, who shares an Italian Christmas feast, but finds it is not quite what she was expecting; - Cecily, who finds love in the chemistry lab; - Agatha, who escapes from looming New Year festivities by booking a package holiday to Agadir, with unexpected consequences; and - Abdul, a young tour guide in Agadir.
Tuesday 29 January	Love, Loss, and What I Wore by Nora Ephron Arranged by: Valerie Antonietti Telephone: + 33 450 437 192 email: gerald.antonietti@wanadoo.fr Cast: 0M 5F Synopsis: *Love, Loss, and What I Wore* is a play based on the 1995 book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman. It is organized as a series of monologues and uses a rotating cast of five principal women. The subject matter of the monologues includes women's relationships and wardrobes and at times the interaction of the two, using the female wardrobe as a time capsule of a woman's life.
Tuesday 12 February	Everything in the Garden by Giles Cooper Arranged by: Diane Simmance Telephone: + 33 450 56 35 11 email: (no) Cast: 5M 3F Synopsis: Diane is using the original script by Giles Cooper (black, black comedy), rather than Edward Albee’s possibly better-known adaption. There is a theme beneath the surface of this play, the corruption of money and the rottenness of a bigoted exurbia where conformity to its illiberal standards and its hypocritical show of respectability is all that counts. The scene is the suburban home of Jenny and Richard. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of their happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy-of-manners style. Then, abruptly, there enters a Mrs. Toothe in the menacing and fascinating person of Beatrice Straight who offers Jenny the opportunity to make more money than they have ever had, to buy a greenhouse and all the other luxuries that they require for their garden and their lives. Richard's realization that their newfound money is being earned by his wife's whoring comes almost simultaneously with the return of their 14-year-old son from school and a champagne cocktail party, which they are giving to impress their country club friends. As a result, his horror, disgust and rage has to be kept under wraps in order to keep up essential appearances until tragedy strikes, and Richard realizes that the assembled wives are all involved and their husbands are aware and condoning. More than that, they are prepared not merely to justify but defend the ends through which their means are attained-and the devastated Richard, left in agonized despair by the ironic events which charge the final moments of the play, must face the fact of his own share in their communal guilt.
Tuesday 26 February	Denial (2000) by Arnold Wesker Arranged by: Alan Leather Telephone: + 33 450 411 008 email: alan.leather@gmail.com Cast: 2M 5F Synopsis: About the “false memory syndrome” and based on a case history of a daughter who turns on her parents accusing them of sexually abusing her as a child. "…there exists a certain kind of mean mind that hates the sight of happiness. In anyone or any form. Loathes it. Difficult to comprehend how such a mind functions. What could there possibly be in the nature of happiness to arouse such hostility, such a demonic desire to destroy it? 'Because it's not mine'? 'I hate them being happy because I'm not happy'? Could it be that? “One of Arnold Wesker's most gripping plays . whatever your gut reaction, and it will be strong, this is a subject that needs the real moral effort of thinking.” John Peter: The Sunday Times
5-9 March	STAGE PRODUCTION: God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza
Tuesday 19 March	Dial M for Murder by Frederick Knot (in association with the Village Players, Lausanne) Arranged by: Christa Baan Telephone: 021 807 2619 email: baan@bluewin.ch Cast: 4 M 1 F but check direct with Christa if she is maintaining all the VP production cast Synopsis: A retired tennis player marries for money then attempts to implicate his wife as a murderess; fortunately the detective is on the ball. Dial M for Murder is a classic among plays about homicide, a masterpiece of construction and intricate plotting involving an ingenious plan by a man to have his wife killed, and the subsequent cat-and-mouse game he plays with a police investigator after the wife kills the would-be assassin. The play's initial path to success was a chequered one. Turned down by several managements, it was transmitted by BBC Television and won immediate approval from viewers and acclaim from the press.
Tuesday 9 April	CHANGE of play: Entertaining Mr. Sloane by Joe Orton Arranged by: David Stieber Telephone: 022 776 4895 email: dstieber@prolink.ch Cast: 3M 1F Synopsis: A wickedly funny black comedy, produced by GEDS in 1975. Sloane, a handsome, sexy and completely amoral young man, joins Kath's household as a lodger and proceeds to manipulate her and her brother, Ed. He is recognized by Kemp (Dadda) as the murderer of Kemp's former employer, whereupon Sloane murders Kemp. Sloane's "just desserts" are not what one would expect.
Tuesday 16 April	GEDS Annual General Meeting
Tuesday 23 April	Art (female cast) by Yasmina Reza Arranged by: Malcolm Grant Telephone: + 33 450 415341 email: malcolm.grant@free.fr Cast: 0M 3F Synopsis: The highly successful French play by Yazmina Reza was first performed in 1994 to almost immediate acclaim. Three university friends have stayed in touch as they have followed very different career and life paths. Their friendship exists despite their very obvious differences in temperament and character until Serge buys a strange piece of art, a white painting. Marc is unable to conceal his disdain and disbelief and things turn nasty, more so when the hapless Yvan tries to be a peacemaker. The painting becomes the catalyst for a total and violent deconstruction of their friendship which had been held together for years by ever more fragile threads, with differences being unaired and not previously spoken of. GEDS produced this play in 2005. In performing the English language version it was, nevertheless, very apparent that these were French men, Latin men whose view of the bonds of friendship and its expression was very different from the cooler, more distant Anglo-Saxon one. In this reading, we have decided to cast three women in these roles to see how the dynamics of the friendship look from a female, oestrogen-charged perspective. It will be fascinating to observe the differences and the similarities between the sexes when a violent argument provokes a complete dissection of a group of friends of the same sex.
Tuesday 7 May	CHANGE of play: On Approval by Frederick Lonsdale. A fast and funny battle of the sexes, vivid, sometimes viperous, even violent, but the blows are always verbal. A delighted Telegraph critic described the heroine of this play thus: “a mincing shrew so formidable that the acid in her threatens to burn holes in the carpet … thin-lipped, hands-limp, shoulders cramped into an affected droop, avid beak …malicious, narrowed eyes … this society harpy is studied to the life. What makes her so comical is that the actress somehow presents her in a state of permanent disadvantage. Squeaking protests, gibbering insults, …. She can never keep the lid on her bile …” Find out why two men, close friends, claim to be passionately in love with this society harpy and try to guess who’s going to be the lucky man! The author, Frederick Lonsdale, a bilingual from Jersey, was not only ranked alongside Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward as one of the three most prolific and successful West End playwrights of the 20th Century, he was also a successful lyric writer and librettist. He wrote Maid of the Mountains, a really huge West End musical hit of the time. It ran for 1,352 performances in its initial London run—closing mainly because of the nervous exhaustion of its female lead, José Collins. He also adapted the successful French opera Monsieur Beaucaire (composer André Messager) into another West End hit and wrote another musical hit, Madame Pompadour. If all that were not enough, he is the grandsire of a Great British cinema and theatre dynasty headed by Edward Fox and James Fox, two brothers whose children include: Emilia Fox, Freddie Fox, Jack Fox, Laurence Fox, Lydia Fox, Robin Fox and Thomas Fox, as well as a film producer, Robert Fox. Oh yes, and with the help of a mistress, a lovely and funny film-star granddaughter named Kay Kendall, dead too young of leukemia. Arranged by David Wark
Tuesday 21 May	Murder in the Cathedral by T.S.Eliot The action occurs between December 2 and December 29, 1170, chronicling the days leading up to the martyrdom of Thomas Becket following his absence of seven years in France. Becket's internal struggle is the main focus of the play. "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason." The Archbishop Thomas Becket speaks fatal words before he is martyred in T.S. Eliot's best-known drama, based on the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170. Praised for its poetically masterful handling of issues of faith, politics, and the common good, T.S. Eliot's play expanded his reputation as the most significant poet of his time. Arranged by: Margaret Byskov Telephone: 022 340 1021 email: margaretbyskov@hotmail.com Cast: 9+M 1+
Tuesday 4 June	New: Round and Round the Garden by Alan Ayckbourn To be performed in Sue and Alan Leather's garden. Round and Round the Garden is one of the titles in the trilogy of The Norman Conquests - Norman being the unsuccessful Lothario. They show us three dove-tailed accounts of events at a country house over one weekend; one in the dining-room, the next in the sitting-room and the third - our choice - in the garden. The house belongs to an unseen but tyrannical invalid woman whose unattached daughter, Annie, cares for her. On the Saturday evening when the plays start, Annie's brother Reg and his wife Sarah have just arrived to take over nursing duties so that Annie can go away for the weekend. Reg, one of a number of Ayckbourn men who can never quite remember the names of his own children, probably hasn't thought about it at all, but Sarah assumes this has been arranged with Tom, the local vet, who has been hanging around Annie as fixedly as her old jumper but failing actually to court her. Arranged by: Sue Leather Telephone: + 33 450 411 008 email: <mailto:Sueleather@gmail.com>Sueleather@gmail.com Cast: M 3 F 3
18-22 June	STAGE PRODUCTION: Calendar Girls by Tim Firth
Saturday 6 July	Change of Date. Poetry and supper evening in Diane Simance's garden. Arranged by: Diane Simmance Telephone: + 33 450 56 35 11 email: (no) Contact Diane to offer your services.

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