Over the weekend of the 18th & 19th June some 9,000 Beaver scouts were treated to a series of magic performances by three of our best performers.

Gilwell Park in Essex is the headquarters of the Scout Association. It has excellent facilities both administrative and for outdoor activities. Every year they put on a themed fun weekend with a single fee covering free access to all the entertainment provided. Last year it had a Medieval flavour with jousting, falconry etc. This year the theme was "The Magic of Gilwell".

The stage was set inside a modern agricultural barn. It was professionally lit and had a full sound desk (see photos in the photo gallery on the website). The show was built exclusively around our members, Josh Miller, Steve Dela and Michael Jordan. Each of them performed a solo set of twenty minutes to an audience of between 300-500 six to ten year old youngsters each time, on a rota basis. On one occasion there were over 700 in the audience! This is how it worked, Josh went on first and did his act. The audience were shown out and a new group were shown in. Steve performed to this new group who, when he had finished, were replaced with another new audience who then saw Michael Jordan perform. The next audience in then saw Josh and so on with each of our stars performing a total of three times each day on the Saturday and the Sunday. Combine the schedule with blistering hot weather and you can appreciate just how hard they all worked.

On the Saturday evening they were asked to perform for the event organisers who had not been able to see the shows because they were working all day supervising the other attractions. We were all invited to the barbeque and after a spot from me to open proceedings Josh, Steve and Michael gave a reprise of their earlier performances with one or two changes here and there to take into account the nearly all adult audience. On Sunday they had to do it all over again!

I was immensely proud of our representatives who were an excellent advert for the YMC and themselves. Well done all of you.

Roy Marsh AIMC
Chairman

10 July 2005 11:34

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