Keith Vinerd Interview: Content of Boys' Brigade Shows
Title
Keith Vinerd Interview: Content of Boys' Brigade Shows
Date
6 November 2017
Description
Oral history interview with Keith Vinerd about the history of the Boys' Brigade shows at the Theatre Royal.
What's the story?
The Theatre Royal has a long history and involvement with local community-based organisations that have used the venue and its resources to stage their shows. These include Nottingham Operatic Society, Nottinghamshire Scouts and Guides (The Gang Show) and Carlton Operatic Society.
From the late 1950s another regular user was the Nottingham Boys’ Brigade.
Established in Glasgow in 1883 by Sir William Alexander Smith, the Boys’ Brigade was the first voluntary uniformed youth movement in the world and today engages with over 50,000 children and young people, providing opportunities to meet together in their communities and engage in a range of fun and developmental activities.
Keith Vinerd was a member of the Boys’ Brigade as a boy and continued to be involved in the organisation.
In this interview Keith talks about some of the content from Boys' Brigade shows, including club-swinging and performing the Totem Tom-Tom Dance from Rose Marie:
The rehearsals would be in the individual companies. We call our groups “companies” and they’re based in Nottingham and in the surrounding area. So we extend from Hucknall in the north, to Bingham in the east, Beeston and Stapleford in the west and Ruddington in the south. So it’s not just Nottingham City.
And what we do, and we still do it this way, is to ask each company if they would be interested in doing an item. Now, obviously it depends on their membership as to the size of the item. Sometimes we would combine companies. And they may come up with an idea. It could be an entertainment or it could be an illustration of the work they do. It just depends. And so we’ve had anything from extracts from Shakespeare. I think we did a skit on Goose Fair, based on Goose Fair one year. Entertainment items: one that comes to mind was a single item which a boy did called “Jake the Peg”, which I don’t think many people would remember nowadays, but it was “Jake the Peg, with an Extra Leg” and he had to learn how to walk with this third leg.
We did excerpts from Chu Chin Chow and the item I did at the old Empire was actually: we were trained to do the “Totem Tom Tom Dance” from Rose Marie, which I must admit I’ve never seen. I’ve never seen Rose Marie. If I saw it on somewhere, I would go. But there was a dancing school in Nottingham run by a lady called Sissy Smith and our full-time organiser at the time, a chap called Jack Bickerdyke was very, very good on organising these things and she came to us and trained us how to wear these horrible, horrible costumes, which were made out of something like canvas, to make us look like totem poles, painted with distemper, I think, and very low hoods. Nobody could actually see who we were and it was a bit of a disappointment because through Jack Bickerdyke we went down to, I think it was the Empire Stadium and performed this for the television on Saturday evening. All the parents at home avidly watching the television to see us and they couldn’t recognise any of us, because we’d got these dreadful peaked costumes on. But, yeah, that was what I did. So that was the “Totem Tom Tom Dance” and that was good.
So that was the sort of thing. Musical items, physical items and you would extend the, sort of, gymnastic items or club swinging was a popular one. We had one, one year, which I think was called “Clubs are Trumps” and it had these lads swinging the clubs. That was very popular. So we dollared it up in subsequent years by putting lights on the end and putting the theatre in darkness.
From the late 1950s another regular user was the Nottingham Boys’ Brigade.
Established in Glasgow in 1883 by Sir William Alexander Smith, the Boys’ Brigade was the first voluntary uniformed youth movement in the world and today engages with over 50,000 children and young people, providing opportunities to meet together in their communities and engage in a range of fun and developmental activities.
Keith Vinerd was a member of the Boys’ Brigade as a boy and continued to be involved in the organisation.
In this interview Keith talks about some of the content from Boys' Brigade shows, including club-swinging and performing the Totem Tom-Tom Dance from Rose Marie:
The rehearsals would be in the individual companies. We call our groups “companies” and they’re based in Nottingham and in the surrounding area. So we extend from Hucknall in the north, to Bingham in the east, Beeston and Stapleford in the west and Ruddington in the south. So it’s not just Nottingham City.
And what we do, and we still do it this way, is to ask each company if they would be interested in doing an item. Now, obviously it depends on their membership as to the size of the item. Sometimes we would combine companies. And they may come up with an idea. It could be an entertainment or it could be an illustration of the work they do. It just depends. And so we’ve had anything from extracts from Shakespeare. I think we did a skit on Goose Fair, based on Goose Fair one year. Entertainment items: one that comes to mind was a single item which a boy did called “Jake the Peg”, which I don’t think many people would remember nowadays, but it was “Jake the Peg, with an Extra Leg” and he had to learn how to walk with this third leg.
We did excerpts from Chu Chin Chow and the item I did at the old Empire was actually: we were trained to do the “Totem Tom Tom Dance” from Rose Marie, which I must admit I’ve never seen. I’ve never seen Rose Marie. If I saw it on somewhere, I would go. But there was a dancing school in Nottingham run by a lady called Sissy Smith and our full-time organiser at the time, a chap called Jack Bickerdyke was very, very good on organising these things and she came to us and trained us how to wear these horrible, horrible costumes, which were made out of something like canvas, to make us look like totem poles, painted with distemper, I think, and very low hoods. Nobody could actually see who we were and it was a bit of a disappointment because through Jack Bickerdyke we went down to, I think it was the Empire Stadium and performed this for the television on Saturday evening. All the parents at home avidly watching the television to see us and they couldn’t recognise any of us, because we’d got these dreadful peaked costumes on. But, yeah, that was what I did. So that was the “Totem Tom Tom Dance” and that was good.
So that was the sort of thing. Musical items, physical items and you would extend the, sort of, gymnastic items or club swinging was a popular one. We had one, one year, which I think was called “Clubs are Trumps” and it had these lads swinging the clubs. That was very popular. So we dollared it up in subsequent years by putting lights on the end and putting the theatre in darkness.
Type
Oral Interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall
Contributor
Interviewers: Liz Mackenzie & Stephen Bray
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
