Tennis Club celebrates 100 years

By Sue Ponsford

The weather recently may not have been very conducive to playing tennis but the committee planning the centenary of Cuckfield Tennis Club has been hard at work thinking up memorable ways of celebrating such a special anniversary.

Saturday 2nd May will be crammed with events and there should be something for everyone. It will be held in conjunction with the annual Cuckoo Fair (this year on a Saturday as there is a special VE Day bank holiday on Friday 8th May). Non-member coaching will be on offer, memorabilia covering the last 100 years of tennis will be on view in the clubhouse and Wisdom Sports will be demonstrating their ball machine with tennis racquets to try. At teatime, there will be a formal cake cutting ceremony, and we hope to invite a local celebrity to do the honours. We plan to have willing members form the figure 100 on the courts and be photographed for posterity by a drone.

On Saturday 13th June there will be a themed tennis tournament, open to current and past members, when players and spectators will be encouraged to dress in the style of one of the decades since 1920.

Sunday 5th July (the middle Sunday of Wimbledon) will see lots of earnest people going round Cuckfield working out the clues in our family anniversary treasure hunt. The local shops are being encouraged to dress their windows appropriately and incorporate clues in their displays.

We hope to hold an anniversary dinner and to have a 100 hours tournament - players sign up to play for an hour, either singles or doubles. Plans are also afoot for more events for young people. More information will be available as the year progresses.

So save these dates and look out for more information as the summer approaches.

Published in Cuckfield Life magazine, March 2020.

Dramatic Society awarded 'Accolade of Excellence'

Following the two NODA awards Cuckfield Dramatic Society (CDS) received in the last couple of years The National Operatic and Dramatic Association has awarded CDS another Accolade of Excellence for its spring 2019 production of Stepping Out.

Inspired by its Creative Director, Sophie Bradshaw, and co-directed by Harriet Sheldon, Stepping Out was CDS’s first bold step into musical theatre. Although the stage play is more of a play with music and dance as opposed to a full-blown musical, it was nonetheless a huge challenge for the theatre group.

CDS has plenty of acting talent to choose from, but to provide some dancing experience CDS collaborated with local dance school Dance With Emily. And so began a blend of actors learning to dance and dancers learning to act that culminated in such a wonderful show.

Once the details of the show were announced, interest in the village spread quickly and with its Saturday matinee and extended seating layout ticket sales picked up rapidly. The show ultimately broke CDS’s attendance record. Many audience members had travelled far and wide and from other drama clubs and societies, such was the interest in the show.

Creative director Sophie said: “This award is just the cherry on the cake for such a fabulous production. The show was a dream come true for me, having been desperate to do it for about 10 years! I’m so very proud of all the cast, crew and Dance With Emily members who helped to make it such a roaring success. They all fully deserve this award.”

Quote from producer and CDS Chairman Ross Bradshaw: “This was an incredibly challenging show for CDS but we carried it off with great aplomb and this award is richly deserved by everyone who was involved. It just shows the incredible range of talent that we have both onstage and behind the scenes.”

The NODA review read: ‘With a small cast of ten principal roles and no ensemble, there is no place to hide for the performers and each needs to bring their best to keep the audience engaged for the duration. Not only did this talented cast achieve exactly that, their claim of not being able to differentiate the ‘real’ tap dancers from the ‘never tapped befores’ was also correct.

‘It is a true testament to the cast and the creative team to achieve such chemistry and for each individual performance to be of such a high standard.’ This was CDS’s first venture into musical drama and it sounds like it won’t be the last.

The groups next production will be Proscenophobia by Bettine Manktelow and will be at The Queen’s Hall between 27th and 30th May.

Find out more at: www.cdsweb.co.uk

First published in Cuckfield Life, March 2020 issue.