Stane Street Players

The group started in 1975 when a group of friends in Marks Tey decided to put on a village pantomime. In those days  performances were in the old Marks Tey Village Hall where we had to build a stage before every performance. For many years the members were all from Marks Tey and we put on a number of community type plays with large casts. These included ‘Our Town’, ‘Roses of Eyam’ and ‘Dark of the Moon’ which all revolved around events in a local community.

Times changed and, in 1988, we moved to Chappel Village Hall where John Sanders, a founder member,  was in charge of the first panto to be staged there. In 1996 the opportunity came for us to perform in the Empire in Halstead which was a bigger venue and had no resident group.  A number of memorable plays were performed starting with ‘The Wizard of Oz , and including  ‘Allo, Allo’, ‘Ghost Train’ and ‘Noises Off’ which won a number of awards for special effects and Best Production.

These days we perform our acclaimed pantos at The Empire but, because some productions do not attract enough audience for such a large space, we use Earls Colne Village Hall for some of our plays. However, plays popular with audiences uch as ‘Dad’s Army’ and ‘Fawlty Towers’ and ‘The 39 Steps’ have been performed at both venues. We have also started to use smaller venues such as The Halstead British Legion and Lamarsh Church and we have taken some of our productions into schools. We have performed Murder Mystery Plays to private clubs and parties.