Rock Tour 4 - Truro

After a night of chatter, swimming and table tennis, the team reconvened for a fantastic breakfast in the dining room at Specott Barton. Some of the team from Bideford had arrived to help - and it was much appreciated - a fantastic breakfast.


This was also the day selected by Richard prior to the tour to be our breast cancer awareness day - so we all wore pink in various guises - some trying harder than others...


After a team meeting in the lounge, we travelled through the rain to Truro Methodist Church, the venue for our Cornish production. The church is a typical large Cornish Methodist Chapel, with a huge pulpit and a balcony. This created some interesting logistical problems. A stage was built over the communion rail, but it didn't lift the action up quite high enough to be seen by all of the balcony. The choir were to be in the balcony at the front, and the musicians in the pulpit. The problems with the choir and some of the audience seeing were therefore solved by a huge network of screens and projectors. These were controlled by an excellent camera man - Tim, who managed to film the performance, and even occasionally put inserts into his projection of Roger conducting. It was amazing - particularly since he hadn't seen the performance before. It was also quite weird for the cast, who could see themselves performing in a projection on the back wall - with a second or so time delay.


The stage was incredibly loud to walk around on - so while the cast and dancers were trying to be as gently trod as possible, Bill was relishing every moment as Cornelius, crashing round and making as big a noise as possible!


The choir was made up of quite a few groups - the Threemilestone group conducted by John Harris (who along with his wife Gill also organised the event). Then there was a group from St. Austell trained by Hilary Balsdon who had themselves performed Rock a couple of months ago, and so knew it by heart already. And there was also a choir from Helston trained by Stephanie Gordon. They made a fabulous sound, and it was great to see so many young people among the choir.


Before the performance we had a shared tea with the choir. It was lovely to chat to them all. There were even a few from Weston who were visiting friends. I wonder if they win the prize for the record number of performances for choir members...


A feature of this tour seems to have been the prophetic section at the end of song 15. This is the moment where all the cast are open to God to hear what he is saying. This time, Brenda had felt God really speak to her while she was ironing and preparing the costumes. So she obeyed God and came on to the stage and sang out a prophecy. It was an amazing moment, and Anna responded in dance. God uses everyone and anyone - if we are only open to him.


God clearly used Brenda's word, and there was a lot of prayer and ministry afterwards.


Thanks so much to John, Gill and all their helpers for making it happen. It was a wonderful evening. We raised quite a decent sum of money for breast cancer too - thanks to the choir for their generosity.