Liz has been a very active member of Hornby Drama Group for about 30 years. Indeed, she and I first met ‘on stage’ there, and we became close friends.
Over the years, Liz became a key member and ‘driving force’ within the group, undertaking a wide variety of roles, including a Director, actor, set designer & decorator, stage manager, committee member and Secretary. Her devotion was recognised a couple of years ago, when she became our Honorary President.
Liz has helped maintain the Drama Group through some challenging times. Indeed, the fact that the group is still active today is in no small way due to her unswerving commitment and motivation. She was largely responsible for introducing children into the Drama Group, which has been a huge success. This reflects her life-long love of, and support for children, not least in this community.
Her infectious sense of fun and humour is best illustrated by a couple of examples. She very much enjoyed the challenge of taking an acting role, but famously struggled to remember her lines! Not to be beaten, her solution was to hide little slips of paper in various stage props, on each slip was written one of her lines. She would then work around the stage in careful sequence, picking up or peering into the various objects as required by the script! This technique worked, but was rather obvious to the audience, for whom I’m sure it must have enhanced their enjoyment. Such is ‘live’ theatre!
In one show, Liz was fitted with a radio microphone. She was given strict instructions to switch off the microphone herself when she had finished her speaking part and had left the stage (there being nobody else available to control the sound). On one night, something went wrong with her performance, and she left the stage very cross with herself and whispering a series of expletives to the backstage crew, blissfully unaware in the heat of the moment that her utterances were being broadcast to the audience! Fortunately, the show was a comedy (a farce), and the audience just thought it was part of the play! Oh, how we all laughed - especially Liz herself - once she had recovered from the horror of discovering her mistake!
Liz was a such lovely, generous and warm-hearted lady, always enthusiastic, encouraging of others, and a great ‘team player’. She will be much missed and long remembered.
Neil Read
(HDG Chairman and long-time friend)