A THEATRE group formed by parents to put on a fund-raising pantomime for their village school has celebrated its 25th anniversary.

CAMP Theatre – standing for Completely Amateur Menheniot Parents – began in 1994, when the director of the Menheniot panto stepped down.

The show was seen as a good way of raising some cash for the school at the time, said director Dr Stephen Jefferies, who has been part of CAMP since the beginning.

Those parents who stepped onto the stage in the mid1990s could not have guessed that their group would go on to perform 50 shows in Menheniot, as well as taking plays on tour around Cornwall and Devon.

‘CAMP has gone from strength to strength over the last 25 years,’ said Dr Jefferies.

‘We have performed 56 different plays (some productions have been double or triple bills) and we have raised more than £50,000 for local, national and international charities.’

More than 300 people have been involved over the years with the theatre group, many of them children who have gone on to develop a love of the performing arts.

Each year CAMP stages a family show and the cast can be anywhere between 30 and 60, depending on the play in question.

For its 25th anniversary, the group chose King Arthur – a Pantomime Adventure in Camelot, and the show had audiences ‘roaring and crying with laughter for all the right reasons’, said reviewer Robbie Bullen.

Dr Jefferies describes CAMP as very much a family-orientated theatre group; his own three sons, now adults, have all acted or have been involved backstage at one time or another.

CAMP will take its 10th touring play around the South West in October and November, and this is set to be a co-production with Sterts Theatre of the Oscar Wilde play Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.