Welcome to the home page of The Villagers Open Air Shakespeare Group.

'The Villagers are a group of friends who, every summer, accidentally put on a play.'

Our 2012 production will be The Winter's Tale.

Click here for the list of performance dates and venues.          

All profits from our productions go to locally supported charities.  In 2011, our performance at Swanmore was to support fundraising for the Ickle Pickle charity for incubators for very young babies and at Andover for schools in Uganda. Profits from our other performances were in aid of GAFIRS, 17th C Village, the Mayor of Gosport's Appeal, Christchurch and MacMillan Cancer Appeal. 

In spite of a very damp start to the run, our generous audiences and supporters helped us to our best ever year for raising money and the charities above received over £4,000!
 

The Villagers are based in Gosport in Hampshire, and began life in 1986 with a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Little Woodham ('The 17th Century Village').  Every year since we have put on an open air production of one of Shakespeare's plays, in Little Woodham and - in recent years - elsewhere across Southern England.

Our aim is to enjoy ourselves, and to share some of that enjoyment with our audiences; many of them come back every year, so we must be doing something right!  As the quote at the top of this page shows, we're not a typical drama group, and these pages should hopefully give you an idea of how the Villagers do things.

Whether you're a Shakespeare aficionado, looking for an interesting summer evening event, or just curious, the Villagers, and this website, should have something for you.

Register with our mailing list, criticise the website or suggest additions for it, or even join the Group - get in touch and we'll do our best to welcome you into the Villagers family!