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FLETCHER FRIENDS

Join us - become a friend

Priority booking
Regular Newsletter
Invitations to social and cultural events

Patrons

Reserved seating - best seats and priority booking
Special events for Patrons
Regular Newsletter

Business Friends

We hope that local businesses will work with us to make Rye a place that people want
to visit for the cultural attractions. If you would like to sponsor, advertise or partner a
project, please email us at info@fletchertheatre.co.uk

Background to the Friends of Fletcher Theatre

Frederick Lees, began the Fletcher Project with a vision that would turn Rye into a
major Festival Centre. A group of volunteers are working together to develop this
vision and we need your support.

Extracts from a paper by Frederick Lees, local author and historian with a keen
interest in the Jacobean period:

"Fletcher represents the richness of Jacobean drama. As head, like Shakespeare, of
‘The King’s Men’ he worked with many playwrights - Webster, Beaumont, Middleton,
Massinger, Jonson. He also influenced the Restoration Comedy of Manners writers like
Congreve and Farquhar. None of them equal to Shakespeare of course but all very
substantial in merit, extensive in scope and, experience shows, well able to appeal to
modern audiences. Think of quite recent successes of Webster’s ‘Duchess of Malfi’,
Jonson’s ‘ Volpone’, Beaumont & Fletcher’s ‘Knight of the Burning Pestle’.

Remember too that the glories of the highly inventive 17th Century stage included
music, e.g. the operatic masques of Purcell and Milton/Henry Lawes etc. and of Lully
and Rameau in France, which country, always part of Rye’s history, might well be
invited to join our venture.