Shepperton Players was established in 1945 and merged with Manor Players to form Riverside Players of Sunbury in April 2020.
The Shepperton Players are a long-standing amateur theatre group (originally founded as Shepperton Amateur Dramatic Society), who have been entertaining locals since their first performance in 1945 (Love in a Mist by K Horne) at Shepperton Village Hall.
Shepperton Players, along with other local groups and in partnership with the local council, redeveloped a derelict factory into what is now the Riverside Arts Centre (RAC), an excellent all-round facility and venue for many community groups in the area. The development was an enormous undertaking with voluntary labour largely providing the building, engineering, plumbing and decorating. The RAC opened in 1983 with Shepperton Players’ first production there being The Fire Raisers by Max Frisch. Shepperton Players would typically stage four productions a year, usually moving straight from one performance to the next (sometimes even overlapping), so there was always something going on.
Open-air Shakespeare productions (directed for 30 consecutive years by Mary Fitzhugh) and other outdoor performances were very much part of the Shepperton Players’ repertoire for a long time.
Pantomime was also a long-standing tradition at Shepperton Players with one being staged every other year since Aladdin in 1971. These were enormously fun, usually had a huge cast and invariably involved everyone in the group in some capacity. As we evolved into Riverside Players, the pantomime tradition has continued to entertain local families during the Christmas period.
Riverside Players of Sunbury 