The Society was founded in the 1960s when the members of Christchurch Methodist Church in Shepshed formed a concert party to sing Gilbert and Sullivan show pieces at concerts at Church. Word spread around the Methodist circuit and the concert party started to “tour”, performing their concerts at Churches and community settings around Leicestershire.
In 1965 the group decided to stage an abridged version of Iolanthe at Christchurch and followed that up with a full show of The Mikado. From that point, full shows were performed every two years, interspersed with concerts and the group moved to the Hind Leys School in April of 1973 and performed Trial by Jury and The Sorcerer. In 1978 when the new Hind Leys College Theatre was opened the group moved again and performed The Mikado.
In 1991 the group, still known as the Friends of Christchurch Methodist, performed Ruddigore. This was the first time in its history the group had performed this opera. The cast for the show had thirty nine members and the cast was accompanied by a 15 strong orchestra. At the Annual meeting following the show the group decided to constitute themselves as a formal Gilbert and Sullivan Society and perform a G & S operetta every year.
Years passed with an operetta being staged every year in March at the College until 1999 when the company had decided to stage Patience for the first time. Various events conspired against us and it became impossible to stage the full show. Instead a semi-staged and narrated concert entitled “An Echoing Voice” was performed instead which charted the history of Gilbert and Sullivan’s collaboration.
Full operas returned the following year with a performance of The Mikado to mark the new century and we were able to stage Patience in 2002.
Having performed Ruddigore again in March 2010, we had to change the society year and stage our shows in November. Realising that a gap from March 2010 to November 2011 was too long, we again staged the narrated concert, An Echoing Voice in November 2010 and performed The Gondoliers in November of 2011.
We passed our Golden Anniversary in 2015 and performed Iolanthe again in recognition of the founding of the society.
We carried on until our world met with unprecedented change in the form of Covid and we were unable to stage shows in 2020 and 2021. We reunited to perform our “Together Again” concert in December 2021 and are looking forward to bringing full shows to Shepshed again.