2016

The first event of the year was a poetry and prose evening, with contributions loosely following a theme of Yellow. Nina Smith also played the guitar and sang Coldplay's Yellow, Nina being one of the WADS members who did keep to the theme. 

This was followed in May by three performances of Pack of Lies , a 1983 play by English writer Hugh Whitemore based on the story of a couple and their teenage daughter whose neighbours are arrested for spying. The original West End production of Pack of Lies starred Judi Dench and her husband, Michael Williams. Dench won the Laurence Olivier Award as Best Actress for her performance. The real-life teenage daughter on whom the play character was modelled was none other than Gay Search, the television presenter best known for her work on the BBC television series Gardeners' World. 

In July, WADS staged Jane Austen and the Vampyre Earl, a murder mystery written by WADS member Sue Washington in aid of the Whitchurch Silk Mill, bringing together Jane and the Third Earl of Portsmouth, who lived in Hurstbourne Park on the edge of Whitchurch in Hampshire, and who was known locally as the Vampyre Earl. He was not only acquainted with Jane but he was taught by her father, The Reverend George Austen, vicar of nearby Steventon. 

In November, WADS hosted two ghost walks around Whitchurch, with WADS members stopping at spooky places to tell telling ghostly stories and share ghoulish suggestions of half-seen apparitions and unsavoury sounds. The walks started at the Silk Mill and finished up at the Red House.