Join the club: International Players, English language theatre group

“It’s a very silly musical, a pastiche, making fun of musical theatre in a loving way. There’s the characters you always see in a musical – the beautiful ingénue, her handsome fiancé and the buffoon.”

This is how Amanda VanOsdol presents The Drowsy Chaperone, an award-winning Canadian musical, and three of its 13 characters: Janet Van De Graaff, Robert Martin and Aldolpho.

She is the president of the International Players, an association founded in 1981 by parents of the Lycée international de Saint-Germain-en-Laye that is based in Le Pecq (Yvelines) and puts on English-speaking plays and musicals once or twice a year.

The Drowsy Chaperone is their forthcoming rendition of the play, which will be performed at the Centre Culturel Jean Vilar in Marly-Le-Roi in late January. Box office tickets go on sale this December.

Membership – which runs from one September to the next – costs €40 per person, €60 for couples and €20 for students, with the cast expected to become members as well.

“Running a theatre group is a loooot of commitment and work,” said Ms VanOsdol who is, like all members, volunteering.

She means that the success of a play such as The Drowsy Chaperone – besides the stage performance – depends a lot on behind-the-scenes shenanigans.

“What we really always need is people who make props or people who build sets, do costumes or play music, help us with tickets or our website. There is tons of work available,” she said.

International Players has too large a turnover of people who come and go, she says. 

With nationalities – members are mostly British with a few Americans – come visa hurdles. Many struggle to get a solid footing in France. Each year, there are from 40 to 70 members, depending on the plays. Ms VanOsdol’s main goal has been to retain members for longer.

Besides rehearsals and plays, members sometimes meet up over BBQs to celebrate plays. 

She implemented the scene study group, an acting atelier where actors are asked to perform in front of a group and given positive feedback. 

She is also hoping to bring back the one-night act, a 15-minute sketch performance show.

“It is less of a social group and more of a theatre group,” she said.

But consider her personal story for a moment.She took four years of acting classes at Indiana University Bloomington in the late 2000s, where her teacher told her she did not feel like she wanted it bad enough – meaning moving to New York, sleeping on couches and working as a waitress in cafes like she, the teacher, had done.

Mrs VanOsdol believed her, so came back home to Indianapolis, while all her classmates went to Chicago and New York to try their luck.“I regret not having gone there to try being a professional actor but if I had done that, my whole life would be different,” she said, reflecting on what happened next.

She au-paired 15 months in Paris where she met a British journalist – who would become her husband – in 2012, and they decided to settle down there. Around 2018, she had an epiphany.

“Something was missing in my life. I felt like I wanted to do theatre again,” she said, remembering using Google to eventually find the association. She auditioned for their upcoming play Steel Magnolias and landed a role. 14 years down the road from her early-childhood trauma of not becoming an actress, Ms VanOsdol did not set a foot on a stage off Broadway but on the streets of Paris, being a tour guide in Montmartre, Les Halles and Le Marais.

“It is not acting and everything I say is true but in the same way, you learn a script, take care of your voice and need to retain attention. It is definitely like performing everyday,” she said.As for what the International Players brought to her, she said: “I met some of my best friends.”

“I didn’t have to suffer to be able to do theatre,” she added.