FOR more than 30 years, they have graced the stage and brought smiles to hundreds of villagers.

Now the Launton Village Players have hit the £100,000 after years of fundraising for charity.

Script writing, music composing and funny panto performing have helped the amateur dramatics group, founded by villagers Martin and Celia Evans, to celebrate the recent milestone.

The announcement that the £100,000 mark had been broken was made after funds were totted up from the latest village panto Jack and Jill and the Beanstalk.

Publicity officer for the Village Players Robert Cornford said: "After the show finished and all the bills had been paid we had £5,450 to give to charity from Jack and Jill and The Beanstalk, which took the total since we began fundraising to £104,908, well above our target."

The cash has gone to a wide variety of causes, including Bicester Foodbank and the Hummingbird Centre.

The group was formed 1986 when a group of parents in Launton were unimpressed at the lack of family-friendly pantomimes locally so clubbed together for a performance of Robin Hood and The Sheriff of Launtingham at the parish hall.

This snowballed on to create a second show, How The Wild West End was Won, which had a very local theme.

Mr Cornford said: "The show was built round plans to build an estate of 150 houses on open land in the village, off West End – land that was later saved for the village as the Island Pond Wood.

"These two very local shows were the foundation of what is now, after 31 pantomimes, a thriving village organisation that has put on full length and one-act plays, musical entertainments, been carol singing in the village, and entered plays in the Oxfordshire Drama Network Festival."

The first charity fundraising show came in 1991 with The Grand Old Duke of Launton. Its original script written by resident Martin Evans who has since written 21 scripts and directed all the pantomimes ever since.

The first show raised £170.50, which set the group off on their fundraising mission of bagging £100,000 for local causes.

In 2002, the group staged Mother Goose and Son, Honk Honk.

It was the first show to have all-original music created by Steve Webber who has written all music for the shows since.

He said: "It’s interesting trying to fit music to the dramatic needs of the plot.

"Writing the songs is the greatest fun.

"Each is in a different style, and each needs to play to the vocal strengths of the cast and where we are in the story.

"They have to reflect magic, knockabout, slapstick, romance, light comedy, menace, and so on."

The Adventures of Sinbad saw the £50,000 mark broken in 2008 and Rumpelstiltskin, Simple Simon followed, with villager Rod Fine stepping into the production team.

Alongside the pantomimes the Village Players also host a number of fundraising events and seasonal shows.

Mr Fine said: "It takes all of us to make it come alive: performers, musicians, set and prop designers, painters and builders, costumes, tech crew, front of house and everybody else.

"At the end, I get a feeling of pride and achievement which is impossible to describe.

"Most of all, we need to acknowledge Martin and Celia Evans, for 31 pantomimes.

"Of all their many wonderful achievements, the greatest is to have created a space where people are encouraged to try things they never thought they could do.

"Not only have they achieved so much, they've inspired and supported many of the rest of us to do so as well."