ONE of Wyre Forest's oldest drama groups is set to lose its headquarters but a long-serving member has vowed the show must go on - and is calling for help to secure the society's future.

Stourport Three Arts Guild has been rehearsing at a former classroom on the Walshes estate in Stourport for more than a decade but must find a new base next March when planning permission for the base will run out.

Now, as the group is preparing to perform Tomb With A View tonight, tomorrow and Saturday, the hunt is on for a new home.

Don Williams, who has been a member of the 62-year-old guild for 40 years, said they would use their existing base until they had to leave and that was bound to happen within 12 months.

Fellow long-standing member John Banner explained the group had almost become homeless in October 2003 when it was told that temporary portable building status on the hut had expired but appealed against the matter to the planning inspectorate and were granted a stay of execution until March 2006.

"But after that we need to be out," he said, explaining they would not be able to appeal again.

Seventy-six-year-old Mr Williams, whose wife Hilda is also a long-standing member of the group, as is his son, Alan, daughter Lynn and granddaughters Hannah and Francis, said: "We have no intention of closing the guild down - we just won't have our own premises to work in."

He added the group, which has 40 members ranging in age from eight to 76, was looking for a room of a similar size to their existing premises that they would be able to pay per hour to use once or twice a week.

He said although the group was "sort of in limbo", it was ploughing ahead with preparations for future productions, which include holding open auditions for parts in their November production of Terry Pratchett's Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

These will be held between 2pm and 6pm on July 24 at Areley Kings Village Hall, where Tomb With A View is being performed.

Mr Williams said: "We're worried because we shall lose our hut which has been so useful for the past 12 years but we shall manage."

Tickets for Tomb With A View, which is being performed from 7.30pm, with doors opening at 7pm, can be obtained by calling Mr Williams on 01584 891412. Anyone requiring more information on the forthcoming auditions or with suggestions of where the group can meet should also call this number.