The Making of a Panto, Cinderella: Director's Blog 1

Welcome to my Making of a Panto Director's Blog. Delighted that you could join me!

In my role as Director of the 2012 Broadway Theatre Panto, I have started this blog to record the behind the scenes stories and joys and sorrows of the Team Cinderella Project. You will get to meet everyone involved in making this year's panto and get to know them. I have no idea of course what each day will bring, but that's the pleasure in it!  My plan at the moment is to write my blog daily from now until shortly after the Panto closes on January 2nd 2013. We will see how it goes!

Everyone at Arc was delighted when we were commissioned earlier this year to produce the 2012 panto for Barking and Dagenham in partnership with the Broadway Theatre with support from Barking and Dagenham College.

Having been resident in the borough since 1986, we know the community well and have made new theatre for many audiences here. So the idea of creating a pantomime was exciting for us and a new departure from our usual repertoire. The team had to be built from scratch and I was looking for a good mix of creative artists, some of whom have extensive experience of pantomime, and some like me who have none! 

Although I have directed many straight plays, this was to be a new adventure, and one I was very excited to begin. Normally a panto is a year in development, and we had to do it in four months!  So putting the right creative team together was the first important job. 

My first port of call was to Denise Cresswell, the Box Office Manager at the Broadway. Denise has a passion for musical theatre and is a mine of information. She suggested I talk to Phil Gostelow who has composed and orchestrated as well as performed the music for the past seven years of pantos at the Broadway, and has a wealth of experience and a colossal talent for musical theatre. 

Denise also suggested Owen Smith as Choreographer, again Owen cut his teeth in panto, learning much of his craft at the Kenneth More Theatre in Ilford, and now teaching dance at four schools. His wide experience and knowledge of musical theatre was to prove a great asset to the new team. 

Clifford Oliver, Arc's resident writer was engaged to write the script, although he has never written a panto before, he has always wanted to, as a musician as well as writer this seemed the perfect opportunity. "Olly" has written over 100 plays, some of which have been Christmas shows with music for children. For the design, I went to my old collaborator Ian Teague, whose design work I love. Again, although Ian has designed a number of Christmas shows, Panto was new to him. This mix of creatives has led to a great partnership which has brought together a unique blend of experience and most importantly a desire to make something new and exciting. Our first meeting went on for three hours, and I knew this was the team I wanted to work with.

We know that Panto is often the first experience children have of theatre, and the tradition of parents and families coming together at Christmas to see a panto is well establishes and highly popular across the UK and here in Barking and Dagenham.  

My ambition for this year's panto was to create a new musical, woven through with all the delights and magic of a traditional panto, to tell a story and create memorable characters. I chose Cinderella as our first panto, because its probably the best known one and appeals to our imaginations, young and old.

Work started in June, with Olly, Phil, Owen, Ian  and I beginning work together. Often in creating shows, the script comes first, then the design, then the music and finally the direction and choreography. Thanks to the short time we had, all of these elements started together, meaning that collaboration was essential from to get go.  So design, music and script were worked alongside each other, each helping to determine and shape the whole. We spent many hours together building the piece, disagreeing, coming up with new solutions and having tremendous fun!

There are many elements to a panto, and we have an overall team of 35. Its all very well having the creative ideas, but you have to have someone to realise them practically. This is where the Production Manager comes in, and I was very fortunate to employ the services of Chris Musgrave, an experienced PM at the Broadway, with extensive knowledge and expertise in mounting a show, who had also led the technical team for the past three years of panto at the Broadway. Chris is also a set maker and has single handedly almost  completed the build, based on Ian's design. Its fun to visit him in the Broadway workshop to see how the set is coming along. He has brought together the production team, and we have also employed a great lighting designer, Chloe Kenward, and costume makers Zoe Baron and Alison Jacobson who are busy finishing the over 50 costumes in Dressing Room One at the theatre.

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So that's the beginning......... 

I will blog every day now to keep you all in the loop about each day's developments  and bring you up to date over this week on what's been happening as we rehearse the Youth Chorus, made up of two teams of eight local young people,  excitedly in anticipation of the arrival of the principals today!

Have a look at a glimpse of chorus rehearsals!