The theatre is a truly magical place; somewhere we go to relax and escape from life’s pressures. As we gather in the auditorium and the curtain rises and the lights come up, we share laughs, gasps, tears, drinks and overpriced bags of Maltesers, as we sit back and allow ourselves to be transported to the world set out for us on stage. Most importantly, the audience shares a collective experience that can never be replicated, one that no other audience will ever endure all thanks to the liveness of performance.
A live performance relies on far too many variables for them all to work exactly how they did before. An actor will not always say a line the same way twice (they might not even remember it), a soundtrack may play late, leaving the performer on stage trying to compensate for the design team’s hiccup, and the set itself might sometimes need a rest and collapse in half at the slightest brush of an elbow. Hilariously, any number of these mistakes may happen in the same performance, even the same scene, and that is what makes the theatre so unique for an audience – it’s live! And when it’s live, anything can happen!
This unpredictability is what has helped make the theatre such an entertaining medium, drawing audiences locally and globally to witness the random experience generator. Audiences revel in such dubiousness and fortunately, so do performers. The risk of stepping out on stage is what keeps it fresh. Months of rehearsal can set a foundation but once you’re up there, anything can happen and that is what makes it so fun! The rehearsals are an outline of what the performance can be, the cast, the friends that you’re performing with, make the performance vivid with colour.
We can’t wait to see our young performers embrace this unpredictability and unbridled joy of panto performance in front of our wonderful sold out audiences this coming December for ACTS’ first ever panto ‘The Wizard of Oz’, and in a panto, going wrong means going very, very right. In our rehearsal rooms, we are encouraging the slapstick and improvisational nature of panto and performance, welcoming mistakes and incorporating comical moments that come up in our classrooms (and believe us, there’s loads!)
This is the first time performing for a lot of our students and we know how daunting that unknown can be. This is why we made sure to include everyone in this production so that the entire ACTS family is behind every performer whenever they’re on stage. We want our young people to go out on this panto stage and know that truly nothing can go wrong when we all look out for each other – which helps when everyone on stage is wearing a silly costume and singing parody lyrics to popular Taylor Swift songs.
We also want this to be a unique experience for you – our audience. We know how scary it will have been on your end, sending your kid into the abyss of an acting group, never knowing if they’ll like it or not. We want to show how thankful we are for your trust in us and, at the end of the day, we want you to have a blooming good time on December the 10th!
The theatre will be a magical place, for us, for them, and hopefully for you. Things may go wrong but from the Wizard of Oz in North Lanarkshire to Wicked in the West End, things always do. What we wait for is the truly unique moments after the performance, seeing you pick up your young one after the show, telling them how great a job they did while they persistently ask you what you enjoyed about it and if you saw them on stage – little do they know, you’ll probably never forget it.