I don't do musicals...

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I don’t do musicals at Yew Tree – except when I get to work with top notch MD’s like Cheryl Camm.  I think if you’re going to do musicals you should do them properly and I don’t have the skill set…so yeah I don’t do musicals…
Except yesterday I did…and it was joyous…we had dancing and singing, chorus girls and gangsters…we had love, loss, wisdom and wit.  We even had Jazz Hands!!  I was so proud of the cast whose talent in all areas of performance meant we pulled off a pretty damn good musical. 
There was so much to celebrate about the performance of Maybe This Time.  The amount of support we got was immense – box office numbers exceeded everybody’s expectations.  However the quality of the support was worth more than the quantity…such genuine lovely comments…so many nice things said about the immensely talented cast in person and across the many social networking sites available for such purposes.  It was praise well deserved, for some this was their first show of this kind…and even for those that were more seasoned lots of being brave was going on. It was brilliant that those that had been courageous could hear through the words of others how well they’d done.  There is a danger that people assume because of the confidence shown on stage that the cast don’t need the affirmation – every genuine positive word helps fix some of the bruises everyday life leaves them with.    
The production also gave the young people involved chance to speak with a different voice – through dance and song and also through the characters of a completely imagined world.  There was something liberating about that.  It allowed them to articulate more clearly, become stronger…gain clarity…We also had a beautiful setting to perform in, Ossett Town Hall lent itself so well to the world of the play.
So where did the expertise come from?  From the cast of course! I had a set of individuals who were so determined to make the show as good as it could be they scheduled extra rehearsals to choreograph, practice songs and routines, arrange harmonies…the expertise came from them…it was a labour of love and of ambition fuelled by the desire to do well.
Finally the infrastructure for the performance was vital – people who gave up their time and rose to the challenge with no explicit glory – so Lucie, Abbie, Georgia and Ben thank you so much.

A word of warning though…I haven’t softened…it’ll be a while before we do one again…

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