Ahoy there, me hearties!
Welcome to the first of our Pirates blogs. In these blogs we’ll be keeping you up to date with all the goings on during rehearsals and show week.
My names Warren and I’m directing the show. If you don’t know it, where have you been? ‘Pirates’ is a fabulous show which some great songs. It’s an old classic but we’re going to be giving it the full SMP treatment and squeeze out every ounce of humour that we can.
Starting a new show is always great fun and once again we welcome new members to the group, as well as some old faces that have returned and we thank the regular faces for being part of the show.
I’m really looking forward to working with the creative team of Erika (MD) and Fay (Choreographer) to put this show together and create something special and also looking forward to getting the ball rolling with our tech team, Ian (SM), Matt (Set), John (LX) and Phil (Sound) next week to make this show look good and run smoothly.
We had our read through on the Monday night and the creative team let everyone know our plans for the show, we also watched a load of clips from the show to get a feel for it, then it was onto auditions.
Our auditions were great, we didn’t have as many people as for past shows but those that came were of a really high standard and the result is a tight cast of super talented individuals to work with. Personally I’m looking forward to doing a lot of character work and the cast I have is a great bunch of talented actors who I know I will have plenty of fun with as we set the show.
At our first rehearsal we set out, under the guidance of Erika, to learn one of the Policeman’s songs. With so much singing in the show we have our work cut out for us but both Erika and the cast rose to the challenge and our first song sounds great.
Our new youngsters Archie and Jamie took their first SMP rehearsal in their stride and huge thanks must go to another newbie Alex who’s going to be playing piano for our rehearsals, gold dust!
Next week we start setting ‘When the foeman bears his stee’l and then it’s on to learning more new music!
Well that’s it for me, I’m really excited about this show, I’ve plenty of ideas and raring to work with the cast to start putting them in action. You won’t want to miss it.
Pirates of Penzance runs from 7th-10th June and tickets are available to buy through the Millfield box office here:
** If you’d still like to be part of the show it’s not too late to join, we could still use a couple of men and women. **
** Please get in touch at SMPTheatre@hotmail.com if you’d like to come aboard. **