Three cheers for musical that was built on Zoom calls
A YOUTH musical theatre group are hoping to raise the roof when their long-delayed musical is finally performed at Derby Theatre next month.
Derby Youth Musical Theatre’s show Bring It On had to be substantially recast after nearly half of those due to take part in it originally had to pull out due to other commitments.
The show has been delayed by more than a year as group founder Caroline Wells dealt with this and other challenges, notably the need to teach dance routines via Zoom due to Covid restrictions.
Members of the group are aged between 13 and 25 and have been recruited from across the area.
Caroline, 52, admitted there have been a number of hurdles in bringing the production to the stage. She said: “What happened was, for different reasons, many of the cast couldn’t commit this year because they were going to university or moved away.
“Out of a cast of 39 last year, we only got maybe 16 or 17 that could commit, we’d lost practically all our cast including most of our principal characters.
“Then we set about figuring out how we were going to rebuild it.
“We decided to try and do it through Zoom, so everyone who wanted to be a part of the show this year had to do self tapes because we were all in isolation, so we had to get self tapes in, and basically assemble a new cast from that, and we managed to do it. Luckily we had a lot of interest because people just want to get back to doing what they love.”
After reorganising the casting, Caroline and sister Daisy, the show’s choreographer and director, set about trying to teach dance routines through video calls.
Bring It On tells the story of a high school cheerleading squad. Caroline said: “We couldn’t do indoor singing with more than six people, we couldn’t have them less than two metres apart, we couldn’t have the under 18s mixing with the over 18s, we couldn’t have dance rehearsals with more than 15 in a group.
“Honestly, you have no idea of the lengths we’ve been to. We were so conscious about abiding by all the rules in any way to try and make this show happen.
“So we did loads of our rehearsals outside for weeks and then it got to May, that was when we could first get back together inside.”
Having been in production since 2019, Caroline and the group are currently isolating ahead of Bring It On’s premiere at Derby Theatre on September 2. However, they fear they will be unable to sell all the tickets they had hoped to because of the delayed opening of the box office. Caroline said: “The box office didn’t open until really late so now we’re worried that we might not get enough money to pay the bills.
“The theatre didn’t open at capacity initially, it was only 65% but they said we could start selling at full capacity, which is a lot of seats to sell so we’re getting a bit twitchy.”
Caroline said most of the cast had to learn cheerleading from scratch, but “we have a very strong cast which we’re just so lucky with because it nearly didn’t go ahead at all”. She added: “It’s been a big ask to teach them the skills. This show means everything to them.”
Bring It On, inspired by the film of the same name, runs from September 2-5. For tickets, which cost from £18.50 (£16.50 with concessions), visit the Derby Theatre website.