Nothing says Christmas like a good panto. The echoes of laughter, “Oh no he isn’t” and “Oh yes he is” are filling packed theatres across the country. This year The Three Musketeers will mark the 12th year of the partnership between The Helix Panto and TheatreworX Productions, a company that produces musical theatre as well as running a stage school. Claire Tighe is CEO of TheatreworX. She explains the process.
“When you produce a panto, you sign your life away really. It’s a year-round process. By the end of this panto, I’ll be booking cast for next year, so I’m really starting to think about the following panto in February/March time.
Claire Tighe is the CEO of TheatreworX Productions.
“We start storyboarding in May/June and then finish off the casting. After that we start writing the script from the storyboards which gives us a direction for the set design and costumes.
“We have photoshoots towards the end of the summer so all costumes need to be ready. Further drilling down from September and we started rehearsals in November. We’re on the home run when rehearsals start would you believe.”
Claire and her life-long friend Karl Harpur co-write the script together. Karl then comes home from LA to direct and Claire choreographs.
“He lives in LA and we write the show together over Skype and Facetime.”
Panto camp
“We run summer camps called ‘Panto Camp’ in the Helix which is open to every child interested in auditioning for the panto not just TheatreworX students.
“There are other fabulous schools out there and it is great to see talent coming from all directions. Certainly showing that the future of performance is safe in Ireland.”
Commitment
There can be anything up to 28 people on stage at the one time with 16 professional adult cast, 10 kids and two teenagers. Claire takes it all in her stride.
“The coordinating is the easy part actually. We’ve done our work before we get to the rehearsal rooms so we know where everyone goes and what they are doing. It helps that we have a fantastic cast too.
Orla Jennings as Daria , Roy Grimson as Christoff and James Deegan as Jean Luc.
“There are 85 shows. So we have five teams of two teenagers. We also have four teams of 10 kids and we rotate the teams so they get around 20 performances each and generally do about two or three shows a week. When we’re rehearsing we have four mini stages dotted around the room. It’s all happening in four different places at the same time. It’s quite fun actually and it helps because they all have an alternate to fill in for them. The kids do two afternoons a week from November, so about six hours a week rehearsing.
“For the professionals it’s 10am to 6pm everyday for three weeks and then for the creative team, like myself and the director, we work 10am to 6pm and then go home to work on something else. My husband Aidan is rehearsing as an actor during the day and then he goes home and builds sets in the evening. Needless to say our children don’t really see us this time of year.”
“When we have two full weeks done in the rehearsal room, we will have rehearsed it a couple of times. We then go to tech week and we add in the costumes, add in the set and add in the special effects. So we don’t really know what we have until the first preview.”
Familiar faces
If you have attended The Helix Panto over the years, you would see plenty of familiar faces.
“I earmark someone that I know will work really well and I’ll book them directly. I have a lot of returning actors so generally there are not a lot of parts that open up to have an open call but this year we did for one of the parts.
Helix Panto.
“We found Rory who is playing one of the musketeers. We really lucked out with him because not only is he a fabulous actor, but he’s also a fight coordinator and has training in sword fighting. So I booked him to work on the sword fighting with Stephen Ryan which is fantastic to have.”
One thing that you might not think about as you settle in to your seat is how the cast get on with each other. For Claire this is vital. “Over the years I’ve learnt that casting the right actors to play the part is important, but equally casting the right people to be back stage during the show is important.
Helix Panto cast.
Panto is a long run with two shows a day, living in each other’s pockets so having the right kind of dynamic of people backstage really makes a difference to what happens on stage. How actors get on and trust each other has a lot to do with the success of a show. The audience are enjoying it because the people on the stage are enjoying themselves on stage and get on with the people they work with.”
The Three Musketeers is running in The Helix until 19 January. The will be a Sensory Friendly Show on 18 December. For more information click here.
Read more
Beauty and the Byrom
Emma O'Driscoll: the panto princess
Hitting the floor with Johnny Ward
Stephen Jones: 'tough guy' on tour
Nothing says Christmas like a good panto. The echoes of laughter, “Oh no he isn’t” and “Oh yes he is” are filling packed theatres across the country. This year The Three Musketeers will mark the 12th year of the partnership between The Helix Panto and TheatreworX Productions, a company that produces musical theatre as well as running a stage school. Claire Tighe is CEO of TheatreworX. She explains the process.
“When you produce a panto, you sign your life away really. It’s a year-round process. By the end of this panto, I’ll be booking cast for next year, so I’m really starting to think about the following panto in February/March time.
Claire Tighe is the CEO of TheatreworX Productions.
“We start storyboarding in May/June and then finish off the casting. After that we start writing the script from the storyboards which gives us a direction for the set design and costumes.
“We have photoshoots towards the end of the summer so all costumes need to be ready. Further drilling down from September and we started rehearsals in November. We’re on the home run when rehearsals start would you believe.”
Claire and her life-long friend Karl Harpur co-write the script together. Karl then comes home from LA to direct and Claire choreographs.
“He lives in LA and we write the show together over Skype and Facetime.”
Panto camp
“We run summer camps called ‘Panto Camp’ in the Helix which is open to every child interested in auditioning for the panto not just TheatreworX students.
“There are other fabulous schools out there and it is great to see talent coming from all directions. Certainly showing that the future of performance is safe in Ireland.”
Commitment
There can be anything up to 28 people on stage at the one time with 16 professional adult cast, 10 kids and two teenagers. Claire takes it all in her stride.
“The coordinating is the easy part actually. We’ve done our work before we get to the rehearsal rooms so we know where everyone goes and what they are doing. It helps that we have a fantastic cast too.
Orla Jennings as Daria , Roy Grimson as Christoff and James Deegan as Jean Luc.
“There are 85 shows. So we have five teams of two teenagers. We also have four teams of 10 kids and we rotate the teams so they get around 20 performances each and generally do about two or three shows a week. When we’re rehearsing we have four mini stages dotted around the room. It’s all happening in four different places at the same time. It’s quite fun actually and it helps because they all have an alternate to fill in for them. The kids do two afternoons a week from November, so about six hours a week rehearsing.
“For the professionals it’s 10am to 6pm everyday for three weeks and then for the creative team, like myself and the director, we work 10am to 6pm and then go home to work on something else. My husband Aidan is rehearsing as an actor during the day and then he goes home and builds sets in the evening. Needless to say our children don’t really see us this time of year.”
“When we have two full weeks done in the rehearsal room, we will have rehearsed it a couple of times. We then go to tech week and we add in the costumes, add in the set and add in the special effects. So we don’t really know what we have until the first preview.”
Familiar faces
If you have attended The Helix Panto over the years, you would see plenty of familiar faces.
“I earmark someone that I know will work really well and I’ll book them directly. I have a lot of returning actors so generally there are not a lot of parts that open up to have an open call but this year we did for one of the parts.
Helix Panto.
“We found Rory who is playing one of the musketeers. We really lucked out with him because not only is he a fabulous actor, but he’s also a fight coordinator and has training in sword fighting. So I booked him to work on the sword fighting with Stephen Ryan which is fantastic to have.”
One thing that you might not think about as you settle in to your seat is how the cast get on with each other. For Claire this is vital. “Over the years I’ve learnt that casting the right actors to play the part is important, but equally casting the right people to be back stage during the show is important.
Helix Panto cast.
Panto is a long run with two shows a day, living in each other’s pockets so having the right kind of dynamic of people backstage really makes a difference to what happens on stage. How actors get on and trust each other has a lot to do with the success of a show. The audience are enjoying it because the people on the stage are enjoying themselves on stage and get on with the people they work with.”
The Three Musketeers is running in The Helix until 19 January. The will be a Sensory Friendly Show on 18 December. For more information click here.
Read more
Beauty and the Byrom
Emma O'Driscoll: the panto princess
Hitting the floor with Johnny Ward
Stephen Jones: 'tough guy' on tour
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