Its less than a month until Cinderella at Fairfield Halls Opens! - Croydon Blog 9 - November 2019

The up and coming production of Cinderella at Fairfield Halls in Croydon is being hailed as the ‘must see, most exciting pantomime for 2019’ and the most innovative pantomime in the UK for years.

To try and understand just what makes this production so special, we caught up with Steve Boden, managing director of Imagine Theatre. It is Steve’s vision that this production will bring to life; his ideas, thoughts and creative brief which led to the brief which will culminate in the staging of this production of Cinderella. Steve took us step by step through his reasons for the show, and why he chose the team he did to design and create the production….

Steve Boden, Managing Director of Imagine Theatre with his business partner and wife Sarah Boden

When we were offered the chance to work with Neil Chandler and the team at BH Live to deliver pantomime at the newly renovated Fairfield Halls we were cautious at first. Delivering a large-scale pantomime into a 1500 seat concert platform with little theatrical infrastructure would be challenging to say the least. But if the venue wanted to re-imagine Croydon’s panto for the Concert Hall, then we too should throw all panto conventions that we know into the air and come up with a new delivery of the art-form, to excite and impress audiences now and in the future whilst maintaining the magic and traditions that panto producers pass down whilst keeping the purists happy.

Imagine have always embraced the chance to work with new teams, in new spaces and have significant experience in putting elaborate pantomimes into halls and theatres across the United Kingdom. Panto has continually evolved over the years, constantly reinventing itself and redefining the art form. As custodians of the art-form for future generations of practitioners and audiences, we were looking for an opportunity to push the boundaries a bit harder, too do something different, to challenge our own perceptions of what pantomime is and can be.

One of the first tasks we had to undertake was identifying our production team. We needed experienced hands who understood the medium of panto, how to work on a production of this magnitude and who understood how to integrate the technologies we are working with. Laura Taylor was the obvious choice as Associate Producer, along with George Wood as Director. Both of them come with a wealth of knowledge on how to create productions such as this. Lynne Thomas joins us to choreograph working along side Steve Clark as Musical Director and Steve Power as Musical Arranger, making up an extremely experienced and strong team. They are supported by a fabulous technical team. We’ll cover more about them in our next blog!

From there our minds turned to how we were going to deliver panto in such a unique space and what it might look like. There were a few challenges which faced us!

The outside of Fairfield Halls on the night of the re-opening, Monday 16th September 2019

The venue has only just reopened! Delivering a brand-new style of panto into an existing building is challenging enough, but when the theatre has only been open and operational for three months prior to fit-up, that adds another layer of nervous excitement to the proceedings! Steve and the production team visited the venue in January 2019 and saw a shell, without walls, ceilings, seating or indeed many of the fixtures and fittings you would expect to see. Indeed, when they returned in June 2019, it was hard to see the stage through the miles of scaffolding that was sitting within the concert hall auditorium. Revised stage plans were yet to be delivered so any designer would be working from visuals of the past configuration and artist impressions of how the new space would work. We’ve had to consider grid loading for the venue’s new motors, sight lines for the screens, positions for the band, all without absolute clarity of what would eventually be delivered.

There’s not much space in the Phoenix Concert Hall - Steve says the solution became easy. If using full cloths and cut cloths in a concert hall is problematic, let’s do away with them! Trucked items and large set pieces are difficult to accommodate when you have no wing space or scene dock, so let’s not have any. As everything must be brought into the venue through a goods lift on the second floor, conventional scenery is not possible, so let’s not have much!

As you can see, there’s very little stage space in the Phoenix Concert Hall, limited entrances and no flying! Oh, and choir stalls at the back and a huge organ!

We need an expert to design this - We appointed renowned pantomime designer Mark Walters, with whom Steve had worked on many pantomimes over the years at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Mark is an exceptional pantomime designer, who understands the spectacle required for panto but who is experienced and exited enough to be able to rip up the rule book and imagine something new.

So, without much scenery and no cloths or trucks, how do we make the show work? Whilst AV and mapping technology has been used in theatre on numerous occasions over the past decade, the technology is only now becoming readily integrate-able into a commercial panto model.

Upon giving Mark the brief for this brief for the show, Steve mentioned that LED screen technology and video mapping could be an interesting consideration. Plenty of panto producers have used projection to provide special moments (animated sequences, 3D routines etc) but have struggled with the brightness of the screen when theatrical stage lighting is applied. Could we expand on the delivery of video imagery with the newer generation of LED screen technology? These provide much greater clarity and intensity than traditional front or rear projection. But we were clear that we didn’t want to end up with a panoramic screen and no interaction with traditional panto set elements. You had to walk into the auditorium and immediately know that you were coming to see panto and that the palpable level of excitement felt from an auditorium packed full of excited families and children was, in no way, diminished.

Mark’s incredible design has now been fully coloured - the space for the screens can be clearly seen, but at the same time, there’s a trick up his sleeve behind each of the portals. With over 5 miles of cable built into the set alone (and that’s without the screens), it is going to absolutely blow the audiences away! Design and image copyright imagine theatre ltd

Mark’s design solution surpassed our expectations. He has skilfully integrated screen technology into the more conventional portal and backing setting, where traditional scenic masking is augmented with high spec LED screens. With the addition of a few simple three-dimensional set pieces (for example a waterwheel and fireplace), the world of pantomime can literally come alive in front of our eyes. The screen art detail can be entwined with the set pieces, for example we can see animated water flowing towards the water wheel which rotates. We can see a real fire in the fireplace of the kitchen, the cinders sparkling through the fireplace set piece. And of course, there is no end to the magical effects that can be created on the screen to support the action. In fact, identifying the key moments where the screens can support the action has been a significant driver in the decisions we’ve made.

The costumes have been designed by Mark Walters are being made by the Imagine Theatre Costume team led by Dawn Outhwaite

Everything must sit in balance - The audience mustn’t come away singing the sets! The cast, script, costumes, writing, comedy, music and storytelling also had to be as strong, to ensure we deliver a strong pantomime production across all disciplines.

Working alongside Mark Walters is renowned video designer Nina Dunn, who’s theatre credits include the current production of 9 to 5. Although Mark had used some video work in other plays and musicals, this would be the first time that video had played such a pivotal role in his design of a panto. The most important part for both Mark and Nina has been marrying the visual design style Mark’s pantomime world with Nina’s video screen world. Nina has never brought video creation into the panto world so there’s been lots of discussions about conventions and how we can enhance them with static scenes, animated sequences and magical transitions!

And all this had to be delivered in a significant but not excessive production budget

For the script, we turned to an experience panto writer who had vast experience in writing not only traditional pantomime but productions where screens had been an integral part of the storytelling concept. Will Brenton has been writing pantomimes for thirty years has also a string of arena show writing credits to his name, all of which have integrated screen technology with narrative story telling. As well as being an experienced writer, will had created, directed and produced countless children’s tv series as well as many of the nations favourite soaps and understands how screens can be successfully integrated into a live production narrative.

With rehearsals starting in just a few days, we’ll follow up with another blog very shortly, taking you inside the rehearsal and production process.

The show is currently being built at the Imagine Theatre Scenic Workshops, headed up by Dave Edmunds (scenic) and Dawn Outhwaite (Costume) Design and image copyright imagine theatre ltd

So, as you can see, this show really is going to be something quite special. Love panto? Then make sure you don’t miss out! Cinderella runs at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon from Tuesday 10th December 2019 to Sunday 5th January 2020.

Behind the Scenes

Imagine Theatre