Wow, what a week!
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I’ve just spent seven days with the wonderful group of 25 teenagers who were the crew on Horsham College’s Production, Legally Blonde Jr.
They were crazy days, full of incredible pressure, quite a lot of shouting ‘go!’, plenty of teamwork and a couple of very good laughs.
We turned up at the Horsham Town Hall Theatre ready to carry in three truckloads of set pieces, a cargo of props from two huge trailers, and various crates, boxes and bags of tools, costumes and decorations overflowing from three cars.
Immediately, a number of boys on my stage crew had bits of furniture turned upside down as they mended trolley wheels, fixed courtroom pews and sorted out door handles.
They were ingenious and energetic.
One team of girls started work cutting round white table clothes for the restaurant, setting them with cutlery and crockery then trialling methods of making plastic champagne glasses stay put, while sitting on a table moving very quickly across a stage.
Some students decorated the dressing rooms for the cast while others hung posters in the foyer, there were dressing room name plates created and pin board displays of photographs pieced together.
Things got really mad when we hit the auditorium as, while broken into two groups separated by a stage, we had to pull together, standing in the dark and in silence on the side of that stage, trying scene changes we had never done before.
It was impossible, but after we had the chance to practise, we got there.
My favourite moments were when the crew congratulated each other, in silent high fives of course, when a complicated scene change was achieved smoothly.
Our aim was to be invisible, and maintain the stage magic by seamlessly enabling new imaginary places to suddenly appear, so the cast could dance and sing their way through the story.
As always with new experiences, I learnt an enormous amount about myself and other people last week.
I was extremely unprepared for the challenges of the week, and felt like throwing in the towel many times.
But those beautiful teenagers just kept turning up each day, and they made sticking around well worth the effort.