Cinderfella, Yessir! Roller Coaster
What a festive season we had!
Here you are with CINDERFELLA, YESSIR! recap and look back:
It all started back in July 2021…. It seems like a long time to plan a panto, but we definitely need all of that time, if not more with Hello Little People primarily being a mighty team of TWO.
July: Research Venues. We absolutely loved our time at the Nunnery in 2020, but unfortunately the venue was not available this year, so it was time to go hunting!
The Isle of Man is not overrun with venues that lend themselves to what we're looking for, particularly at Chiristmas time… so it wasn’t an easy search.
Listen to the songs!
August: Time to develop our initial thoughts and ideas for the show. We create all our work from scratch, so it is important for us to ask ourselves WHAT STORY DO WE WANT TO TELL?
We spent time researching stories, inspirational companies and allowing our creative juices to be filled.
We often start by moodboarding our ideas and exploring images and music to develop the vision and feel of the piece.
September: A busy month!
Our marketing campaign began (thanks to the wonderful Amy for her graphic design skills!) and the tickets went on sale
Chloe starts to put pen to paper and write draft 1 of the script, and then draft 2, draft 3…Michelle put on the producer hat for a while and worked on the budget and putting the team together. In 2020, when we produced Juan and the Beanstalk we learnt the hard way that we couldn’t do everything - we were literally pressing play on the music, changing the lights and then jumping on stage to play all the characters! So we knew this year we wanted to put a team together that would help us have a slightly different experience!
We were also joined by our glorious composer Isaac Savage! Although he had composed all of our productions up until this point, we had never worked with him in person before, so it was a joy to invite him to the Isle of Man.
We wrote all the songs for the show in 3 days.
October:
More script edits… (I think we were on about Draft 6 by then?)
We started developing our full costume looks with Jude (another superstar!)
Marketing photoshoot happened with the glorious Clare Payne.
We spent a few days developing the show through an Research and Development process to try out parts of the script on their feet and work out how we might tell the story of Cinderfella (7 characters) with the two of us!
AND then we produced and led our engagement project School of Little People where we invited 30 5-7 year olds to become part of Hello Little People for a week.
November:
It’s hotting up now, tickets are selling well slowly but surely.
Props, Costume, Set, Promo events….. All the elements to keep ploughing on with.
Our technical team is formed and we are working on the details like ordering ice cream, merchandise and ensuring we have our seating sorted to ensure a Hello Little People experience from stepping in the door.
December:
A whirlwind! Everyday brought its challenges.
The Omicron variant brought added worries as to whether the show would be able to happen or not!!
We were in the rehearsal room full time, the show was being rewritten every other day. It was filled with fun from playing with rubber feet, making mop heads into full blown characters and working out if we had enough fake poo?
Once we got in the venue we were joined by our full team which was a welcome relief!
Once the set was constructed (of cardboard boxes!!), the soft style seating was in place and we tech with sound and light, we were ready before we knew it!
The first few performances were really interesting as it was the first time we really were able to test the material in front of a live audience. And if kids don’t like it - they WILL tell you!!
We successfully completed our full run and then slept for a week! Well, after we had tied up all of our producing jobs!
