Play in a Day 2010

On the 18th February 2010, we held our ever popular Play in a Day. The children from 8 – 14 years started the day knowing they were going to create their own short version of The Lion King, and it had to be ready for performance that evening at 7pm. After getting to know each other and playing some games, they set to work creating their new performance, rehearsing in smaller groups and then bringing it all together for the parts that everyone was in. The day was led by our fantastic Youth Theatre Leaders who had a brilliant but exhausting day!

After final rehearsals, the Butterworth Hall was cleared, with everyone using the Creative Space to practice and focus on the performance and frantic face painting taking place! Everyone was ready just before 7pm, but with the snow falling all afternoon, nearly all the parents were having a terrible journey trying to get here to see their budding actors perform.

We finally started the performance at 7.20pm with around 20 parents and friends, some of who had abandoned cars and walked to try and get here on time! It was such a shame as the children had worked so hard and we were expecting an audience of around 75. Nevertheless, they performed to their small audience brilliantly, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy every minute of it, and they all looked fantastic in their costumes and facepaints.

We made a quick decision to film the performance on our FlipVideo from the front row, trying to capture as much of it as possible. This has meant we can upload it to the website so all the parents that didn’t make it can see what a brilliant performance their children gave.

Play in a Day 2010 from Warwick Arts Centre on Vimeo.

After great applause and a big thank you to our leaders for the day and our technical staff, we then had quite a wait for all the children to be collected as parents slowly made it through the snow and traffic. A long but brilliant day!

Lots of pictures from throughout the day, can also be seen in the Gallery to the right.