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Performing at the Millennium DomeDateline: 9th July, 2000 Last year over 200 local education authorities throughout Britain were invited by McDonalds, the burger people, to send up to a hundred young people to the Millennium Dome to perform the story of their town - past, present and future - as part of the McDonald's Our Town Story. The company would build its own theatre in the Dome, equip it and provide technical help. In addition it would give each participating LEA £10,000 and provide transport and accommodation for the participants. The "Day at the Dome" starts early. Up at 5.45am to get the kids out of bed and down for breakfast by 6.30. We had to be at the Dome by 8.00 at the latest and, although Rotherhithe Youth Hostel is not too far away, we wanted to get there early rather than late. The day begins with a briefing at 8.00 in the Green Room. This was followed, on the day we were there, by a visit to the central arena where GMTV (Good Morning Television) were doing a live broadcast (which included an appearance by Five, a pop group which had the kids climbing the walls in excitement!). No such rest for the technical crew, band conductor and artistic director! For us it was getting the 31-piece band arranged onstage, plotting the lighting, positioning mics (each section of the band, float mics for the front of the stage and eight lavalier radio mics) and getting costume changes, props etc. in position. By 9.45 it was time to fit the radio mics to the actors and do a sound check. Just after 10.00 the tech run started - the only one we would have. Our Technical Director cued the lighting operator and I did the same for the sound engineer, and off we went. It was diabolical! The kids' concentration had been totally destroyed by the GMTV thing and we had sound problems galore. The lighting, fortunately, was more or less right, although we had problems synchronising the opening video with the overture. We finished the tech at 10.45 (for a 20 minute show!), leaving me with less than five minutes to get the psyched up again before make-up. Our first show was at 11.15! I have to say that the Dome's techs and stage management team were brilliant. Nothing was too much trouble and they worked like slaves to give us everything we needed. I confess that I was a bundle of nerves. I spent the next half hour answering questions from the techs, then dashing outside of the Dome to have a sustaining nicotine fix, then dashing back again. I directed my first show in 1965 and I still get extremely nervous before each one! As soon as we cleared the stage, the house opened and the audience started drifting in. I had expected that we might have a lot of empty seats. The theatre seats 500 and I couldn't imagine that that number would come to see a show by a group of schoolkids about a part of the country that most Dome visitors would hardly know about. But I needn't have worried: all three shows were full. And, even better, in the whole day we only lost four audience members during the shows, and they were kids of about 12 or 13. The First Show The overture started - a suite of north country songs by conductor Ernie Young, Head of Music at Springfield Comprehensive in Jarrow, whose wind band was ours for the visit. Ernie nodded the first cue in our direction. Paul (Tague, TD of the Customs House in South Shields), murmured "Go VTR" and the video began playing - and finished just as the last notes of the overture finished. Paul and I both muttered "Yeah!" at the same time. Lights faded up on the three actresses and the play began. The three statues from in front of the Town Hall (Queen Victoria and two torch-bearers: here three women, two with unemployed husbands and one a single parent, playing them as a job) came alive and caught the audience's attention with the story of their lives. Then we had the Jarrow March: Ellen Wilkinson (MP for Jarrow at the time of the march) a commanding presence. Back to the statues and then into the Hilda Pit Disaster of 1839: 59 men and boys killed, the youngest nine years old. This was performed by dancers from Mortimer Comprehensive and seven six-year olds from Downhill Infants. In the silence after the disaster, one of our actor/singers (who were all from my own school, King George V) sang the first verse of Abide With Me, joined first by the women whose husbands, brothers or sons were down the pit, and then by the dancers. Immediately after, one of the statues cradled a dead child and sang the lament The Flowers of the Forest (words re-written, of course, to suit). Then into Catherine Cookson! Alice and Mary, with (very bored) grandchild Stacey in tow, finish the Catherine Cookson Trail and look back at the past with nostalgia. Suddenly the whole cast burst onto the stage, fed up with the past and its misery. The three statues protest that their life is not exactly pleasant but are shown that it's vastly better than even in the time of the Jarrow Marchers and the play ends with the cast looking forward to an even better future, with all 42 singing and dancing One day the sun will shine on a bright new morning. Two More A press photo-call followed - our own local paper's editor in attendance - then off to lunch (at McDonalds, of course) and back for the second performance, attended by South Tyneside's Mayor, Depty Mayor and Chair of the Education Committee, along with other dignitaries, including the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Greenwich. They had enjoyed it - I was kissed once by the Mayor and twice by the Chair of Education (both women, I hasten to add!), and then a half-hour's breather and we were into the last show. Fantastic! A wonderful experience for the kids, who showed just how talented they are. At the end of each performance a number of members of the audience were wiping away tears. Plenty of compliments from McDonalds people and from the tech crew. For me, that's the ultimate accolade: tech crews either tell you they think the show's good, or they keep their mouths shut. No matter what you think of the Dome, on the basis of our experience I have to say that the McDonalds Our Town Story is a resounding success. It gives children from all over the country an amazing experience and shows what a range of talent there is throughout the United Kingdom. We returned home on Saturday absolutely exhausted but exhilarated. Superb! The Dome: a Personal ReactionArticles Indices:
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