While many people are making the most of the good weather, some theatre creatives are busily anticipating Christmas and preparing for festive shows. One company that’s getting even more steamed up about Christmas than usual is Wise Owl, a Leicestershire company which specialises in immersive theatre.
In 2025, Wise Owl will be staging a new show, Santa Express, which will employ between 40 and 50 performers at two new venues: North Yorkshire Moors Railway and London Victoria station. Although this might seem a daunting prospect, the signals appear to be green for Wise Owl, whose previous railway shows have played to more than 300,000 people.
Chris Brookes set up Wise Owl in 2015 as a way to get work between acting roles. “I've been involved in steam railway preservation since childhood,” he says, “and after graduating from drama school, the connection felt natural—steam railways are inherently theatrical, with their rich history, dramatic visuals and immersive atmosphere.”
He started by developing immersive experiences on trains, at historical sites and in hotels. A hotel manager saw one of the company’s murder mysteries and booked Wise Owl for his hotel chain.
“All our success has come from people watching the quality of what we’ve done and wanting more,” says Chris. “We now create theatre tours: we’re working with Buxton Opera House, the Theatre Royal in Nottingham and Curve in Leicester.
“As well as that, we’re still doing what we originally set out to do: shows on steam railways.”
Producer Chloe Thorpe explains how Santa Express came about: “there’s always been Santa trains at heritage railways. It could be simply someone playing Santa, going up and down the train giving out gifts.
“Because we have so much experience with steam trains and theatrical experiences, we wanted to see if we could adapt a Santa train to make it as high quality as possible and also to have a storytelling element.
“We follow different characters that you meet, we have puppetry, music and we make it the best it can possibly be.”
“There are so many children’s stories with trains in them,” adds Chris. “Harry Potter, Murder on the Orient Express—the steam engine is always the star of the show.
“North Yorkshire Moors Railway wanted to bring new elements to their Christmas experience and make it as theatrical as possible. It’s an exciting opportunity for us.”
North Yorkshire Moors Railway’s stations and scenic routes have featured in several high-profile productions including the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first Downton Abbey film in 2019, the 2023 films Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Goathland station regularly appeared as Aidensfield station in the long-running ITV period drama series Heartbeat.
Chris and Chloe are still developing Santa Express but have plenty of ideas about the content: “when you arrive, you’ll follow a story that enables you and your family to meet various characters, write letters to Santa and search for hidden characters or hidden meanings to things,” says Chloe.
Chris takes up the story: “When people get out of their car we don’t know where they’re coming from, what’s going on in their lives. The main thing for us is that they can escape from reality. They can be part of the story. For a couple of hours they can become part of the adventure, part of this magical storytelling world.
“That’s the beauty of immersive theatre—it’s just as important as theatre on a stage. You can be part of the action.”
Santa Express will appeal to all ages and, as Chris emphasises, adults have been just as excited as children to see previous shows.
“You get mum or dad or grandma or granddad saying they’ve been dragged along by the kids. By the end, they’re having just as much fun and their inner child has come out.
“I think everyone remembers what it was like when they were a kid and how exciting it all is, Santa and the magic of Christmas and the storytelling. Christmas is the time when you can release the inner child and that magic comes out.”
In 2025, Wise Owl will be employing a mixture of professionally trained new graduates as well as seasoned actor-musicians, puppeteers, magicians and singers.
“There’s always work for actors at Christmas, but if they haven’t bagged themselves a panto job, they’re thinking about what else they can do. Our shows are a really nice gig, particularly for new graduates,” Chloe points out.
Chris stresses that Wise Owl is not an events company: “what attracts a lot of good actors to us is that we’re a theatre company, so there’s always a sense of storytelling or the theatrical about what we’re doing.”
According to Chloe, Wise Owl is passionate about employing self-represented actors who don’t have an agent: “on the acting database Spotlight, if you’re not represented by an agent you’re restricted as to what you can see. I think that’s really unfair.”
As with panto companies, Wise Owl is working most of the year on its shows.
“Our job starts in February or March,” says Chris, “and castings are sent out by Easter. Then it’s just constant. Most theatres say they have to plan all the year round for panto; we’re the same but we’ve also got a moving steam train.
“By the time we get to November, if we’ve done our job well, the joy for us is we get to sit back with a hot chocolate and watch these amazing, talented actors every day. And that for us is worth all the hard work.”
Although Chris and Chloe are seasoned performers, they feel it’s impossible to be in the show and organise it at the same time.
“There’s always a problem to fix, something to catch us off guard. One of the actors once said he’d graduated in 1980 and we’re the best problem-solvers as producers he’d ever met. That meant a lot.”
At the same time as they are thinking about Santa Express, Wise Owl is preparing for a tour of Stiles and Drew's The Three Little Pigs the Musical, which starts at Curve, Leicester at the end of July and has dates until May 2026.
Wise Owl specialises in family-friendly shows and previous productions include Alice in Wonderland which toured in 2023.
“Good-quality family theatre is hard to do budget-wise because affordable tickets have to be a lower price. Our theatre tours are subsidised by our Christmas show in the same way that pantos subsidise theatres. Steam trains allow us to create quality theatre the rest of the year,” says Chris.
Santa Express will not only employ actors but also set designers, set construction teams, sound designers, costume makers and lighting designers. In 2024, Wise Owl also employed five children aged from 9 to 13 and their chaperones.
“There was one child in particular,” says Chloe, “who’d never acted in front of an audience. It was a really big step for her. Working for us is a good opportunity for young actors too.”
Santa Express will open at North Yorkshire Moors Railway on Saturday 29 November and will run from Pickering station every weekend in December. In the final week before Christmas, it will run every day. The London Victoria experience will logistically be more complicated, so it will take place on Saturday 20 and Monday 22 December.
“Then,” says Chris, “we sleep. We go into hibernation and pick up again in the new year.”