What Does a Panto Company Do Throughout the Year - March

Continuing our blog of what a pantomime company does ‘for the rest of the year’ here is a brief overview of what the Imagine team have been up to during March.

This month has seen Head of Wardrobe Dawn return from maternity leave and so our fabulous wardrobe team are now back to full strength and are busy planning for the season ahead.

Artistic Director Eric and Head of Casting Louise have been getting some of the creative teams and returning cast members in place for this season’s shows. In addition Eric has been liaising with our writing team over the scripts for this year as well as creating first drafts of those he is writing.

The final week of March saw the first photoshoot of the 2023 season and many of the team were working hard in preparation. The wardrobe team carefully selected and prepped the costumes, shoes and wigs and Katie and Emma from the marketing team had a guided tour of the props floor from Ruth and had a lot of fun coming up with new ideas for social media and selecting the props. The wonderful Ruth and Anna also created some very special and glittery additional bits for the shoots this year. The shoot day itself was a lot of fun with some familiar faces joining us for a lot of merriment alongside the hard work of getting all the photo and video content that was needed.

With the financial year end Sarah and the accounts team have been very busy reconciling the accounts from the past financial year, checking and double checking everything has been correctly coded to each show.

Beth in the Child Performance Licensing department has been creating all the info sheets and application forms for the Junior Ensemble auditions. All the dates are now on our website, with the first ones happening in June, so please take a look at our Junior Ensemble page for further information – www.imaginetheatre.co.uk/childrens-auditions. The page has a run down as to how our audition days work and there is also a video and a podcast with further insight into the process.

If you are interested in a further look behind the scenes check out the fortnightly Just Imagine Podcast which as well as interviews with the members of the Imagine HQ team includes guest interviews from the wide range of people we work with each year.

What Does a Panto Company Do Throughout the Year - February

Continuing our blog of what a pantomime company does ‘for the rest of the year’ here is a brief overview of what the Imagine team have been up to during February.

Although many of the team take the opportunity to have a well-earned break in February, things have still been exceptionally busy at Imagine HQ.

Many of the companies that we hire sets, props and costumes to produce their pantomime during January and February and so the last few weeks have seen the majority of the set and costume hires for the 2022-23 season come to an end. The warehouse, wardrobe and props floor are once again full.

This year our warehouse is home to 5 new sets. The stores team have been logging all the new sets onto the system. They have to measure and photograph each piece of every single set.  Each individual piece of set has its own label with a barcode which is linked to a central system along with the photo and measurements. This allows the team to quickly pull up images and information for each piece of set we own. This system is also used to log the sets in and out of our warehouse each season.

The wardrobe team are cleaning all the costumes from the season and doing any necessary maintenance before they get put away. In addition Saeni and Adam have been venturing off around the country procuring some new costumes to add to the collection.

The debriefs with the venue management and the marketing teams are now almost at an end and budgets are getting closer to being finalised.

The casting process has begun with a few familiar faces beginning to be confirmed for this season with announcements and brochure launches imminent for a few of our venues.

In addition, Sarah, Steve and Laura attended the first ever pantomime symposium in London run by the UK Pantomime Association and the team behind the MA in contemporary pantomime at Staffordshire University, along with many of the country’s other top pantomime producers, and other representatives of the UK pantomime industry. It was a fabulous day of thought provoking panels, honest and open discussion about the future of pantomime and a chance to meet up with friends and colleagues from the industry.

The team are delighted that the Just Imagine podcast has now received 6,000 downloads and the schedule for the podcast for the rest of 2023 is already in place.

And finally, the Imagine Team did not forget to embrace the tradition of Shrove Tuesday with Amy making delicious pancakes for the whole team on Tuesday 21 February.

If you are interested in a further look behind the scenes check out the fortnightly Just Imagine Podcast which as well as interviews with the members of the Imagine HQ team includes guest interviews from the wide range of people we work with each year.