Rebekah Pickering-Wood Interview: Great Expectations Audition Part One
Title
Rebekah Pickering-Wood Interview: Great Expectations Audition Part One
Date
21 November 2018
Description
Oral history interview with Rebekah Pickering-Wood about her childhood experiences of performing at the Theatre Royal in Great Expectations in 1994 and A Christmas Carol in 1995.
What's the story?
Born in Nottingham in 1983, Rebekah Pickering-Wood performed as a child in two Christmas shows, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol at the Theatre Royal in 1994 and 1995. These two Dickens stage adaptations replaced the traditional Pantomime for two seasons.
From the audition process to performing on stage, Rebekah provides a vivid account of this period in her life, as well as an insight into the life of the theatre.
Rebekah is one of hundreds who turn up for auditions at the Theatre Royal, she is intimidated at first but when she goes on stage she really feels at home.
And so he brought me down here. And we were quite early because the queue for the children who were auditioning eventually wrapped around the block. So we were stood at the main doors and we must have been within the first twenty or so parents, but we were early. And then by just before the time that the doors opened, there were hundreds, they were queueing all the way around the street, all the way back round past the stage door. And so it was quite an amazing experience to think “Gosh, there’s so many children here”. What was quite unnerving for me at the time, I would consider myself to be a working class girl, I did a lot of singing in church. I’m a good Methodist, so my singing was a big part of my life, but I never went to dance school, I never had dance classes and everybody was there with their little jazz shoes and their mums doing their hair in neat little braids. I was just there stood in my trainers and my jogging bottoms, feeling a little bit out of place.
But we were invited in and as we went in there was a desk and they took my name and they took information about whether I’d done anything professionally before, to which I answered “No”, and they gave us a name sticker and they brought us up to the Dress Circle waiting area and eventually they put us into groups of twenty or so and then they called us to go and have our first part of our audition. And that was really the first time I’d ever even been on a big stage and they took us round the side door and I just remember walking out onto this brightly lit stage. At that time the house lights were up as well, so you could see the whole of the auditorium. And it was huge and I must have been 11 at the time and I felt so small in comparison to this huge expanse of space. And it was quite amazing and I just thought “Wow, I could get used to this. This is beautiful”.
From the audition process to performing on stage, Rebekah provides a vivid account of this period in her life, as well as an insight into the life of the theatre.
Rebekah is one of hundreds who turn up for auditions at the Theatre Royal, she is intimidated at first but when she goes on stage she really feels at home.
And so he brought me down here. And we were quite early because the queue for the children who were auditioning eventually wrapped around the block. So we were stood at the main doors and we must have been within the first twenty or so parents, but we were early. And then by just before the time that the doors opened, there were hundreds, they were queueing all the way around the street, all the way back round past the stage door. And so it was quite an amazing experience to think “Gosh, there’s so many children here”. What was quite unnerving for me at the time, I would consider myself to be a working class girl, I did a lot of singing in church. I’m a good Methodist, so my singing was a big part of my life, but I never went to dance school, I never had dance classes and everybody was there with their little jazz shoes and their mums doing their hair in neat little braids. I was just there stood in my trainers and my jogging bottoms, feeling a little bit out of place.
But we were invited in and as we went in there was a desk and they took my name and they took information about whether I’d done anything professionally before, to which I answered “No”, and they gave us a name sticker and they brought us up to the Dress Circle waiting area and eventually they put us into groups of twenty or so and then they called us to go and have our first part of our audition. And that was really the first time I’d ever even been on a big stage and they took us round the side door and I just remember walking out onto this brightly lit stage. At that time the house lights were up as well, so you could see the whole of the auditorium. And it was huge and I must have been 11 at the time and I felt so small in comparison to this huge expanse of space. And it was quite amazing and I just thought “Wow, I could get used to this. This is beautiful”.
Type
Oral History
Location of item
Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Sally Smith and Phil Smith
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
