Rebekah Pickering-Wood Interview: Great Expectations Audition Part Two
Title
Rebekah Pickering-Wood Interview: Great Expectations Audition Part Two
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 asked to run on stage and sing Happy Birthday. Her experience of singing in church is invaluable as the number of hopefuls gets fewer and fewer, eventually she becomes one of the chosen ones.
And because the house lights were up, we could see out into the auditorium and there was Chris Sandford who was the director and a couple of other members of staff, mainly with clipboards looking quite professional. And Chris stood up and he addressed us and explained what the performance was going to be about: it was Great Expectations, it was a Charles Dickens production, that Darren Day was going to be the star. Then he mentioned a whole load of actors who I’d never heard of before, who, looking back on them now, they were quite famous, but to an 11-year-old, I had no idea who Brian Glover was, for example. I know he’s of Tetley Tea advert fame, but at the time I didn’t know, so I just smiled and nodded.
And the point was, they had a piano on the stage and the idea was that they’d line us all up, they’d play a piano cue, you’d run onto the spot in the middle of the stage and then you’d sing Happy Birthday to a woman called Zoe, who was one of the assistants. And I think the idea behind that was to get a bit of a sense of whether or not you could do your timing correctly, whether you could run when you were supposed to, whether or not you could sing in tune, whether or not you knew the words to Happy Birthday, which was quite simple, and so the idea was you just ran on. And of course all these little dance school girls ran on and were, like, very dramatic and wonderful. And I just ran on and just sang Happy Birthday, but because I was quite confident at singing, I thought “Well, I’ve done an all right job: I sang it in tune, I remembered all the words, that must be OK”.
And so not long after that they split us into two groups and then one group got led off and I thought “Well, that’s it, isn’t it. They’ve got through and I haven’t”. And obviously I didn’t realise at the time, but they were the children who’d been taken away to be told “I’m ever so sorry but you haven’t made the cut this time”. And so as the group got smaller and smaller as we did more little auditions, a little bit extra singing, a little bit of “could you dance along to this routine”, they narrowed us down and down and down. And I remember it being just a really strange experience because we didn’t really know what was going on, but at the same time it was a great opportunity to meet other children. Everybody had such passion for wanting to perform and I just wanted to sing. That was the bit I really loved, so that was why I was there.
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 asked to run on stage and sing Happy Birthday. Her experience of singing in church is invaluable as the number of hopefuls gets fewer and fewer, eventually she becomes one of the chosen ones.
And because the house lights were up, we could see out into the auditorium and there was Chris Sandford who was the director and a couple of other members of staff, mainly with clipboards looking quite professional. And Chris stood up and he addressed us and explained what the performance was going to be about: it was Great Expectations, it was a Charles Dickens production, that Darren Day was going to be the star. Then he mentioned a whole load of actors who I’d never heard of before, who, looking back on them now, they were quite famous, but to an 11-year-old, I had no idea who Brian Glover was, for example. I know he’s of Tetley Tea advert fame, but at the time I didn’t know, so I just smiled and nodded.
And the point was, they had a piano on the stage and the idea was that they’d line us all up, they’d play a piano cue, you’d run onto the spot in the middle of the stage and then you’d sing Happy Birthday to a woman called Zoe, who was one of the assistants. And I think the idea behind that was to get a bit of a sense of whether or not you could do your timing correctly, whether you could run when you were supposed to, whether or not you could sing in tune, whether or not you knew the words to Happy Birthday, which was quite simple, and so the idea was you just ran on. And of course all these little dance school girls ran on and were, like, very dramatic and wonderful. And I just ran on and just sang Happy Birthday, but because I was quite confident at singing, I thought “Well, I’ve done an all right job: I sang it in tune, I remembered all the words, that must be OK”.
And so not long after that they split us into two groups and then one group got led off and I thought “Well, that’s it, isn’t it. They’ve got through and I haven’t”. And obviously I didn’t realise at the time, but they were the children who’d been taken away to be told “I’m ever so sorry but you haven’t made the cut this time”. And so as the group got smaller and smaller as we did more little auditions, a little bit extra singing, a little bit of “could you dance along to this routine”, they narrowed us down and down and down. And I remember it being just a really strange experience because we didn’t really know what was going on, but at the same time it was a great opportunity to meet other children. Everybody had such passion for wanting to perform and I just wanted to sing. That was the bit I really loved, so that was why I was there.
Type
Oral Interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal and Royal Centre Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal and Royal Centre Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Sally Smith and Phil Smith
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
