Pinocchio Launch Event at The Old Rep Theatre, Birmingham

Event: Pinocchio Launch

Location: The Old Rep Theatre, Birmingham

Today, the Smallhousebigtrips household was invited along to enjoy the Pinocchio Launch Party, held at The Old Rep Theatre in Birmingham.

It may only be June but the year seems to be flying by and in just 5 months time the Christmas Production of Pinocchio will begin. I’m sure that you will join me in thinking what a fantastic show it is to have on during the festive period.

If you have never been to The Old Rep Theatre before, you are missing out.

Opened in 1913, it began as the original home of the Birmingham Repertory Company, led by Sir Barry Jackson, who moved to their new site on Broad Street in 1971. The theatre was Britain’s first built Repertory Theatre and has over 100 years later still kept many of its original features. It seats 385 people and I imagine if chairs (or walls even) could talk, they’d be telling us plenty of exciting stories of what they have seen.

The Old Rep strives to engage, educate and entertain the next generation of artists and theatre lovers. With a high quality programme of events, The Old Rep is a creative hub that showcases professional productions as well as nurturing talent by providing a platform to showcase amateur performances. Now owned and managed by Birmingham Ormiston Academy (BOA) it has given teenagers studying at the Academy a place to specialise in creative, digital and performing arts. The academy has established itself as a centre of excellence for the arts, forging strong links with creative industries regionally, nationally and internationally.

The Old Rep stages BOA students’ performances throughout the year, and students on performing and technical theatre arts courses have regularly timetabled lessons within the theatre. Continuing to give what the theatre began giving in 1913, a platform for new talent to perform.

And today, at the Pinocchio Launch, I was able to watch my first ever performance by BOA students and I was impressed. Such an outstanding group of performers. We were informed that they had only been given the script 24 hours before our sneak preview and yet, when watching them perform, you could easily believe they had been rehearsing for weeks.

Pinocchio when it commences its official shows is going to be performed by 50% of trained performers and 50% of BOA students. And after today, I have to admit, I’m very excited for the show to commence. As there was some exceptional talent on the stage today.

The highlight for me being Niamh Slater (twitter: @niamhs_island) whose performance and role as Pinocchio for our preview, could easily be transferred to the main performances without the need for a ‘none-student’ to take the role. I personally would love to see Niamh play Pinocchio in November. Another stand out performance for me today was a young lad who played Cat (sorry, I didn’t get your name). Another who could easily take the role permanently and give a stand out performance. Well done both!

We only got to see a short taster but it left us really wanting more. In the scenes we watched, Matilda and Jemima giggled and sat glued to the stage. The director (Alec Fellows Bennett) has great ideas for the setting and when talking to him today, his passion for the show was highly evident. It’s pretty obvious that this is going to be a show that you don’t want to miss. With that in mind, tickets are now on sale here. The show is running from November 17th – December 30th. With various start times, so if like me, your children are thoroughly exhausted by 4pm and unable to sit quietly or still from that time, you could bring them to an earlier showing.

I haven’t watched Pinocchio since I was a young child so I cannot wait to see Pinocchio brought to life this Christmas with Carlo Callodi’s classic tale. If you can’t remember what it’s about, the classic tale follows an inquisitive young puppet, carved from wood by Geppetto, a lonely toy maker. We get to see Pinocchios near miss at joining Mangiafuoco’s Puppet Theatre, the depths of the ocean and the Land of Toys all on his quest to become a real boy.

Thank you to The Old Rep today for your fantastic hospitality. The girls loved the carnival games (even if they did cheat at them – oops) and they loved the sneaky peek at the show. The popcorn and sweets were a total winner too for them. And the bright and colourful displays really gave it a carnival effect.

Me and Mr Trips loved your show, the food and drink spread and the chance to chat to the stars of the show, the fantastic staff at The Old Rep (especially Jess), the Director of Pinocchio and the Principal of BOA. We even managed to chat to the beautiful Momma Mack Family who were having a sneak peek at the show too.

A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon with some truly lovely people.

Thank you for having us and we hope to see you all very soon.

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Disclaimer: We were invited along by The Old Rep to hear more about Pinocchio. All views are my own or of my families. We loved the launch and are really looking forward to November.

Hey, if you liked this review or maybe were inspired to try this out because of my post, you can always buy me or the kids a drink or a slice of cake on our next big trip! Just hit the button below, if you want to. 🙂

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