One day in 2013 we brought together 3500 performers to one place – the 02 Arena and performed a two-hour show with a live orchestra. It was a tribute to 20 years of the company and included songs from many previous shows. It had been postponed for a year because the venue was unavailable in the Olympic year. These days many schools participate in large-scale choir events but none do what we did – perform as a choir and get out of their seats to be performers in the arena.
When I first suggested the idea, I think a lot of people were shocked and thought how do you make that work? Privately I suspect some of them thought it was impossible. They reckoned without our wonderful creatives who work week in and week out with our students.
The first thing we decided was that the creatives would also be in the show. At a stroke, the students would be safe and surrounded by professional performers who would lead by example and set the pace. And it was fun for the students to work alongside the considerable skills of their teachers. It led them to believe in themselves and challenge themselves to even greater heights.
For one half of the show, they formed a massive choir that extended along one whole half of the arena. Robert and I had presented two shows at the O2 Arena with schools but used the curved end of the audience to be the choir. I wanted something different. I wanted to use the whole arena floor for our performance. So the choir went along the side and it was a great sight to see.
I divided the arena floor into 27 equal rectangles that filled the space. Our experiences at the Royal Albert Hall had taught us how to make spaces around a centre stage so here we did it on a bigger scale with three centre stages and spaces around. Every performer spent time in 9 spaces and in the interval the arena swapped with the choir.
Come the day we had just a few hours to put into place lighting, sound, orchestra, build the stages and mark the floor with dozens of reels of tape. There were two live video screens to relay the show and here we met a problem. One of the screens was not ready and couldn’t be pulled up into position. That meant that hundreds of performers were kept waiting outside for up to an hour. Eventually, it was sorted out and up it went.
When the audience came in the performers were already present. It was undoubtedly like a rock show rather than a theatre performance. For me, the arena lacks something that a venue like the Royal Albert Hall gives you. Whisper it – it’s a bit soulless. The connection between the stage and the furthest seat is so far that something gets lost. Don’t get me wrong – when all the performers were beating out Adele’s Rolling in the Deep in four-part harmony it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up but it lacks that immediacy you get in smaller venues.
It was a great achievement though. I don’t think anyone else has performed in this way with so many children and young people in such an enormous place. Would I do it again? I don’t know. In some ways, the strain puts years on your life but to a theatre nut the adrenaline of the event and the excitement of the performers give you a buzz that lasts a long time so who knows – maybe I’ll go again one day.
