LOCAL SCHOOLCHILDREN TREATED TO CHRISTMAS PANTO

Bury College Performing Arts students have been hard at work creating a Christmas pantomime to perform for local schoolchildren. The students wrote, produced, and acted in their adaptation of ‘Tangled Tales’, a story of what happens when two mischievous apprentices destroy a Magic Storybook and chaos runs wild in Fairy-tale land.

In this exciting medley of famous fairy tales, including Peter Pan, Rapunzel, and Pinocchio, the audience were treated to singing, dancing, and plenty of pantomime pranks. There were also lots of chances for pupils to join in on the Christmas fun, shouting and laughing with the characters.

The audiences were made up of pupils from local schools, including St Luke’s Church of England Primary School, St John with Saint Mark Church of England Primary School, The Derby High School, Holy Trinity Church of England Primary School, and Unsworth Primary School. There was also a performance put on for Bury College New Horizons, a department for students with profound learning difficulties, and an additional performance for the parents and carers of the cast.

Andy Tomlinson, Head of Curriculum for Performing and Creative Arts, said, “I really can’t express the feelings of relief and satisfaction of performers, staff and audience in being able to perform this Panto. Seeing the excited audience faces, and witnessing their interaction with the cast was magical and something that will be remembered for a long time.”

Second-year Level 3 student Emily Sandison, 18, was delighted to play Dorothy, along other characters, in the show. The former Oulder Hill Community School student said, “It was really fun to perform to different audiences – one day we would be performing to five-year-olds, and then the next to Year 7s, and then to our parents. The whole experience was really challenging but fun. We put all of our ideas together to create the show and rehearsed it all in under four weeks. I got to play lots of different characters and develop my range.”

Emily wants to progress onto stage school when she has finished her studies, with ambitions towards the West End.