I produced Silken Burlesque Varietease in Leek, Staffordshire from May 2014 to December 2015. I hope someday in the future I can revive it.
It was such a lovely show to put together and everybody, performers included loved it. There was so much love and dedication piled into it and an immeasurable amount of passion and energy. Watch the highlight reel here.
I produced the first show as part of the Leek Arts Festival, I was given 5 months to prepare. First was the casting, many brilliant and talented performers emailed me and I was honestly so spoilt for choice, but then came the excruciating picking process. I detested sending the rejection emails out, I’ve kept a lot of performer info on file in hope for the future.
Then came the mountains of paperwork nobody tells you about: contracts, lighting lists, photo lists, music prep, rehearsals, risk assessments, running orders, venue agreements… the list never ends.
After all the stressful joy of the whole process the day came. Time to dress the stage! This was the only part of the entire thing I wanted help with, and I was very lucky to have such helpful friends.
Over the year and a bit Silken Burlesque Varietease had been running there has been so many amazing performers and I’m so grateful to each and every one of them that graced the stage with their routines. A huge thank you to Cherry Lace and Nikki Bordeaux for helping make each and every show run seamlessly.
Producing a show, especially on your own is hard work, you quickly find out how hard it is to organise everybody to all come together at the same time. I had lists to hand out to people coming out of my ears to make sure people were at the right place at the right time.
But I wouldn’t have swapped it at all! We played games with the audience, threw glitter everywhere and made people smile, and that is the best reward a producer can ever get.
Have a look at one of the audience games here.
Just look at the fun we had…
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Photography Credit: Paper Toast, Wills Photo Imaging, Micheal Szabo, PhotoLea, Cat Marie, Frameworks Media.
