RODGERS and Hammerstein’s classic musical Carousel is CODS production this April.

Firstly and most importantly, here are the dates for your diaries: Monday, April 15 to Saturday, April 20, 7.30pm nightly at Queen Elizabeth’s Lower School (Barnfield campus) and tickets are now on sale.

At the time of writing these dates seem quite a long way away, but as everyone who has ever been involved with any project at all knows, time flies! In fact the selection process for our 2019 show began as early as 2017. This was followed by a lot of early preparation before the first rehearsal could be held on October 31, 2018.

Initial rehearsals were followed by auditions, and after the Christmas break, it is full on in all departments. Music, dance, and storyline plus all the other areas that support a production such as set design, lighting design, costumes, publicity and promotion etc. This all takes literally hundreds and hundreds of hours by a large number of people.

Carousel is the quintessential, timeless and enduring Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. There’s so much to enjoy in this classic tale. Over the next few articles your CODS correspondent will remind you of the story of the show and its wonderful songs.

We are thrilled to be bringing this show to Crediton once again, the last production being staged by us 35 years ago.

But for today, let’s just share with you another reason why we are thrilled to be working on this production.

Put quite simply and in one word, it is Youth! It is so special to see all the young people involved with the production. The Society is lucky to already have a number of younger members, but these have been joined by even more young stars from QE, other local schools and from Dance Academies in the town.

In addition to this, when we held a workshop a few weeks ago looking for children from ages eight to 13, we were delighted to see 23 enthusiastic and lively young people come forward and join the show.

With a young director and choreographer this production is going to be, to quote part of a line from one of its popular songs, “bustin’ out all over!”

Let’s meet just a few of these young people.

Joining us for the first time this year is Luca Vaccari. Many of us have seen him perform in the amazing QE productions over recent years. Luca studied A-level Drama at QE and is now on a gap year before going on to study dance and choreography at university.

He began dancing two years ago in QE’s production of West Side Story and has since performed and choreographed locally, and further afield with German theatre companies in Fulda. He is currently training at the Katharine Mitchell School of Dance. You’ll love his role in Carousel.

Our next newcomer is Imogen Knott. Imogen started taking dance and singing lessons from the age of 13, and has performed in various musical theatre, Shakespeare, and dance productions since. She has studied ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance at her local dance school in Dorset, and worked towards various RAD Grades and vocational exams.

In addition, this very talented young lady has also achieved Grade 8 in Singing and is currently working towards a diploma! At university she performed in several student and local community theatre productions, as well as choreographing a production of Princess Ida at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter.

Imogen is currently training to teach English at secondary level. Lucky secondary children is all we can say!

One of our regular young performers is Georgia Steer. Georgia is currently a student at Queen Elizabeth’s school and is in her first year of sixth form. She has danced with the Katharine Mitchell School of Dance for 13 years, and recently passed her advanced foundation RAD ballet exam.

Georgia has been performing with CODS since 2011 when she performed in Oliver! as one of the children. She is hoping to go to dance college and have a career in Musical Theatre.

Many of our audiences will have noticed Georgia in previous shows. Her last venture on the boards for CODS was as Jessica Steel in the October Play A Bunch of Amateurs. She played a headstrong teenager with a famous Hollywood father. We asked her mum if Georgia actually was headstrong like the character she was playing. Mum said “I’d better not answer that!”

Our youngest regular performer at present is Abbie Tebbit. Abbie is at QE School and in addition to CODS she regularly attends and performs with Stagecoach in Exeter. Her last role with CODS was as Sharon O’Grady in our award winning production of Made in Dagenham.

And last but certainly not least, another new young person from Amy’s Dance Academy is Bonnie Irwin.

Bonnie is 14 and regularly training at Charles Academy of Dance. She has been in Pantos, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, and also danced in festivals around Devon.

Bonnie is hoping to become a dancer, and when you see her perform we are sure you’ll agree she has every chance of achieving her ambition.

We’ve just selected a few of our younger performers for this article, there are a good number more. Over the coming weeks they will be hard at work with the rest of the cast polishing and perfecting their performances ready for our audiences when the curtain goes up in April.

Now there’s a funny phrase “when the curtain goes up”. Modern stage productions are rarely revealed by raising the curtain, most have the stage setting there for you to see as you enter the theatre and take your seat. It’s there for you to look at and to imagine what is going to happen.

CODS don’t use a curtain, partly because we haven’t actually got one! But as our audiences will know, we perform in a variety of ways in the QE Lower School Hall, in which we go to a lot of effort to create our own theatre.

There are shows where you will find us using the stage in some way, then again our show may possibly be “in the round”, where you can sit and get very close to the action.

What will we do for Carousel? There’s only one way to find out!

The tickets are now on sale from Olivia James in the High Street (Telephone 01363 777968) or you can click on the CODS website Box Office: www.codsonline.com .

Come and join us and see this lovely show. Oh, and bring your friends too.

Stop press … CODS has been nominated for three NODA awards for our 2018 productions! Look out for our next article and find out more about these.

Mike Palmer