by Priscilla

Jul.29, 2010, under Cast Blog

This is my first West End show and it is my first time playing a swing. At the beginning it was intense as you have a lot more tracks to learn. If the numbers are down or people are off sick then any day you may be covering up to 3 or 4 people. So one number you may be covering one guy and then for a different number you are covering someone else. Your head has to be in the right frame of mind. The costumes are big and that doesn’t help the traffic. You have to remember when to come on stage, when to go off, when to go in front of someone, when to go behind and the revolve stills scares me.

John Phoenix

You can get just one number’s notice to go on. You have to come into the theatre show ready. If someone goes down or injures him or herself you have one number to be ready. You’ll hear a call “John Phoenix to stage right” and then you are told to go upstairs and get ready to come on in a minute. We have a book we call the swing bible and that comes with us everywhere.

Priscilla is great and it’s been amazing to be part of an original cast and a show that everyone talks about. I trained in Ireland and then I got a scholarship to come and study in the UK. I was auditioning for shows, but I was also doing a lot of commercial dancing. I used to dance for the Sugar Babes. I auditioned really late for Priscilla, as they were looking for just one more guy. I had to come back every day for a week of auditions until I got it.

I love playing the Lizard and I love doing the Venus number, but it’s the most tiring one to do. I also like the funeral scene. The hardest number in the show as a swing is Downtown. There are so many individual routines and parts in that number that there is a lot of traffic to navigate. When you are rehearsing on a stage it seems big and then when the lights come on and you have an audience it suddenly seems to shrink. There have been occasions when we’ve stacked it, but it is all part and parcel of it.

People should come and see Priscilla, because it is a really feel good show. People know the music, but they have great new arrangements. A lot of people come back so many times that they know the routines, you can see them from the stage mimicking them.