The lovely Rachel joined us at Theatre Hullabaloo for a week on work experience recently. In our latest blog, she gives her thoughts on being an honorary member of the Theatre Hullabaloo team.
When I first sat down to one of Theatre Hullabaloo’s plays, an opera for children, roughly 7 years ago I never expected I would be an honorary member of the team behind their latest vision.
At that age, I didn’t have any thoughts regarding my future at all, much less the relevance of the theatre in it. All I knew was when I was invited to ‘meet’ the puppets after the show I had the amazing feeling of being part of something bigger.
It is this quality of theatre for children that Theatre Hullabaloo excels in, and in each performance, I have seen a similar trend where often shyly introduced toddlers and babies gradually grow in confidence until the play time at the end when they never want to leave!
From the moment, any prospective audience member walks through the glass doors of the purpose built venue, The Hullabaloo, they are shrouded by a delicate custom-designed sound track and welcomed by the actors themselves. It’s this attention to detail that caused me to love this theatre and the incredible friendliness of every member of the team that has caused me to feel at home here too.
Ever since I arrived I’ve felt like part of the team, allowing me to engage in the immense pride they should and do feel regarding the amazing facility they have created here. As with the audience every detail of my experience at the theatre seems to have been thought through and was constantly under review to change as I was encouraged to specify what most intrigued me throughout the week. Whether it was being met at the door on my first day to feeling as if the work I was doing was making a genuine impact on both myself and the theatre, or my personalised spreadsheet I could not have felt more welcome.
In short, Theatre Hullabaloo seems unable to limit its encouraging atmosphere to merely their public facing work. The encouraging atmosphere runs throughout the entire company as it seems to serve not only as a pioneer of creativity but also a pioneer of the self.