Wicked Day
WICKED DAY 2008 was a ‘thrillifying’ event at the Royal Horticultural Halls’ Lindley Hall. It was amazing to see so many people joining together to celebrate WICKED and raising money for the fantastic charity Thrive.
As soon as the doors opened the fun began as Desmond Barrit led the cast of the hit musical in giving out free recyclable cotton goodie bags full of WICKED DAY goodies to enjoy. People flocked through the doors in some amazing outfits to see what they could get involved with on the stalls around the hall. These included being interviewed and filmed on the ‘WICKED Chair’ by TotallyTheatre.com, creating a piece of art to contribute to the WICKED Anti-Bullying Alliance mural, having their faces painted while watching exclusive footage filmed by the V&A Theatre and Performance Collection of the costume and make up process involved in the show, playing the games on the WICKED website and WICKED Battleships as well as being able to purchase merchandise from the show. In the middle of all these great stalls stood the exhibition of costumes, props and wigs from the show which included the hats, masks, jumpers, scarves and many more exciting items created by the cast for the Charity Auctions. From the very beginning the cast and team of WICKED helpers were on the look out for the best fancy dress of the day.
The queues to get into the hall were around the block but once everybody was inside we were all treated to a spectacular performance from the WICKED DAY choir from Stagecoach Schools of Richmond and Chigwell. Their magnificent performance of the songs One Short Day and For Good from the show were the perfect start to the day and thoroughly enjoyed by all.
The free fun activities kicked off with the first set of workshops led by members of the cast Sean Parkins, Gary Wood, Liam Tamne, Alex Jessop, George Ure and Jeremy Legat. ‘Monkey Business’ taught 6-9 year old little monkeys how to behave and move like a WICKED monkey and the ‘Oz-some’ Acting Masterclass saw the cast working with budding actors between 10 – 18 years old, teaching them some of the skills required to be an actor in ‘London’s No. 1 show’.
Throughout the day you could get autographs and have your picture taken with the cast. A few lucky people even had their faces painted by the cast as Harriet Thorpe created Madame Morribles and Jake Samuels helped ‘greenify’ people on the face painting stall.
Ozians were treated to charming story telling sessions as George Ure, Caroline Keiff, Jeremy Legat and Desmond Barrit read extracts from the critically acclaimed novels ‘Wicked’, ‘Son of a Witch’ and ‘A Lion Among Men’ written by Gregory Maguire. The Animation Art Gallery were also with us throughout the day running wonderful workshops on how to draw your favourite WICKED characters.
One of the highlights of the day was the Charity Auction led by Andy Mace who was joined on stage by numerous member of the cast including Alexia Khadime, Dianne Pilkington, Oliver Tompsett, Sarah Earnshaw and Desmond Barrit. The cast had made some unique and fantastic items to be auctioned exclusively for WICKED DAY that were very popular with the crowds. The auction saw Dianne Pilkington and Oliver Tompsett both do the splits in order to get the bids higher and they were very successful as the auction raised a staggering £1200 for the charity Thrive.
It was soon time for the winners of the fancy dress competition and the ‘Positively Emerald Hat Competition’ to be announced. The ten finalist hats were displayed as part of the costume, props and wigs exhibition where Oliver Tompsett and Dianne Pilkington viewed them to decided which were the most ‘Positively Emerald’. After some serious and careful deliberation they took to the stage to announce Emmanuel Addo and Kate Smith as runners - up and Stefanie Weittenhiller as the winner! All three took to the stage in turn to display their hats and receive great applause and cheers from their fellow Ozians.
The fun continued in the hall until 6pm when we had come to the end of one truly ‘Oz-some’ short day of WICKED free fun at WICKED DAY 2008. Thank you to everyone that came along and took part in the day and congratulations to all the winners of the raffle and the fancy dress competition. We hope everyone had a ‘thrillifying’ time and are looking forward to WICKED DAY 2009!
Wicked Day is a fantastic day of free family fun that gives everyone the opportunity to celebrate all things WICKED. The day is an international event when productions of WICKED worldwide come together to do something ‘For Good’ in their own communities.
Check out the schedule for Wicked Day.
