Why don’t you do a well known show like ‘Oliver’, ‘Annie’ or ‘Wicked’? Is it too expensive?

The reason we don’t is that these shows simply don’t have enough parts for enough for every child to play a full role. This is why we have to create our own shows. Even doing this (and writing extra scenes specifically for the younger ones) we still had some comments that younger groups didn’t have enough to do!

Also when you perform a script like this you have little or no flexibility whatsoever with the lines/setting. You can’t add scenes or lines nor do things radically different to the stage directions given in the script. It just doesn’t suit us at all. The only way to get everyone involved is to pour everyone on stage for the group numbers and then drag’em off again. There are other local groups who do this...

Expense?  This isn’t really a consideration except that we would have to raise ticket prices by around 25/30% to cover licensing, script and score costs and we are conscious that we don’t want to hit people any harder in the pocket.