Chairperson's Comment

Late last year, I had an idea – why don’t we do several shows at the same time, like a theatre company doing a season of Shakespeare plays in repertory? Multiple extremely good reasons why we shouldn’t do that came to mind, and more were put forward by everyone I spoke to. Nonetheless, through a mixture of dark sorcery and resting-sad-face, I was able to convince the Footlights Committee that this was, in fact, a good idea and from that moment ‘The Festival’ (as it was unimaginatively originally known) was born.

Despite the craziness of doing four musical shows with the same company across two weeks, I am incredibly thankful for the immensely hard work put in by everyone involved, and hugely proud of the result. I'm very much looking forward to performing onstage with Wellington Footlights again, while still getting to flap my arms around and play wrong notes on the piano and clarinet.

In particular, I'd like to thank my fellow Rising Sun landlord, Ed Blunden; my partner in crime, Dom Taffs; and our SM double-act, Sam Burnard and Patrick Barnes – all have been an absolute joy to work with, as has everyone else.

- Michael Stebbings