Guest Blog: Bring It On The Musical rehearsal diary (Part 3)

Sarah Flinton

It's half term around the country, all across England kids are celebrating a week off school, but we're in the studio still trying to perfect our toe touches. As much as we all probably need some time off, there's something about this show that makes us not care that everyone else is on holiday...

This week has been a busy one, starting with the entire cast trying on costumes. Finally we got to see what both Jackson and Truman's cheer uniforms were. Given none of us have ever done any cheerleading before you can imagine how excited we all were, there will probably be tears when we have to take off those uniforms for the last time on 7th March.

Now that we know our costumes will look like real cheerleaders, we had to make sure our stunts and routines were up to scratch. The Broadway version had the advantage of hiring actual professional cheerleaders who've been basket tossing since they could crawl. So we spent over 6 hours running the cheers and going over lifts, god only knows how the boys are surviving 6 hours of consecutively lifting us girls! 

Guest Blog: Bring It On The Musical rehearsal diary (Part 2) - A few cheer stunts...

Sarah Flinton

The Christmas season is like a forgotten memory now and the workshop stages of Bring It On The Musical are over. Everyone's back from Panto and if we thought the first few weeks were hard work, we were fooled. The teams have been chosen; we finally have our Truman squad and our Jackson crew. Now we have to create rivalry between a group of actors who have been together for nearly three years. 

Being a fairly tall blonde without much 'street cred' I was naturally put on the preppy all-smiling Truman squad. So for my 'high school' team we spent the first few days setting the opening number 'What I Was Born To Do'. Anyone who has seen clips of the Broadway version of this number will know how challenging this would be for any company. Within the first few minutes we have to prove that we are an all American cheerleading squad worthy of going to Nationals. Even the lyrics say that we have to be 'superhuman'. Thankfully our horrific warm ups are starting to make us all feel a bit fitter. Regardless though, the five minute opening number started off feeling like running a marathon. As cheerleaders we have to be completely together and pretty much look like an army that has trained for this their whole life. 

Guest Blog: Bring It On The Musical rehearsal diary

Sarah Flinton

You might be wondering "How does a bunch of drama school students pull off a mash-up of big new show tunes and impressive cheerleading stunts?" Well look no further for your answer!

Follow us third years at Performance Preparation Academy, alongside our director Chris Howell and choreographer Louise Pieri, as we rehearse for the UK drama school premiere of 'Bring It On: The Musical'.

When our year were told our third year shows we were all so enthusiastic about the prospect of doing such a new show. With the excitement though came the panic... American cheerleaders train from about four years old to be able to do what they do. All of my year are over 18 and had never lifted a pom pom before, let alone attempted to throw people in the air. So it was a pretty big ask, but everyone seemed ready for this crazy challenge.