As the curtains go up on professional theatre productions in Melbourne after almost a year of COVID cancellations, Ballarat's performers are getting ready to step back on the stage.
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BLOC Musical Theatre is in rehearsals for Mamma Mia, which they will perform at Her Majesty's Theatre in May, while Lyric Theatre has their first rehearsal of We Will Rock You on Sunday and a booking for the Her Majesty's stage in July.
Lyric Theatre director Stephen Armati said the reopening of blockbuster stage shows Come From Away and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Melbourne in recent weeks offered optimism and confidence for smaller productions.
"We start our rehearsals on Sunday which will be the first time we've got everyone together. Obviously it's a very fluid environment but there is a buzz though everyone is cautious. We plan for the worst case scenario but hope for the best," Mr Armati said.
The company purposely chose We Will Rock You as their 2021 production to offer people a "fun night out" after the gloom of 2020.
"We deliberately thought, after the 12 months that people have had with lockdown, that rather than doing something serious and heavy that people would want to come out and celebrate. And what better show to have a good night out with than to come along and hear all the hits of Queen."
Mr Armati said We Will Rock You also had shades of theatre somewhat mimicking real life.
The futuristic masterpiece is set in a time where music and theatrical entertainment is banned. Galileo and Scaramouche (lead characters) embark on a conquest to bring music back to the people and save the world with artistic expression.
"A fitting scenario in our time where the community is starved for live entertainment and in troubled times people have found solace in music and the arts to get them through," he said.
About 95 artists auditioned for the 46 roles in We Will Rock You, with one of the lead roles won by Montgomery Wilson who has performed in professional theatre productions and spent the two years before COVID as a lead singer on the Queen Elizabeth cruise liners out of England.
"There's a lot of new faces in the cast too and we're blown away by people coming through. The future of theatre is in great hands with some of our young performers and some new talents."
Mr Armati said any show was a big investment for the group and the spectre of COVID, and this month's snap lockdown, made it a "scary environment" to mount a production in.
"But we've got confident in the fact that by July hopefully a lot of the population will have had the vaccine and there's not a lot of transmission now in the community so we hope it remains that way."
Lyric Theatre Company was lucky in the timing of their 2020 production, with the curtain falling on their season of Les Miserables just four days before the first COVID lockdown.
BLOC wasn't so lucky, with their 2020 production of Mamma Mia cancelled.
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It will be revived this year with rehearsals already underway.
"Following the 2020 postponed season of Mamma Mia, we are thrilled to be back in rehearsals and can't wait to get live theatre back on stage this May," the company said in a FB post.
The first show back at Her Majesty's Theatre though is an evening of stories, fun, laughter and tunes from the world's most popular musicals with well-known musical theatre performers Rachael Beck and Michael Cormick in their show You and I on March 16.
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