Mercury Theatre Colchester To Stream CINDERELLA Pantomime This Easter Saturday

The Mercury Theatre Colchester are thrilled to announce that they will be streaming their most recent Mercury Pantomime, Cinderella, to the public via YouTube Premiere this Easter weekend.

The stream will go live at 3pm on Saturday 11th April, offering online audiences a fun-filled, family friendly treat to enjoy for free, from the comfort of their own home!

Cinderella was originally recorded in December 2019, when it was live streamed directly to local medical and care facilities, including the Colchester Hospital's Paediatric Unit, Balkerne Garden's care home, and a number of local hospices and care settings, spreading festive cheer to those who were otherwise unable to attend in person.

The theatre's Autumn/Winter season including their annual pantomime took place in their temporary pop up theatre venue, Mercury at Abbey Field - a magical 800 seat festival tent - while their building undergoes a £9.8 million redevelopment project. Cinderella has since been nominated in two Great British Pantomime Award categories including Best Show, and the Mercury now hope to spread the magic and sparkle of their record-breaking panto even further this weekend.

Mercury Theatre's Creative Director Ryan McBryde said: Every year our Christmas pantomime brings our community together to cheer the good guys, boo the bad guys, scream at the monsters and laugh at the chaos created by the slosh scene. It's a magical, shared experience. To banish the lockdown blues this Easter weekend, as part of our Mercury Online programme, we're proud to stream our production of Cinderella, so that friends and families can watch and experience the fun and magic once again, together, but from the comfort of their own homes.

The live stream is made possible by Digital Producer Ben Pugh, and will remain on the Mercury's YouTube page for one week following its initial premiere. The theatre will also provide a 'design your own ticket' template and a character themed colouring in sheet on their website, enabling family audiences to make an event of the stream at home while in lockdown. Viewers are also encouraged to tweet along to the premiere using hashtag #MagicToDo. Members of the cast, who will never have seen the show from an audience's point of view before, are also expected to tune in and tweet along.

This exciting online premiere is presented as part of the theatre's #MercuryOnline programme, launched in response to the current COVID19 lockdown. Mercury Online offers free, often interactive digital activity to both audiences and arts industry professionals. Phase One of the programme includes Monday Masterclasses, Storytime with Dale (a Mercury panto favourite), Wednesday Sing-a-longs with West End star Craig Mather, an Introduction to Fundraising and Arts Council Support webinar, and Mercury Monologues - an exciting creative writing competition in partnership with publishing giants Josef Weinberger Ltd.

While all #MercuryOnline activity is free to its users, the Mercury hope that those who feel able to do so will consider supporting the theatre with a donation, either online at www.mercurytheatre.co.uk/support or by texting MERCURY to 70085 to give £5*.

The Mercury would like to thank the cast, crew and creative team of Cinderella, all of whom kindly agreed that this recording could be made available to the public during these unprecedented times.

Tracey Childs, Mercury Theatre Executive Producer stated: We're so grateful to all of our magnificent cast and creatives for allowing this recording of Cinderella to be shown. They, along with our amazing Mercury Team, created one of the funniest, most inspiring, breath-taking, silly pantomimes that it has been our pride and pleasure to produce and we're thrilled that even more people now have the opportunity to enjoy it, safely from their sofa.

For more information on the Cinderella YouTube Premiere visit www.mercurytheatre.co.uk/cinderella-online. The Mercury's Customer Experience team are also available to discuss all Mercury Online activities (or just for a friendly chat!) over the phone Monday to Friday, 11am - 4pm on 01206 573948.

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