An Overview of ‘CHOMP’

The Disease Spread All Over the UK!

An Overview of ‘CHOMP’ on tour By Charlotte Parkin

After a gruelling, and groaning, six months of rehearsals for Chomp! A Zombie Musical written by Andy Evans, it was time to hit the ground for a week tour around the local area. With a kick start off at Lindsey School in Cleethorpes, scaring and singing along to the addictive songs the cast left the audience amazed at the choreography of the dances, the level of acting shown and the enjoyment of the actors!

For me I love performing to the home crowd, it’s the people you have to impress most, show your mum what her driving to rehearsals every week has helped towards, what it’s ended up being! Some of the comments from the audience pushed everyone’s spirits up to high, and reared everyone for a week of tiring, some might even say deadly, performances, but nevertheless I don’t think anyone would have changed it for anything!

Jade Smith, 16, dancing zombie, even claimed it ‘The best experience EVER!’ The favoured show was at Doncaster Little Theatre, even though realising, as we arrived, there would have to be a few major changes to our rehearsed show because of different staging, everyone took it in their stride making it the strongest performance of the week! With performances also taking part in Spilsby, Boston and Scunthorpe; it really was a hectic!


There were 25 kids on stage, but they weren’t the only ones to contribute and also enjoy it! Back stage and the ‘techies’ helped make each show. Tim Peacock, 18, sound technician: ‘Awesome fun and a great experience. It was good to be involved in a new piece of writing in such a way.’

After tying up the tour in Scunthorpe, you could see the anxiety in peoples’ faces; we were off to Edinburgh to perform in the Fringe, the largest arts festival in the WORLD! We all knew what it meant, what sort of opportunity this was for us, aged between 13 and 18! So we worked our socks of in the next few rehearsals cutting and modifying the musical to being the best we all could make it!

So a week later, we gather our tents sleeping bags and many a bag of food too! Jumped on a minibus for a long drive, the good end of six hours! When we arrived the sun was shining, we set up at camp, then got ready to tackle The Royal Mile. All pulling together the team acted scenes out in the middle of crowds of people; trying to chase, and munch upon fellow citizens, just the way to promote a Zombie Musical wouldn’t you say?

After pulling in a large audience, nearly sold out on both nights, we all piled backstage to prepare with 5 minutes to get in and set up and 5 minutes to get out after the show. I looked around in the dressing room, seeing all these familiar faces, and before we even went on stage, I was so proud. We’d made it here and we were going to give it our best. And that’s what we did! The performances didn’t run as smoothly as hoped, but the recoveries from the cast made it barely noticeable, singing a Capella in front of 150 people, really does show your professionalism and gained us a standing ovation! So with our two performances over, we had time to enjoy the Fringe.

Taylor Thow, 18, realised after watching shows at the festival ‘As long as you are involved in cutting edge, interesting and different drama that's all that matters.’

As a whole I think I can claim, ‘Chomp!’ really was the highlight to 2009 for everyone involved. A big thank you for all that helped towards the show, including, workshop leaders, backstage, technicians, cast and the people that came to see it!

Chomp – A Zombie Musical was written by Andy Evans, with original music by Jack Pudsey and funded by the Clore Duffield Performing Arts Award.