After months of planning, Lighthouse has welcomed guests on its first Backstage Tours, as Friends and Individual Giving Executive Jonathan Smith reports in a special blog.
It’s the first time we’ve opened up the entire venue — and with so much happening here, we only had three dates available to showcase all our spaces, including backstage.
The first two tours on 12 and 13 February were a great success, with my colleague, Lucy Funnell’s presentation being especially praised — her script was more than 20 pages packed with fascinating insights!
With peeks into the Projection Room, behind the Theatre curtains, on stage in the Concert Hall, and even into the dressing rooms, with stories of the stars they’ve welcomed, we had lots of steps around our corridors jam-packed with detail and fun facts. Our colleagues on Stage Door shared their first hand accounts of the celebrities they’ve met and I must say a big thank you to technicians Sam Coombes and Sam Richardson for sharing their expertise on the first tour.
These first tours were offered to Great and Best Friends (and Good Friends who upgraded) to help raise vital funds for Lighthouse’s work.
Thanks to everyone who shared information with our colleague George Rogers while he researched and wrote the script, and to those who joined our practice tour and gave such helpful feedback.
We can’t wait to do it again on Thursday 12 March.
Booking now at Backstage Tours – Lighthouse and on 01202 280000.
"I enjoyed the tour of Lighthouse, which I found very interesting. The fact that I can't do stairs was well catered for and care for the odd few steps (which I can manage) was supervised well. I thought that Lucy talked so clearly and was able to pass on so many facts without always referring to the notes she had. Not just reading from script. Very well done."
"Fantastic, informative, educational and most of all fun."
"I had a backstage tour today and was very impressed. Our guide was excellent and very informative. I would highly recommend this tour."
"Well, what can we say about the back stage tour…? It was a fantastic insight! "It is appreciated the amount of back research and work that had to go into the preparation, script and design of the tour. This was so well organised and informative. Most information was new and it is really enlightening as to what is going on in the background all the time to enable us visitors to fully appreciate the performances and professionalism of the entire Lighthouse Team from the audience side in whichever venue we may be in. "Thank you for enabling my daily step counter to record I am actually doing some exercise!"