Features

The Baddies Q & A with Director and Choreographer Katie Beard and Composer Joe Stilgoe (Music and Lyrics).

The story of how the stage show first originated

How did this co-production of The Baddies between Freckle Productions and Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre Company come about?

Katie Beard: “Stick Man had been a great success at The Lyceum, it had gone beautifully well for them. David Greig, their artistic director, and Jennifer Sutherland, founder of Freckle Productions, started a conversation about possibly doing something as a co-production. The Baddies was a relatively new title at the time and David was really keen to adapt it… A year later, here we are.”

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From Book to Stage

A Q & A about The Baddies with David Greig, Artistic Director of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre Company and adaptor of The Baddies for the stage musical

How did you find yourself adapting Julia Donaldson’s The Baddies for the stage?

“It started with the idea that the Lyceum needs to open up our audiences and trial different approaches. As well as our subscribers, patrons and the ‘drama crowd’, we’re trying to widen our audience base. To that end we’ve done musicals but also wanted to do more work for children. We made contact with the company Freckle Productions who specialise in bringing the work of children’s writer Julia Donaldson’s to the stage, and brought their production of Stick Man to the Lyceum last year. It did brilliantly, the theatre was full of families and kids. That was really exciting so we thought, ‘Let’s make a show together’. At the Lyceum we want to be making shows that have a long life and Freckle tour shows for a long, long time because when you make theatre for children there is always a new audience coming along. The Baddies seemed like a fantastic option to do that and, for me, it was great fun because creatively I love doing musicals and creating work for children.”