Thanks to a £650 donation from Tarmac’s Mountsorrel Quarry, the Starlight Youth Theatre, in Quorn, has been able to ‘C major’ improvement with the purchase of much-needed sound equipment.
The Starlight Youth Theatre is a registered charity and an inclusive youth musical theatre group for ages 10 to 18. The young people rehearse in Loughborough, but typically perform two productions per year at the Rawlins Academy, in Quorn, with help from a creative team, chaperones and committee members – who are all local volunteers.
The theatre offers its members the chance to perform on stage before a live band and develop their performance skills through singing, acting and dancing, or by providing an opportunity to work backstage behind the scenes.
To reduce the need of borrowing or hiring sound equipment, the donation was used to purchase a radio microphone – a hands-free wireless headset pack, including clip-on microphone, bodypack transmitter and receiver. Having been one of the first amateur groups in the country to be granted the rights to perform “School of Rock”, the group used the new microphone in both this musical production and concert performance, earlier this year.
Chris Dimelow, chairman at Starlight Youth Theatre, said: “We were delighted to be able to acquire an additional new radio microphone, thanks to the generosity of Tarmac. The new microphone is more discrete in design and boosted the overall sound quality for our talented lead singers. We also appreciated a reduction in complexity of the microphone changes backstage!”
Rob Lees, senior area operations manager at Tarmac’s Mountsorrel Quarry, said: “I’m glad to see that our donation has had a good impact on the theatre and the performances they have done this year. It is important to us to give back to local groups like this one, who help their members and community, and I hope they can use and enjoy their new radio microphone for many more productions to come.”
Main photo – cast photo from their latest production
Article photo – Ross Dimelow, 16, from Quorn using the microphone