It was amazing to see our musical performed. It’s been wonderful to get small people say “great lyrics” with big grins on their faces as they get to sing about horrible monsters, cruel villains and robbing a train. It was great to hear teachers, parents and other grownups talk about the moments they loved. Some of the dance moves were utterly fantastic and much of the makeup was sweetly gruesome. There are parts of the musical I really want to rework, improvements to be made, lessons learned, but I am glad that the things that were really important to me worked well.

• The kids had fun performing on stage – the lyrics were rewarding and the chorus liked singing them and the lyrics also invited cool dance moves.
• The story was simple on some levels, but also had rewarding meta levels through complexity of lyrics and was open to deeper engagement and a safe place for children to explore emotions, concepts of good, bad, loss and overcoming setbacks (that was probably the coolest bit of feedback I got from a teacher discussing the musical afterwards).
• The moments that were really important to me are moments that people have said told me how much they loved afterwards.

It has been wonderful to get so much positive support from friends and family. There’s a lot of work still ahead of us, to redevelop Comicbook Opera and find new opportunities for it, but it feels so great to have my work performed and dreams of how to take it forward.