ACCESS ALL AREAS with Rebecca Ridout ✨ I’ve known Rebecca for almost 4 years now (from when she was in Phantom Of The Opera) and we tried to make a photoshoot happen for so long and we finally could make it work. She’s currently working on the Les Miserables UK & Ireland Tour as the Dance Captain AND Swing covering 8 (!!!) tracks! I was very lucky because I followed her around on a show day where she had her dance captain tasks to do, but she was also on for the show in a 2 person split track. Focussing on her dance captain job first: a lot of people (including me to be honest) always think that the DC is the cast member who’s the best dancer, but often that’s not the case (in Rebecca’s case - her words!). The job role involves being responsible for the physical warm up before every show, making sure everyone knows their track for the evening and whenever cast members are off the show the main responsibility is figuring out how they have to be replaced by swings/other ensemble members and how the show will look. She needs to make a “Show Set Up” spreadsheet with which swing is on and how many people they cover. After warm up she tells everyone who’s covering what moment and makes sure everyone has the blocking ‘notes’ about what to focus on for the show. When I followed Rebecca around there were 3 ensemble girls off and only she and one other swing were there to replace them. So they had to make a cut show. What basically means that the 2 of them had to replace 3 people. So in the spreadsheet she wrote exactly who plays who in what scene and which ‘character’ was left out for that scene and what that means for everyone else and their blocking. The female ensemble is on for a lot of scenes in the first half and I wasn’t allowed to stay in the wings because of the set coming on and off and not enough space for me to survive in the wings, so I kept saying hi and bye to Rebecca after a costume change and she had 7 changes in the first half. Wow! In all honesty I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who’s more proud of their job and does it with such joy as Rebecca. She really showed me the love she has for theatre, the show and everyone around her.