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CBeebies’ science ace Maddie Moate raring to fly high as feisty Tinkerbell in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan at Theatre Royal

Shining light: Maddie Moate’s Tinkerbell in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan at York Theatre Royal

YOU must have seen CBeebies’ favourite Maddie Moate’s smiling face on the side of buses, at shelters, on billboards and flyers, as the poster star for York Theatre Royal’s pantomime, All New Adventures Of Peter Pan.

“It’s very strange because it’s not usual to see pictures of myself staring back at me at bus stops, on lamp posts and even the menus here !” says the Maddie’s Do You Know? television presenter, podcaster, YouTuber and children’s author, who will be starring as feisty fairy Tinkerbell in creative director Juliet Forster’s production from tomorrow (2/12/2022) to January 2 2023. “That’s an entirely new experience!

“There’s a little pressure there, but I’m really glad the show is selling so well because, being at the front of the poster, I’m aware it comes with responsibility, though the show is not ‘the Tinkerbell show’, it’s very much about the ensemble, the full cast. After all, Tinkerbell is often played by a little light bulb or a bell!”

Following Andy Day – Dandini in last year’s Cinderella – as the CBeebies’ name in the York Theatre Royal-Evolution Productions co-production, Maddie was the first signing for the Peter Pan cast and will be sharing the stage with returnees Faye Campbell (Elizabeth Darling), Paul Hawkyard (Captain Hook) and Robin Simspon (Mrs Smee); viral video sensation Jonny Weldon (Starkey) and Jason Battersby (Peter Pan).

Not only being the dominant face on the panto poster is new to Maddie, so too will be flying across the stage. “I’m not scared of flying. In fact, I’m thrilled! When I found out I’d be flying, that was the clincher for me, though I would have done it regardless. It was the cherry on the cake,” she says.

Maddie Moate: CBeebies presenter, YouTuber, podcaster, children’s author and York Theatre Royal panto star

She conducted this interview the day before “Flyday Friday”, when the company met the flying team from Foy’s [Flying By Foy] for the first time. “All of us, apart from Jason, who was in Wendy & Peter Pan at Leeds Playhouse last winter – are first-time flyers, so it’ll be exciting to give it a go,” says Maddie.

“We’ll have to be at least 15ft high to fly through the window: the Theatre Royal stage is tall and it’s deep but it’s not so wide, so we’ll need a bit of height.”

Maddie will be making her entry that way. “I’ll have the one flying scene and then it’s done for me! I get it over and done with in my first scene,” she says.

Rather than a light or a bell, Maddie’s Tinkerbell is “one of Peter Pan’s sidekicks” in these All New Adventures. “She’s one of the Lost Children’s gang; they are her family, and she doesn’t like it when anyone else takes Peter’s attention away as he’s her very best friend.

“It’s said that fairies are so small, they have room for only one emotion at a time, so she’s a character of extremes – and she’s not like me!

Fairy powers: Maddie Moate in the poster pose for All New Adventures Of Peter Pan

“Quite often on TV you end up playing an exaggeration of yourself, but Tinkerbell is the furthest removed I could be from myself, and I’m having fun with that.”

Last Christmas, Maddie played Fairy Phoenix in panto at Leicester de Montfort Hall. “She was a fairy in training, whereas Tinkerbell has some serious fairy skills. Flying for one – and she has a stand-off with Captain Hook, where she gets to show off her magic skills.”

Her first experience of performing in panto was a “huge learning curve”. “Doing it for the first time made me really appreciate the medium, when it could be considered ‘silly’ or ‘not proper’ theatre, but last year I found it interesting to see just how steeped people are in the tradition,” she says.

“Some performers just have ‘panto bones. The timing. It’s all in the timing. So I got the rhythm of panto under my belt – I hope!”

Maddie had studied theatre, film and television at the University of Bristol from 2006 to 2009. “It was a course that had a little bit of everything, but first and foremost it was an academic degree,” she recalls.

“For a short time, I thought I wanted to go to drama school, but I quite quickly fell out of love with it and regretted not studying science. I was really missing science, which I hadn’t pursued as a degree because I didn’t know what role I would do afterwards, whereas I’d done theatre all my life.”

The acting bit, the science bit and now the acting bit again in pantomime for Maddie Moate

She would see wonderfully talented actors who would be perfect in a role but did not meet the director’s ideal for that part. Such unpredictability was unappealing, and so instead Maddie started working on an App for the National History Museum and ended up working for the wonderfully named Lady Geek TV.

Making a comedy YouTube series about smartphones and technology ensued. “Before I knew it, I was reviewing tech on YouTube and that became a career,” she recalls as the science side of Maddie found fulfilment.

“It was only later that CBeebies said they were looking for someone to talk about science on a new show, and it ended up being called Maddie’s Do You Know?”

Maddie has presented the series, exploring the secret workings of everyday objects, since 2016 and a year later she won the Best Presenter category at the BAFTA Children’s Awards. Multiple science-based projects have followed.

“Now it’s all come back round, starting as a performer, deciding not to pursue acting full time, then doing science, but now returning to the stage in pantomime all these years later,” she says.

All New Adventures Of Peter Pan, York Theatre Royal, December 2 to January 2 2023. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Copyright of The Press, York

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‘Sand is running out all over the world’… ‘Climate change will bells on’…Cue Emma Gibson’s Quicksand sculpture triptych

Installation artist Emma Gibson on Scarborough’s South Bay beach with maquettes of her large sculptures of grains of sand , soon to be on show at Scarborough Art Gallery. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

EMMA Gibson’s upcoming Quicksand exhibition aims to raise awareness of “one of our most under-appreciated natural commodities”.

On show at Scarborough Art Gallery from February 12 to June 5, Gibson’s triptych of sculptures transforms minuscule grains of sand into megalithic forms, putting this endangered but seemingly ubiquitous material – used to make anything from phone screens to windows, from plastics to paint ­– under the microscope.

Applying micro-3D scanning technology, Gibson worked with the Imaging and Analysis Centre at the Natural History Museum, London, to discover the otherworldly shapes of individual sand grains before recasting them as colossal forms.

Each piece was made using recycled plaster and clay, timber and a pioneering resin made from recycled plastic bottles that have been redirected from landfill and the oceans.

Simon Hedges, head of curation, exhibitions and collections at Scarborough Museums Trust, says: “Sand is running out all over the world – it’s a global problem; it’s climate change with bells on. It may be difficult to believe, but sand is limited – and it’s critical as a commodity for so many types of technology.

Emma Gibson holding a maquette of one of her grain-of-sand sculptures. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

“It’s estimated that, for construction alone, the world consumes roughly 40 to 50 billion tons of sand on an annual basis. That way outstrips the rate at which sand is being naturally replenished by the weathering of rocks by wind and water.”

As a museum in a coastal setting, Scarborough Art Gallery “feels it’s our responsibility to help raise awareness of this issue,” says Hedges. “Emma’s sculptures are a particularly stunning way of doing that. Three giant grains of sand, each over a metre tall, have been created after being magnified nearly 3,000 times,” he continues.

“They represent just three of the many different types of sand there are – a fossil foraminifera, a rolled-up piece of quartz and a chip from a shell.”

Gibson says: “Quicksand is about assumptions in relation to perceptions: we assume that there is the same amount of sand available as stars in the sky. People say: ‘Can’t you just use sand from the Sahara to build stuff? We’ve got loads of sand.’ But you can’t because it’s wind-blown and all the grains are circular.

“I started reading all these strange documents about people stealing sand because it’s a seriously valuable commodity. Some go to the beach to sunbathe; others turn up in the middle of the night in a truck to take the sand away. There are people getting murdered over sand, it’s really serious.”

Emma Gibson’s sculptures of grains of sand arrive in Scarborough for exhibiting at Scarborough Art Gallery from February 12. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Explaining her creative process, Gibson says: “Grains of sand are really tiny, so I wanted to explore how I could make them important to humans at their own scale.

“I’m hoping people will have some kind of murmuration – just a little moment in their minds where they recalibrate their belief system in nature and technology, and what their purposes are. Maybe it can offer an altered perspective and state of mind for a moment.”

Alongside the sculptures, Gibson will be re-creating her studio in Scarborough Art Gallery. “I’ll be showing films, digital and physical models and supporting materials as part of the development process of the work, which is as much about the science as the aesthetic,” she says.

Gibson will create a learning experience that will lay out globally significant issues in an inclusive and approachable space.

Scarborough Museums Trust’s learning team is devising hands-on learning experiences for primary-school children, in collaboration with geologist Dr Liam Herringshaw, including a Beach in a Box, to “bring an important part of the curriculum to life in new and engaging ways”. 

” I’m hoping people will have some kind of murmuration – just a little moment in their minds where they recalibrate their belief system in nature and technology,” says artist Emma Gibson . Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Co-curated with theYorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, Quicksand has been gifted to Scarborough Museums Trust by Selfridges & Co, where it was first exhibited in The Art Block gallery, in London, in 2020.

Emma Gibson: the back story

BORN in 1980, this British installation artist explores the uncertain state of reality. She studied at Open School East and the University of the Arts in London and now lives and works in the Scottish Highlands.

Gibson’s large-scale installation works are the result of both traditional and technological making processes, often using 3D-scanning and digital representations to create physical sculptures and total environments. Regularly, she collaborates with scientists in her fields of interest.

Her creative practice revolves around coastlines and shores as a metaphor for the edge of reality, the end of the internet and a loss of control – a place “where science and nature collide and mimic each other, where so much is unknown, where human intervention can go no further”. 

Scarborough Art Gallery is open from 10am to 5pm every day except Mondays, plus on Bank Holidays. Entry is free with a £3 annual pass that allows unlimited free entry to the Rotunda Museum, Scarborough, too.