Stagecoach- worth the money?

[FaintlyMacabre]

Hi , DD (7) is interested in doing performing arts. She loves singing in particular but also regales us with dance routines. Stagecoach have classes near us and look good but also pricey! There are a few alternatives nearby as well but not sure how to tell which are good.
We are in Wilmslow, Cheshire if anyone has any local recommendations. Thanks

I went to stagecoach as a child and loved it! I got so much out of it and my confidence improved ten fold! My daughter 7 now goes, she adores going! Its definitely worth the money if it's something she enjoys.

I like Stagecoach because it does all 3, singing, dancing, acting so dd didn't have to pick one she liked best. Also they provide all the costumes for shows so it's stress free it's 3 hours for Main Stages though which is a long time, 7yo dd is wiped out by it the next day (we do it on a Friday after school) but she comes out absolutely buzzing. Our one is Ofsted registered so I can use childcare vouchers.

It varies hugely depending on the team running your local franchise. We went to one for a year and I have to say, the early stages class felt like a glorified crèche. We later moved to a local independent in the same time and the two simply weren't comparable! My DD has been there ever since - Over 7 years now. However I also know of some really amazing branches of Stagecoach. I'd say like anything, do your research. Observe some classes, ask other parents and check out the other available options. Do they have kids regularly getting cast in local / national shows? It might not be what you are aiming for right now, but it's a good indicator of the quality of tuition.

It varies hugely depending on the team running your local franchise. We went to one for a year and I have to say, the early stages class felt like a glorified crèche. We later moved to a local independent in the same time and the two simply weren't comparable! My DD has been there ever since - Over 7 years now. However I also know of some really amazing branches of Stagecoach. I'd say like anything, do your research. Observe some classes, ask other parents and check out the other available options. Do they have kids regularly getting cast in local / national shows? It might not be what you are aiming for right now, but it's a good indicator of the quality of tuition.

I'd find a local independent theatre group over Stagecoach and Thor kind of large companies if it were me. We did for dd and she loved it from age 5 to this year, aged 18. She also ended up doing both gcse and a level drama as a result.

My experience of Stagecoach and the lime is that's it's pretty formulaic and the children follow instructions rather than spend time developing their own plays and scripts, learning about staging and other aspects of theatre.

Though it does depend on what you want.

If you want the polished shoes with the proper costumes and the chance to perform of a west end stage experience that stagecoach may the right group.

My daughters been going since she was 4 and is now 9. She loves it.

If you get childcare vouchers they are accepted (wel by my local franchises anyway) that helps.

My one has also run full classes during lockdown via zoom - really impressed with them they have worked really hard to still make them entertaining.

Guess it is all down to the franchise owner though so may differ by area.

My DDs only ever did the summer holiday workshops where they do a show in a week. This would have been DD2's 10th year (only not running due to you know what).

My DD10 loves all things performance. I've looked at Stagecoach and Pauline Quirke for her, and an independent all- in- one but at the moment she does it separately with independents. It's messier and more time consuming, as she does musical theatre drama for 1 hour, 2 different dance classes totaling 1hr45 and a private singing lesson for about 45 minutes, every week. I keep wondering about moving her, mainly for the opportunity to do professional shows but actually she's getting a great training (drama teacher regularly gets kids into drama school at 18+, gets them in front of agents etc), we can walk to almost all of them, she loves it and it's convenient timings whereas the all-in-one options locally aren't. And I'd hate to leave the teachers she's got who are all awesome!

As pp have said, I'd look at what's local to you and think about what you want from it, see who's more likely to deliver that?

Thanks all- good question about what do we want from it- I want her to enjoy herself learning something new and also develop her singing voice (which I think could be v good)- she wants to be a movie star, hopefully in Descendants 4! We have told her it’s not guaranteed .
I’ll do some more looking around and maybe see where does taster sessions which will give us more of an idea of what will suit her.

As others have said, Stagecoach and similar organisations work on a franchise basis and the quality does vary from group to group and might not be consistent across all three disciplines. For instance our local group had a fabulous singing teacher (my DD had private lessons with the same lady) but the dance was lamentable. For a 7 year old who is excited to give performing arts a try, its probably not a bad idea as groups like this give a bit of everything. However, if she does want to take it seriously later, then she's likely to need a lot more than 3 hours a week at stagecoach.
You might be better off looking for independent schools in each discipline and/or a local youth theatre group if she does get the bug. However, as others have said, this is more logistically challenging and will probably be more expensive than Stagecoach. If she does get keen and wants to go into anything that involves dance in the future then she almost certainly needs ballet lessons. Ballet is the base discipline for dance training, and auditions even for full time musical theatre, rather than specifically dance courses tend to include a ballet class and ballet often continues to be an important part of the curriculum. You won't get that level of dance training at somewhere like Stagecoach. As actual preparation for full time training to work in the industry I wouldn't think Stagecoach is sufficient. I know they have an agency and like to talk about their successful alumni, and I don't doubt that Stagecoach has helped them, but I imagine that many of their successes have also trained elsewhere. Certainly that's the case local to us - all the ex Stagecoach kids that I know have subsequently gone on to vocational schools/colleges have also had considerable training at different schools and groups.
Not that I am suggesting you bother about that kind of thing right now. Young children enjoy trying new things, many don't stick with the first hobby they try and career aspirations often change. She might want to do something totally different this time next year. The most important thing at this age is that she finds something that she enjoys. But just be aware that if she ends up taking it seriously its going to involve a lot more.

Agree with everyone above.

With all the franchise schools it depends on who is running it and teaching at it. Some are great, some are okay and some are awful. I also wouldn't recommend the attached agencies at all.

DD started at 4 with a franchise like Stagecoach and then moved to Stagecoach at 6 when we moved area.

She got very frustrated as the majority of children (certainly at the younger age group) seemed to be there so their parents could have 3 hours of peace and quiet at the weekends. The level of choreo was basic in the extreme and half the classes seemed to be spent cajoling reluctant children into having a go.

In the end we opted for one of the audition entry MT schools in London when DD was 7 and travel in every weekend for that. All the kids are of a certain level and they all want to be there and to maintain their place in the teams, so they learn fast and at a high level.

Agree that 3 hours isn't enough if they are serious about a career in this industry. Happily I hadn't a clue when we started down this road as it gets both time consuming and expensive - but not quite as bad as having a horse! Fortunately DD is a singer/actress not a dancer - but you still need to be doing a ballet class and a modern class at the very minimum even if not really a dancer. The dancers DD trains with are all doing 8 hours a week just of that.

Most places will do a free session as a taster, so worth trying them. Also lots of online classes at the moment - not quite the same as in person, but you can get a feel for the teaching.

A quick google found PYPS and independent MT group for your daughters age group. Which is just an hour for 7 years olds, running a group for 9-16 years I would say an hour at that age is fine. It seems a good quality group as it does Lamda exams and in summer 2019 everyone got distinctions.
If she enjoys MT and wants to take it further and develop her voice you will need to think about individual singing lessons and ballet lessons ( ballet is the key dance style to provide a good basis for MT).
My DD will start MT sixth at drama school in September and for the last two years our life has been a frenzy of choirs, MT groups, singing lessons, acting lessons, ballet and tap.
I had never been a pushy mum, but found I needed to become one for this. I need to search for auditions for groups, scholarships and residential programs.

You may well have the best Stagecoach (or similar) franchise in the country but the reality is that many parents see it as childcare, not professional training.

Our local Stagecoach was awful and we pulled my daughter out after two terms (it would have been one but their contract locks you in if you don’t give notice in time).

Moved my kids to PQA which has been fabulous, but particularly around holiday times parents take their kids away (as they are fully entitled to of course!) but often don’t tell the Principal. That’s great when a week before a big show in the West End your partner is sunning themselves on a beach somewhere and you can’t rehearse properly. Sometimes there has been half the class missing.

We swapped to doing everything separately and people take it so much more seriously. It might make you more of a taxi driver but you will get a higher quality training.

I used to work for the Macclesfield Stagecoach and my daughter went there for 8 years.

She also attended a local dance school. The dance school was far more formulaic, (syllabus classes, everything highly choreographed, what drama there was was very formulaic. At Stagecoach dd learnt to devise, create her own work in small groups (tricky for her as she is autistic). Once a year they worked towards a presentation of classwork where the students created drama pieces based around a theme or a poem etc then in the summer term they alternated between doing a book musical one year and a variety type show the following year.

SHe feels she got the best of both worlds, the freedom and creativity at Stagecoach and the more formal technical work at her dance school.

She is now training at a professional musical theatre college.

Stagecoach singing often seems to encourage the kids to shout and sing in a really nasty nasal tone! The kids I inherit from there for private lessons take a while to learn to undo these nasty habits. They all say they liked going there but that it got very samey after a while.