Local theatre group, Ilkley Upstagers, have announced their January pantomime, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, will be postponed for a year and is now scheduled for 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The group announced in June that its production of Shrek The Musical, which was due to be performed at the King's Hall in Ilkley in July this year has been postponed until July 2021.
Andrew Hewitt & John Clark on behalf of the Upstagers said: "It's been a very difficult year for all of theatre, including ourselves due to the global pandemic. Earlier this year we announced that we were postponing our July 2020 show 'Shrek The Musical' until 2021, and unfortunately now we have come to the decision that it will not be possible for us to perform our annual pantomime in January 2021 (Goldilocks and the Three Bears) and this too will be postponed for a year and is now scheduled for 2022.
"We're heartbroken to have to make this decision and are sorry to disappoint all our potential cast, crew and audiences. We’ve put an enormous amount of work into researching the Government guidance and health and safety legislation and found these produced an enormous list of barriers to try and solve. For every problem we thought we could find a workaround, several more problems were revealed.
"We are also looking at whether there are any alternative performance options open to us and will keep you posted as opportunities develop and progress."
With no income from tickets sales to keep their facilities maintained and pay on going costs, they are asking people to register with Amazon Smile, Amazon's scheme to help charities - it enables you to choose Upstagers as your favoured charity and every time you buy something on Amazon they pay small percentage to Upstagers at no cost to you
They have also launched an online Teespring merch store at https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/upstagers, a percentage of anything bought goes to the group.
Read further details about the Upstagers decision to postpone are available here.