Have been trying to find out this information all day with no luck.

What is the maximum time allowed for children under the age of 13 to be on stage in any 6 day period?

We are just casting our latest show and it looks like we might only require one team of children instead of using two teamslike we have done in the past. As they will be on each night we just want to be sure of timings so that we can organise scenes and numbers with them in.

You can't use them for more than 3 performances per week anyway.

That is what I was thinking might be the case. We have always used 2 teams before.

They might only be on stage for as little as 10 minutes in total as it looks like we could only require them for 2 songs at the most.

Thanks for your feedback btw

Sorry I can't remember more of the rules Richard. I'll search my very dim brain for them. If you register on the forum as a member, I'll email you the finer points when they come to light.

Are you sure that's correct?

I'm thinking my local youth theatre has 8 performances in one week using two casts

Richard you might try The Man In The Moon or email paul@themaninthemoon.co.uk they should be able to assist

Richard:

One rule would be simple! Each local authority is able to set their own rules. However all children on stage will require a licence, so contact the local authority where the child performer lives as soon as possible.

There is no blanket 3 performance a week regulation that I know of. However, some local authorities use this as a general guide. If the performers are older, and the appearance early on in the show, you might be able to persuade the authority to allow an appearance each night.

If the children are under 8, expect stricter regulation.

It will be of no surprise to regular posters that the Methuen Amateur Theatre Handbook has a chapter on the subject!

Keith - with the greatest respect to your unbridled wisdom I am not sure it is correct to say "all children on stage will require a licence".

S.37(3) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963 provides that a licence is not required for a child to take part in a performance if:

(a) no payment in respect of his/her taking part in the performance, other than for defraying expenses, is made to him/her or to another person; and EITHER
( in the six months preceding the performance he/she has not taken part in other performances of the types set out above on more than three days; OR
© the performance is given under arrangements made by a school (within the meaning of the Education Act 1944 or the Education (Scotland) Act 1962) or made by a body of persons approved for the purposes of section 37 by the Secretary of State or by the local authority in whose area the performances take place.

If an amateur society is not in breach of this exemption, I would be interested to know under what power local authorities believe they can demand that children are licensed.

There is as you say no '3 performances a week' rule. A child may not take part in a performance or rehearsal on more than 6 days (or 5 if he/she is also taking part in non-theatrical performances) in any period of 7 days.

Mark: thanks for that - the question related to a 6 day period, hence no mention of the exemption for shorter periods in my reply.

Mark: thanks for the note.

My reply was addressing the original question of a six day period, hence no reference to these exemptions.

That said, even for shorter runs, I would seriously consider obtaining a licence - just in case the child "forgot" to tell you about another show they were in 5 months ago!

Keith

Hi keith & Mark - or anyone else that might know.

I have also been put in charge of finding out info re licensing/chaperones etc for our forthcoming show King & I.

I have advised that according to the NODA website, it is not nessecary for us to license the children or indeed have any chaperone CRB/Police checked.
We are adhering to the NODA code of conduct and putting in place lots of precautionary steps - involving as many parents, already checked teachers nurses etc as possible for charperones etc. (we also contacted our counil (Dartford) who have agreed that there is nothing we need to do)

We have 2 "teams" of children who are doing alternate nights.

Our show week schedule includes a band call (Team 1) & Dress rehearsal (team 2) on the Sunday. Monday Dress Rehearsal (team 1) then Tuesday, wed, thurs, fri and 2 perfs on Sat all having alternate teams.

My questin is that we have a 15 year old boy who is 6ft and quite able to play an adult - he is desperate to be involvedand both he and his parents are willing for him to perform in every performance. Is there anything to say that he is not allowed to do this. He is a member of our youth group and would not have appeared in any other productions throughout the year.

Your help would be much appreciated as we are stuck!!

Thanks,

Twirlie Aims

I would think you're ok. our youth theatre company does full runs and our minimum age is 15.

Aims- if he applies for a license you'll be covered anyway. If we do a show which involves more than 4 performances we apply for licenses for all the kids-then we know that we're covered. We also have chaperones who are CRB checked-every local authority seems to be different-but all the societies around here follow these guidelines. You should apply to the authority where the child goes to school. All local authorities forms are different but usually require passport photos and a doctors certificate. I think some ask for permission from the school too. As long as the GP says he's fit and he hasn't done any other shows he should be ok. We've applied for 40 licenses using 3 different local authorities in the past and didn't have any problems.

If you contact your local Education Welfare Service they'll be only to happy to send you the information you need.

We perform in West Sussex not sure if it's the same through out the country

Simply (from memory) if the child has appeared on stage (even school productions) within six months prior to your performance they will need a licence. This is true of all children upto the age of 16

Schools do not need to apply for a licence

you will need to provide licenced chaperones (1 to every 12 children per sex)

In short it's a mine field but your local authority should be able to

please feel free to contact me if you need to know more and I'll try and dig out the leaflet with the info on

Just one point to be aware of. It can happen. A group I knew of with some years ago had a new chap come to do some voice coaching. He was a practising teacher, no room for suspicion you would have thought, and nothing ever happened with any of the kids from the group, but he was prosecuted for offences regarding photographs. I knew this guy and would never have dreamed there was a problem, so cover yourselves whatever you do, and don't just pay lip service to it. It's an awful shock when you find something like that out.

There is no reason why a 15 year old cannot play an adult part. But there are two issues to bear in mind:

1. He would need to be in the boy's dressing room.
2. Make sure the part doesn't require him to do anything inappropriate. As an example, we were contacted recently by a group who had a 14 year old girl they wanted to cast in an adult part, who would then have to do a love scene with a 40 year old. I thought this highly inappropriate.

this 6 performances a week thing, is that for everyone under 16? because i did every night for 7 nights and a matinee when i was 15 and also when i was 15 i was ASM every night for 7 nights.

I have alerted the authorities, and you may expect a knock on the door at any moment.

Luckily for you, the law doesn't apply to Scrumpets

hehehe, good. ah well, i'm over 16 now so now i can work even harder yey. steve and paul had me attempting to use a screwdriver at the end of pygmalion. i couldn't do it lol, i'm too weak and the screw had paint over it so that was totally working against me.

EEK!!!

I have palpitations if my wife even so much as looks at a screwdriver

haha! it was a bit of light entertainment for them, so i got andrew my sound buddy to do it instead hehe.

My husband hides all screwdrivers from me!

My boyfriend is fine with letting me use screwdrivers .... it's the Drill he has a problem letting me near (and in all honesty ... quite right too !)

I won't even use the word "drill" within my wife's earshot

I've always wanted to try a chainsaw!

*faints*

I have run our youth theatre for 15 years now. Our shows run over 6 performances.

In Birmingham, the Education welfare team insist, quite rightly, that we have one Resisted Chaperone or a qualified teacher in full time employment for every 12 children.

I have provided opportunities for children to perform in our annual Youth Theatre Production who are 6 years old.

The rules regarding children in theatre differ from authority to authority depending on their interpretation of the Law. Since they are the body that can close your show if you get it wrong, I would contact them before I went to anyone else for information.

Go here for further information.
http://www.bgfl.org/services/ews/childent.htm

I agree with the previous poster. Each LEA Education Welfare Officer has their own slightly different interpretation of the law. Some will allow all amateur groups to be a "body of persons" and will exempt perfomrnaces from being licensed. Some will insist on any child being licensed if an antry fee is charged.

I am a chaperone living on the border of 3 LEA's. Each have their own rules and I am not actually allowed to chaperone children from one particular LEA as they don't accept my LEA's vetting procedure.

I would like to see a clear national policy but this is not in place at the moment.

Having just investigated this with my local authority, I was informed that licence is required as discussed above if it was more than 3 perf in 6 months, and it can only be 6 days out of 7 etc.

However, as we need some older teenagers, I made a point of asking what age the licencing situtation goes upto and was told it was children of school age. When I pressed, I discovered this IS NOT 16 - but is instead defined as "the last Friday in June in the academic year of their 16th birthday, after which is the Mandatory School Leaving Age (MSLA)" - according to www.open.gov.uk.

So they may be 16 in September 2006, but they would not be exempt from licence until July 2007.

What would be the law if the parents of the children involved were also in the production, does this change things?

In a word Christine - no.

Fraid not.

Safer not to work with children under 16 at all, really. What a minefield!!!!

Not as far as I was made aware - it is tied into the employment law (the same one as governs paper rounds etc) and is all to do with not disrupting their schooling, so it doesn't matter whether you are in the production, (run the newsagents) or not.

If you are not involved in the play, then the Local authority will likely insist on a chaperone anyway. Oh and separate dressing room: this caused us fun when we needed a nine-year old girl for Death of Joe Egg ...as we only have one dressing room in the theatre.

The one thing I never got to the bottom of was it appears you can rehearse them every night for 10 weeks, as long as they don't give a "performance"....?

Hmmmmm, trying to get my head around how a professional touring company can get away with only one group of children.

"Annie" MArina Theatre - Lowestoft
MONDAY 23RD TO SATURDAY 28TH OCTOBER NIGHTLY AT 7.30PM MATINEES WEDNESDAY & SATURDAY at 2.30PM

total of 8 performances, no quiet days, and only 1 group of children!

Think this goes back to what I said in an earlier post - you can only do 6 days out of 7. They are doing Mon to Sat with Sunday off. The following comes from warwickshire guide to the law for parents:

Maximum days permitted to perform
A child may not take part in a performance, or rehearsal, on more than five days in any seven day period for broadcast or recorded performances.
A child may not take part in a performance, or rehearsal, on more than six days in any seven day period for other performances.
For a combination of broadcast/recorded and other performances, the limit for a child?s performance is as per broadcast

Our school regularly provides performers for Joseph and Scrooge and sometimes Whistle down the Wind. They always have 2 groups of kids, one on one off.

At a recent performance of Joseph that I know of the children came from 2 adjoining counties. 12 of them were missing for one performance as one county would not license them for the mainee but the other one would.

This won?t help!
But I remember when I was a kid, it did get confusing between different Cities & counties.
But we relied on the theatre management to organise it, except in London where we had to be checked out by a doctor before each performance. Otherwise in most cases it was the local eduction authority who issued the licence.
I can see how it hasn?t changed much there over the years!
For whatever reason there is no restrictions here, other than the provisions of the Child Welfare Act & the Union rules of the Arts Media Alliance (Equity) which seems only to cover paying &/or exploiting children.
Otherwise it is self regulating with the onus on parents & the group concerned! There dosent seem ti be any specific provisions for chaperones, only the requirement of a State & Federal police clearance when dealoing with minors.

I'm quite astonished by all this!
I realised kids in professional productions were governed by quite strict rules but had no idea it applied to amateur ones.
My children have all appeared in productions over a number of years, and I've been involved in many other productions both with children and 'young adults' and I can't remember the issue of licensing or number of performances EVER being raised!

Last Christmas my (then) 11 year old was in a show at the local theatre, taking part in 22 performces over 4 weeks. I suppose that averages out at 5 and a half perfomances a week, but there was a break over Christmas so one of the weeks at least must have had more than 6 performances!
The theatre never mentioned her needing to be licensed.

I can only think our local council have more pressing issues to worry about.
No I'm not saying where I live!

For Serendipity

It beggars belief that there are still out there amateur producers who are naive, not aware, or chose to disregard the Child performance regulations.

Do they equally disregard HSE compliance?

Do they operate a satisfactory matron system and comply with dressing room policy?

How safe is your child in their control?

They need to get real and review their overall policies.

I agree. Especially since the regulations date back to 1968. Amateur theatre groups have had nearly 40 years to get used to this!

What is interesting about Serendipity's post is that it sounds like the show the child took part in over a four week period was a professional production.

I was horrified to hear that my 10 year old niece was performing with a professional company in Jersey with no license over a long period. Perhaps the law is different there?

The production that she was in was at a very long established and respected amateur theatre.
(I have never worried about her for a moment when she was there - but then I don't subscribe to the paranoia method of child rearing).

Could the rules be different for a 'club' theatre? Although I don't really see why they should be, they certainly used to have different rules for fire regs, etc. ie none as far as I know.
Although it was possible for non-members to buy tickets every ticket included 'membership' for the evening.

This is all changing slowly, but old habits die hard.

This worries me even more. This group appears not to have joined the 21st Century.

Have they heard of the Licensing Act 2003 which has fundamentally changed the status of all these types of organisations and particularly the premises from which they operate.

I'm 100% on your side and don't subscribe to the paranoia system either, but rules is rules and laws is laws.

Unlicensed theatre performances can invoke sentances of imprisonment and fines on the promoters / producers.

Perhaps that thought may make them review their position.

As far as I am aware, the fire regs are different because you (or should I say "we", as my theatre is also a club) don't admit the public, so don't need to meet the fire regs etc for public buildings. However, the kids stage time thing is part of UK employment law, which applies equally to all members clubs (e.g. working men's clubs as well as theatres) whether they are a publically accessed building or not.

As I said we are a club, and run in exactly the same way as you and still had to use two actors for one part (with chaperones and seperate dressing rooms) when we did Joe Egg in April 2006, and will again as we are just auditioning Caught in the Net for next year.

The operation of a club for regulated entertainment is also part of UK law and requires a certificate under the Licensing Act 2003.

Applicants are required to demonstrate how they intend the the club should comply with the 4 licensing objectives:-
Prevention of crime and disorder
Public safety
prevention of public nuisance
protection of children from harm

It seems unlikely that any licesing authority would permit exemptions from normal fire regulations.

The size of the venue does affect the stringency with which the general rules are applied, as for village halls community centres and existing buildings which are difficult to adapt or have limited capacity.

The arrangements for applying for Club Premises Certificates are very similar to those for Premises Licences and require full details of the structure plans etc of the premises.

As to public admission there must be an interval of at least two days between membership and their admission. Guests would be governed by the general rules of the cub and presumably be invited by members.

They are getting their act together on all sorts of stuff now, as they want to be able to sell to the public so I'm sure all these things will be sorted out.

The law catches up with all of us in the end.

I've just had to apply for an events license for a fundraising event - none of the dozens I've been involved with over the years have ever had one - it's always been got round in some way or other - but not these days! Big brother is watching us!

Don't start me on TENs that is the greatest law of unintended consequences to come out of the Licensing Act 2003 - Do governments never learn.

Most legislators admit retrospectively that they never fully read the legislation they were passing.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1162101

Check it out

ALL 164 pages of it!!!

There is the possibility that Serendipity is just unaware of the regs behind the scenes. The parents of the children of a charity show we did had no idea of the stuff we did behind the scenes to comply like getting a body of persons exemption and sending a list of names and dobs of all children taking part to the EWO.

From my experience different LEA's do interpret the rules differently and some are more lax than others (the show we did involved children from 3 neighbouring LEA's and they all did things slightly differently.)