Jason Francis - Director

Jason hails from Cornwall and originally trained as an actor at the Guildford School of Acting. Before co-founding Premier he worked for six years as an actor, including stints in the West End and National tours of 'The Rivals' and 'The Mikado'.

For those six years he doubled a sporadic acting career with working as an Restaurant Manager for Pizza Hut UK Ltd, running restaurants with a combined annual turnover in excess of £3 million pounds.

Since forming Premier with Nick and Connie, Jason has co-written and produced all of their productions and shared the directing duties of all their shows with Nick. Jason also handles most of the technical design of the shows and particularly enjoys creating and pitching the Premier brand to the children's licensing industry.

Away from the office Jason enjoys writing, in 2001 he completed a play about sixties trail blazer 'Joe Orton' called ‘Gorilla in the Roses’ which was turned into a production and played at The Latchmere Theatre in Battersea for four weeks. He also is a director of The Academy Stage School, teaching performing arts to children from 3 to 17 years. The company currently has four branches across the south, with over 200 students.

Jason has directed many household names in seven major pantomimes all over the UK, he has also written three pantomime scripts.

April 2001 saw Jason run his first ever London Marathon for Diabetes UK, where he managed to beat Sir Steve Redgrave and raise over £2000, as a child he also represented his county at snooker and chess.

 

Nick George - Director

Nick’s background is as a performer, having started his career nearly 25 years ago working in London’s Covent Garden. Unfortunately, it was not the opera house, but the streets outside, so he soon decided to move in out of the cold. Following many successful years appearing as a speciality act and compere at holiday resorts around the UK, Nick toured as a comic in various productions, supporting many ‘name’ acts along the way.

As company manager, he oversaw the smooth running of numerous productions and has also directed over twenty major pantomimes, working alongside international soap stars together with some of the UK’s leading comics and variety artists. These include the legendary Spike Milligan and singer Nathalie Imbruglia.

In the mid nineties, Nick worked in the production department of Leisure Services Agency, one of the countries largest booking agencies. During his time there he was responsible for engaging numerous children’s television personalities to appear at live events at major holiday parks across the UK.

Since co founding Premeir Stage Productions Ltd, Nick has co produced all of their shows to date and is also responsible for directing many of them. These include such classic children’s brands as "Rupert Bear", "Mr Men & Little Miss", "Bananas in Pyjamas", "Brum", "Fifi & the Flowertots" and "The Tales of Peter Rabbit".

He has also co written all of Premier’s productions, and with the current vogue of celebrities providing the voices for children’s television shows, Premier have endeavoured to carry this across into their theatre productions. Ant & Dec and Les Dennis have provided voices for Premier’s ‘Engie Bengy’ scripts, and Dave Benson Phillips and Chris Jarvis voiced their Dream Street characters for the live show. Most recently Jane Horrocks has worked with Premier to provide the voice of Fifi Forget-Me-Not.

With the children’s theatre market ever increasing, Nick is constantly working on formats, scripts and proposals for up coming productions, together with maintaining the integrity of the licensed shows they currently have touring.

Stephen Smart - Booking & Production Manager

Stephen is the newest member of the team with his main responsibility for booking and contracting all Premier shows.

He started his working life in the civil service, before embarking on a 30 year acting career. Over this time his theatrical work has included children’s theatre, Pantomime, Shakespeare, West End musicals, commercials, voice-overs and providing role playing services to business in both the public and private sectors, for staff training and development.

He has a wealth of experience, having previously co-founded and run his own theatrical production company, Bandwagon Productions, producing 6 musical revues at the famous Water Rats Dinner Theatre in London, before producing, writing and directing pantomime. He has subsequently booked shows for Parasol Children’s Theatre and Twain Productions

Steve has just spent 14 years working for Penna, the leading global human capital management consultancy as a freelance Career/Outplacement Consultant, managing, amongst many, an award winning Resource Centre, supporting 1200 employees through redundancy and site closure, the Centre’s success was recognised by AOCFI (Association of Career Management Firms International) who gave it the Quality of Excellence Award for Professionalism.

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