Shibden Park centenary: West End performer Emma Williams on why it's 'special' to be back in Halifax

Halifax’s Shibden Park has always been a firm favourite with Emma Williams and her family. The actor, voiceover artist and musical theatre performer grew up in Calderdale and spent many a summer laying on the grass watching the clouds go by.

Now it’s a staple for her daughter too whenever Emma visits her family who still live in Calderdale – and so she’s “thrilled” to be performing in the park as part of the Stage at the Lake celebrations, which are marking its centenary.

Olivier Award-nominated Emma will take to the stage for the Theatre at the Lake event on August 13, a night of musical theatre under the open sky. Led by musical director Matthew J Loughran and featuring Wakefield-born Laura Pick, West End favourite Ben Forster and stage star Joel Montague, the night will celebrate the best of the West End with a live orchestra and performers from Stage 84, the Bradford-based performing arts school where Emma trained.

“I don’t get a chance to sing with orchestras of this size normally so to get to do this as an amazing live outdoor gig is great,” says Emma, whose husband will be drumming with the orchestra. It’s a little bit scary to be on home turf because it means so much and you want to do a good job - and you’re going to know more of the audience than you do normally.”

“I don’t get a chance to perform up north very often and then it tends to be shows rather than concerts so to get the chance to perform as me, not a character, in my hometown is really special,” she adds, speaking from her home in Bedfordshire. “I’m really proud of where I’m from.”

Emma, who made her West End debut as Truly Scrumptious in the original cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium has most recently finished the UK Tour of Top Hat and is now involved in voiceover work. "Performing is in my blood, it’s who I am,” she says. “I think if you’re going to work in musical theatre you have to want and need to work in it because the amount of rejection you get is extreme…

"You are constantly hustling for work. I’m fortunate I skip between TV, theatre, touring and West End, and voiceover work...The nice thing about the industry is that it’s constantly changing - there’s always something new to want to tick off, something different to turn your hand to.”

Emma will be sharing the stage with the now London-based Laura, who is best-known for her role as Elphaba in Wicked at the Apollo Victoria. She joined a youth theatre group in Yorkshire the day before her seventh birthday.

“That’s when I started singing songs from musicals and from that moment, it was all I wanted to do and realistically probably all I was ever going to do,” she says. “It feels very special to help people escape from the day-to-day through seeing a show or seeing somebody perform…We have the ability to make people feel all the feels.”