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Great Dickens! Tyler takes to the stage in Songs of Praise special
A TEN-year-old Walderslade boy has experienced the life of his school’s former world-renowned owner, when he was asked to play a young Charles Dickens as part of a festive BBC Songs of Praise for the Advent season.
Tyler Rodberg, of Gad’s Hill School, Higham landed the part of the young Dickens when the BBC approached the school - which occupies Gad’s Hill Place, the former home of one of Britain’s greatest writers whose novels helped perpetuate the image of a very traditional Christmas - as part of the television station’s 200th anniversary celebrations of the great man’s birth.
Young star Tyler, is no stranger to performing, regularly swapping text books for the bright lights of the stage, is set to strengthen his affiliation to his school’s former owner as he prepares to play orphan Oliver! in the much-loved musical, based on the Dickens’ classic, at the Woodville Halls, Gravesend on February 7th2012 – the authors bicentenary.
He said: “It was really exciting, but nervous, playing Dickens at the house he lived in all that time ago.
“I learnt quite a lot of things about Dickens when we were filming, like how he wanted to live in Gad’s Hill Place as little boy and that when he did live here, that he had a special chalet for writing in across the road from the school.
“It was my first time in front of a camera. I like watching documentaries, so it was very interesting to see how a TV show is put together and how a camera actually works. I really liked being able to watch the filming after we finished in the directors small TV.
“I really like acting, and hope that when I’m older that I can go to stage school as it might help me become my favourite film character, James Bond!”
Tyler wasn’t the only pupil to be involved in the special show, as many of his school mates were invited to play members of the novelist’s family and classic characters from his books.
Seven year-old Ethan Bromley, who was asked to played Tiny Tim, was joined by Autumn Ibanez, nine, Jemima Bischoff, ten, and eight year-old Conor Mackay who played his sisters and brother in an interpretation of a scene from a ‘Christmas Carol’.
Elsewhere, Olivia Black aged ten, Katie Hergest, nine, and seven year-old Luis Le Grove played Victorian urchins while Bethany Sparshott, 12, played Charles Dickens’ daughter.
Featuring popular broadcaster Aled Jones, the Songs of Praise show is set to discover more about Dickens’ life in Kent, including his time at Gad’s Hill Place, where classic novels such as ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ were penned from 1856 until the authors death in the school’s dining room 1870.
The Grade One listed Georgian property has been used by the school - the country’s top independent school according to the BBC, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Government’s School League Tables - for teaching since the 1920s.
The past ten years have seen a significant period of growth and progress for school and it is this success that has enabled it to invest in a new school construction allowing for Gad’s Hill Place – for the first time in its history - to be open to the public as it is turned into a world heritage centre - a project expected to attract visitors from across the globe.
The Songs of Praise special is due to be broadcast on BBC One at 5.30pm on December 11th.