St Edmund’s student and Drama Scholar Maggie Sharp is making her pantomime debut in ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury this festive season, marking her first professional role. With aspirations for a career in the arts, Maggie has grown up watching the local panto with her family and this year will excitingly be playing one of the Seven Dwarfs. I am always keen to support local talent and during a break from rehearsals, I recently had the opportunity to ask her some questions about her interest in acting and what she is most looking forward to about being a part of this year’s panto.
Drama at school
Maggie is in the lower sixth at St Edmund’s, currently studying for three A Levels including Drama and Film. It was from year 8 onwards that she started to take an interest in Drama, and has since gravitated towards plays over musical theatre. She has been a part of various productions at the school, including ‘Remember’ (a play about the holocaust), ‘275’ (a piece of theatre about the school) and ‘The Canterbury Tales’. Now a Drama scholar, which involved an application and audition process, Maggie has aspirations to apply to Drama School in the future and her “main goal is to be an actor”.
Being part of the Marlowe Panto
Maggie watched the Marlowe Theatre pantomime with her family when she was younger, describing it as a “big part of Christmas”. Sometimes she’d end up watching it twice a year, with school and family. For 2025 she will be part of the cast and described the experience so far as very exciting. Booking the part has been “something to look forward to” and through the role, Maggie is excited to “give other people that joy for panto”. Having watched some of her fellow cast members in both the panto and on TV over the years, notably Ben Roddy (Resident Dame), Phil Gallagher (CBeebies Mister Maker) and Sarah Hadland (Miranda), she is already noticing how much time the other actors put into the creative process and being part of the company, “you feel like you are a family”.
Leading the Seven Dwarfs
Maggie’s character Sarge is the leader of the Seven Dwarfs and the only female of the group, with creatives Paul Hendy and Emily Wood wanting to have a girl as one of ‘The Seven’. Referring to Sarge as “a bit sassy, a little bit bossy and friendly”, through the role Maggie is looking forward to “being on the stage with an audience”, seeing people respond and “making other people happy”.
The future and learning from the experience
In terms of the future, through the experience Maggie is looking forward to finding out “how professional theatre works”, specifically how much time and preparation goes into putting on a show. Referring to theatremaking as “precise and exact”, she says that when you watch the pantomime, “you don’t realise” about all of the cues and that “someone needs to press something at the right time”.
Being part of the panto has given Maggie “more independence”, balancing the schedule with school work. When she returns to St Edmund’s full time in the new year, she says she will be “proud to put it on her CV”, noting that it will “help having this for her career”.
Watching the Marlowe panto this festive season
Performances of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ opened on Friday 28th November and you can catch Maggie as Sarge in the show until Sunday 11th January 2026. It was great to chat to the performer and be able to support a rising star. Tickets for the pantomime can be purchased via the theatre’s website.
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