The Team
Who We Are
Leon Parris
Leon is the youngest-ever winner of the prestigious Vivian Ellis Award, and also winner of the Really Useful Group Award for Most Promising Young Writer, the Warner Chappell Award, The Mercury Workshops Award and the Cameron Mackintosh Bursary. Among his many productions as composer, lyricist and writer are Wolfboy, The Famous Five, Scary Musical and Bananaman the Musical. He’s acted and sung on stage and screen (his personal highlight was appearing as a young tearaway on Desmond’s), was the youngest member of the Royal Academy of Dance, and is a highly regarded audiobook narrator.
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Jacqueline Rayner
Jacqueline is the writer of over 50 books and plays, including The Stone Rose, the highest-selling Doctor Whobook ever (topping The Times bestseller list) and works for World Book Day and International Women’s Day, and has been noted as ‘with Jacqueline Rayner’ on the title page of novels by actors Alex Kingston and Bonnie Langford. She’s written for franchises including Doctor Who, Merlin, Robin Hood, Blake’s 7, Bernice Summerfield, Peppa Pig and Power Rangers, and has been shortlisted by the BBC Writer’s Room (for comedy script Inaccessible) and the Audio Production Awards (for Best Drama Producer).
Want to hear Colin Baker and Bill Oddie in a Doctor Who musical about pirates? Here you go:
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“Let’s go slow and see if our song can last forever…”
The song that gave us our name.
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THE HEART (Emotion and Passion).
Represents kindness, empathy and love.
A ‘good heart’ brings tenderness, mercy, loyalty and compassion.
THE SOUL (Essence and Integrity).
Represents the core of a person’s being – their deepest values,
authenticity and commitment to doing the right thing.
BEYOND SONG = HEART + SOUL
The best results come about when you go beyond just ‘doing’
and incorporate who you are into the process.
The Song Begins
Leon and Jacqueline met in Spring 2024 while working on a Doctor Who drama for Big Finish Productions Ltd., as sound designer and producer respectively, and decided it’d be a lot of fun to collaborate on a musical. That musical became the horror musical series Bellwood which proceeded to take over their lives… But it didn’t stop them having a whole host of other ideas, for both further projects and ways to make everyone’s lives just a little bit more musical. Making the partnership official was the inevitable next step, and Forever Song was born.
Forever Song’s roots, however, go rather deeper than either of them initially realised…
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Overture
In June 2001, Big Finish Productions released a dramatisation of James Follett’s novel, Earthsearch: Mindwarp.
Jacqueline Rayner (who’d been the writer on the now-huge company’s very first production) adapted the book for audio.
Leon Parris had been spotted at the Edinburgh Festival in the breakout hit New Boy, and offered the lead role in Earthsearch. But his musical success meant he took on an additional role – as composer.
Which means their first collaboration as writer/composer actually occurred last century – they even spent three days in the same recording studio back in September 2000. (Jac also played Leon’s character’s datapad, which he dropped down a hole at some point in the proceedings and never mentioned again. Oops.)
It took them some time to realise all this. And it can get quite complicated when anyone asks how they met. But it’s fun to be able to say they’ve been a creative partnership for over 25 years!
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Extended Second Family & Friends.
We owe anything and everything to these people. We'd like you to know more about all of them, because you know forever song is more than just these two people writing songs it's about this whole family. If you wanna know more about them dadadadada!!
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