West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London.

Total attendances first surpassed 12 million in 2002 and 13 million in 2007, setting a new record for the West End. Since the late 1990s there has been an increase in the number of famous screen actors on the London stage.

The Theatre in London flourished after the English Reformation. The first permanent public playhouse, known simply as The Theatre, was constructed in 1576 in Shoreditch by James Burbage. It was soon joined by The Curtain. Both are known to have been used by William Shakespeare's company. In 1599, the timber from The Theatre was moved to Southwark, where it was used in building the Globe Theatre in a new theatre district formed, beyond the controls of the City corporation. These theatres were closed in 1642 during the interregnum.

Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).

Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a black man. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.^{[citation needed]}

Dino Lenny (born Dino Anthony Lanni) is an Italian DJ, singer, record producer and record label owner (Frenetica), known on the global dance scene for 20 years.

Growing up playing in the biggest European clubs - Axis, Space, Amnesia, Goa, The Egg, Ministry of Sound – he gained success thanks to remixes and collaborations with Inxs, Planet Funk, Underworld, The Housemartins, Scissors Sisters and many others.

After being among the “Essential New Tunes" of Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, Lenny started singing in 2005. The British press defined his style a mixture between the Talking Heads and Ian Dury. Later on Lenny was invited by Hardage to take part to his project which included Jocelyn Brown and Maxi Priest, Level 42 and Peter Gabriel.

In 2007, Lenny released the single "Feels Like Home", together with Meck taking care of the production (with Simon Duffy) and the vocals. The track entered the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart and was A-listed on BBC Radio One. The song was on the soundtrack for Wembley Stadium's opening event, on the occasion of the FA Cup final between Manchester United and Chelsea.

Louise Dearman is a British musical theatre performer, who played the role of Glinda in the West End production of Wicked from 2010-2011. She has a number of other professional stage and television credits, such as Eva Perón in Evita, and released her debut solo album, You and I, in 2005.

Dearman grew up in Linslade, Bedfordshire, attending Linslade Middle School and Cedars Upper School. She first began dance lessons at the age of three, and started to consider a stage career after appearing as part of a children's choir in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the London Palladium when she was thirteen. She then went on to train at Laine Theatre Arts, where she won their Musical Theatre Award and Opera Award.

Straight after graduating from Laine in 1998, Dearman joined the touring cast of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat as the Narrator. Then, after performing in the ensemble of Whistle Down the Wind in Bromley, she portrayed Jan in the Grease UK tour in 2000, which she later returned to in 2003 at the Victoria Palace Theatre. Other roles Dearman has portrayed have been Lucy Harris in the national tour of Jekyll and Hyde, Mimi and understudy to Miss Adelaide and Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls at the Piccadilly Theatre (she then took over the role of Sarah Brown a year later in the touring production of the show), Debbie in Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, Eva Perón in the tour of Evita, and Grizabella in Cats in Cyprus.