Picture the scene: you’re somewhere off-stage - in the wing, behind the set, in the dark, cramped band-pit, or perhaps even the Larkum Studio. Beyond the Josef Weinberger score on the stand in front of you, you only see vague silhouettes of fellow musicians and the Musical Director, four volumes of music at his side and a conductor’s baton in his hand.

This is my passion, this is what gets me through the 9am lectures and all those supervisions. The pitband musician is an oft-forgotten part of the Cambridge theatre world: we are under pressure to perform, yet we are not acting onstage; nor are we techies or production team, despite similarly providing fundamentals for the show that an audience should only notice when something goes wrong. Indeed, the best pitbands have been mistaken for soundtracks.

The pitband crowd is small: there are a few people, like myself, whose prime focus is theatre music, but the majority of musicians you will find in the pit are primarily orchestral musicians who had enough time to step in and help out the MD.

It’s a sad truth: in my experience, most musicians view theatre as something of an aside, and would prefer recitals and lunchtime concerts to a week’s run at the ADC. This isn’t necessarily due to the quality of the music – the guitar scores are as challenging as jazz charts – but rather personal preference, and perhaps the fact that when you’re playing concerts, people are actively paying attention to you (everyone likes the limelight a little bit).

So why do we ‘pitbandies’ commit to five-night runs of sitting backstage? Well, I personally bloody enjoy it. Just like the stage managers and the lighting designers who sit there every night; we’re not doing this for glory, but for love of what we do.

I love to play music. Passion should be the top priority for any artist, and the quantity of music-related productions that get put on throughout Cambridge guarantees willing pitband musicians regular opportunities to do what they love. Unlike playing gigs and concerts, we get to perform for five nights at a time. And this isn’t just playing for your standard Sondheim or Tim Rice musical; I’ve played in everything from Elizabethan comedies to Russian adaptations of Greek tragedies. Pantomimes always need composers and bands, the tour shows always want recorded soundscapes and compositions. Every show presents a new challenge, from 24-hour musicals to 17th-century English folk music to switching between two guitars and a banjo in the space of 30 seconds. Never a dull moment!

Then there is the pitband atmosphere, which is always casual and fun – doing what I love while wearing my Iron Maiden t-shirts and jeans is so pleasing to my inner individualist (a friend even played the last night of Cabaret with his trousers round his ankles). When the time comes to perform, we play and we have to play so well that the audience thinks it’s a soundtrack; otherwise, we just have a laugh. We arrive about an hour before curtain-up, and after soundchecks we have plenty of time for “band-ter”. We can sit and read between the songs, or watch the show (we’re usually provided with video monitors).

Afterwards, it’s straight to the bar together. It’s a great team atmosphere - joking about unprepared suspensions for harmonies over the lyrics “Even though you’re not prepared” and debating whether a glissando on the bass is necessary at the end of every song, make better bonding exercises than you’d expect.

Many pitband musicians do this for love for the musicals and the scores themselves. This is why the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society exists: there are so many Cantabs who simply love to sing along to ‘Wicked’ in their spare time. Though I enjoy musicals, they’ve never been my top priority, since the bass part is never spectacularly interesting (unless it’s written by Alex Aitken), but some of the best music I’ve ever heard comes from musical theatre: for me, ‘Our Time’ from Merrily We Roll Along ranks up there with Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’. There’s so many pianists out there who idolise Jason Robert Brown and who dream of one day playing The Last Five Years to a live audience.

There also exists a broad sense of community throughout the theatre. Everybody, from directors to actors to techies to producers to musicians, is there for the show, so the prevalent mentality is of universal co-operation. Directors are nothing without actors, musicians nothing without sound engineers. It’s the people I work with who keep me coming back to the theatre – not just having nerdy jokes with other musos, but chatting with the actors, the director, the set designers and counterweight operators. I’ve never worked with anybody who focused solely on their own spotlight (that concept doesn’t really exist backstage); rather each production at the theatre involves a company of ten to forty people all working towards the same goal. That creates a feeling of companionship extending across everyone involved – and honestly, all of those ‘thesps’ are damn friendly.

So to anyone who’s ever been wary of theatre music or backstage work, I say: next time you see a musical, stop and think about whether you even noticed the music, the lights, or the set. Then think about the people not on stage, who are creating that for your enjoyment… and remember how much fun they’re having as well!