#six alternates

[lightleckrereins]

Its kinda bittersweet that 2025 will probably go down in history as the only year all six alt costumes were onstage.

[six-musical-refs]

Hi! It was just shared in a Q&A on Shakira's stories that the West End Super Swing's priorities are:

Shakira: Aragon & Cleves

Meg: Boleyn & Parr

Laura: Seymour & Howard

If I understood correctly (hope I interpreted it right), they each have a cover order (1 to 5), with their two priorities being at the top.

What do you think the full order for each Swing is, and do you think their priorities being consistent with the Alts' 1st covers are so they can each effectively be a 1st cover for an Alt in case of vacation, etc.?

Thanks!

So, this was a very fun 24 hours for @lightleckrereins and I because we were literally trying to figure out their priority a week or two ago and came up with exactly these first covers. I do think it's lowkey hilarious that they just kind of have double alt system at this point with the three swalts w 2 first covers each (six, you wanna switch to my six alts system soooo bad). But yes, I think you understood correctly! A few other swalts have alluded to a similar system the last few years, with two main covers and then everything else in a clear order after that. For instance, near the end of the 2022-23 cast the alternates (not swings) all seemed to have switched to a this system. Danielle Rose explained her cover order at that point as Howard/Boleyn, Parr, Aragon, Seymour, Cleves. This is different than the original alternate cover system style of 2 1st covers, 2 2nd, and 2 3rd. It's really hard to know the exact order for each swing. Sofia and I have been trying to understand that for weeks (okay, who am I kidding, really it's been months). We've thrown all sorts of Excel functions and statistical analyses at my performance sheet haha. There are some things that we feel fairly confident on, but the possibility of any certainty is majorly complicated by virtue of vacations, Laura having to learn all the tracks for the first time (unlike Shakira/Meg), and a lot of uneven coverage with some roles having significantly more or less swing coverage dates. But that's where a bunch of math, logic, and some assumptions come in to fill the gaps, but again...no certainty. There are two things we feel most confident on:

First covers: Shakira A/C, Meg B/P, and Laura S/H Obviously, we know these because Shakira and Laura confirmed them yesterday!

Fifth covers Now, this is our first big assumption. Sofia and I feel fairly confident that Aragon is Meg's 5th cover, and that Cleves is Laura's 5th cover. But Shakira's is much harder to guess. We've made the case for a few different possibilities, but Sofia came up with the theory that we feel is most likely: that the swings' 5th covers correlate with the alternates' 3rd covers. So...Leonor covers Aragon, which is Meg's 5th cover; Odelia covers Cleves, which is Laura's 5th cover; and Honey covers Boleyn, which makes it Shakira's 5th cover. This was surprising to me because, at the start of the run, Shakira was A/B/C and Meg was S/H/P while they waited for Laura to debut. But it's apparent that a lot of coverage has moved around since (i.e., Laura now being 1st priority S/H) and Sofia is correct in her assertion that there being a correlation between alternate 3rd covers and swing 5th covers makes a lot of sense, especially with Meg A/Laura C already lining up. So...this is our working theory that helps fill in Shakira's. Now, here's where everything gets muuuuch more complicated. We're assuming that, for the sake of coverage, things loosely follow the old alternate system of 2 1st covers/2 2nd covers/2 3rd covers. That means that each role is included once across 1st covers, 2nd cover OR 3rd cover, and 4th cover OR 5th cover. Since we've assumed that the 5th covers are Boleyn/Aragon/Cleves, then Seymour/Howard/Parr need to be the 4th covers and each of the six tracks will happen exactly once across 2nd and 3rd covers. This is where we really got into all the nitty gritty in terms of every time a swing played something other than one of their first covers and the exact context of it - which other swings were on that performance, and exactly what roles were they playing? which swings were out of the show? which roles had Laura debuted by then? at this point Sofia and I both ran to our own respective spreadsheets to puzzle things out in the ways that made sense to our respective brains (mine of course included some hyper specific Excel functions, and Sofia's included what she refers to as "cover sudoku") From looking at: 1. Confirmed first covers; 2. Assumption of fifth covers (including the correlation with alts' covers); 3. Assumption that tracks happen only once across 1st covers, once across 2nd/3rd covers, and once across 4th/5th covers; and 4. Contextual information from shows where swings did not cover their 1st tracks... Sofia and I came up with two possibilities that we think are most likely:

(The only thing that really changes between the two is just that we swapped Seymour/Howard for Shakira and Meg)

Again, no idea if either of those are accurate and I'd be surprised if either are 100%!! there's just too many limitations on what we know, and to try and even get to a full guess we had to make the above assumptions to fill in those gaps. but I think both of these are pretty reasonable guesses based on what we do know! And now that I've taken wayyyy too long for that explanation...on your last question, I think it's up for debate! The best way to take a good guess at that would be to know exactly when this cover order was solidified, and since we don't know that it's hard to guess what exactly the considerations were. I'm inclined to think it wasn't solidified until a few weeks after opening, and it's also very possible that it's changed over time as Laura has debuted more tracks. It's just hard to know with any certainty! Re: vacation: If they were trying to make sure swings could adequately cover alts during vacation, I'd have expected they'd intentionally have different priority combos than the swings (ie, if Leonor is out and both Seymour and Howard coverage is needed, it would make more sense to have Laura as priority S and Meg as priority H than it does to have Laura as priority for both)

[sabeedraws]

visualized the late-night thought "what if they were blonde tho???"

honestly? anne looks a bit odd to me- but catherine? DAMN! I'm obsessed

[thequeendomeffect-noah]

A pink super swing was not on my 2025 bingo card but ykw? I kinda dig it. (And again, the WIGS.)

[artemisdumb]

Sooooo... Last night I couldn't sleep so I decided to do my take on how an Orange Boleyn Skirt™️would look like. I decided I wanted it to have the same pattern (or similar to) the top: big orange square alternating with the checked squares on the upper part and just the checked squares at the bottom. And a black line at the bottom just to give it a visual pause.

I actually never done 3D modeling before, but it was really fun!!!! I'm sure going to make more fantasy alt variations in the future.

I struggled with the holographic texture so much, it looks too metal and not much plastic, but oh well.

Plus: the first try 💀

[six-costume-refs]

I’m in Love 😍

But that surely isn’t Pewter.

It's not quite what I would think of as pewter - probably more of a nickel. When I saw the pewter name I immediately said to @lightleckrereins that it was a very British name (which tracks for a British musical of course) (and then of course sofia also had her own associations, so zero chill in opinions on color names from the two of us as always) but I like it - nice combo of a few different designs while still feeling like its own thing.

[sixaltfan]

Calling all Six fans, what alternate/swing/standby/superswing/emergency cover queen have you seen and what role did they play. Repost this and tell your story.

[dontbebittah]

The History of Swingo, Part 6: The Aussies 

(Karis Oka performing as Anna of Cleves. Photographed by @daynaransleyphoto on Instagram.)

(7) Karis Oka was one of three swings in the first and second Australia tour casts and wore the black alt costume with Howard skirt and pants variations. She was the first of the three to complete Swingo, although her final debut as Seymour was also the only time she played the role. While the AUS swings had no formal cover order, Karis seems to have been the priority cover for Boleyn and Howard. Since leaving Six, Karis has played Ocean in Ride the Cyclone.

Days to complete Swingo: 701 (single production: 24, AUS 2.0)

Date completed: January 29th, 2022

Performance stats:

Fun Fact: If only counting debuts in a single production, Karis holds the record for fastest Swingo with only 24 days from first to last debut in the 2nd AUS tour. (Grace Mouat still holds the record for fastest overall.)

(Shannen Alyce Quan as Catherine Parr. Photographed by @larajanephotography on Instagram.)

(9) Shannen Alyce Quan was the second swing to complete Swingo in the first and second Australia tours. They wore the teal alt costume with Seymour and Boleyn skirts as their only variations, and she is still the only performer to have worn a Boleyn skirt for a role other than Boleyn- she also wore it for Cleves and Howard. Shannen has been in a variety of productions since their time with Six, most recently playing Jo in Little Women.

Days to complete Swingo: 763 (single production: 74, AUS 2.0)

Date completed: March 18th, 2022

Performance stats: 

Fun Fact: Shannen and Karis were in the same production of Fangirls in 2021 before the second tour began, Karis as Edna and Shannen as a swing.

(Chiara Assetta as Catherine of Aragon. Photographed by @daynaransleyphoto on Instagram.)

(12) Chiara Assetta joined as the third swing in the second (post-COVID) Australia tour production and wore the orange alternate costume. She is the only person to have worn a different (non-pants) variation of the orange alt costume- she wore shorts for every role. While she was given two alt variations like the other swings, she never performed in the pants variation and the mystery of Chiara’s missing orange pants haunts the fandom to this day. Chiara has returned for the 2024-25 AUS tour in the silver swing costume!

Days to complete Swingo: 75

Date completed: March 29, 2022

Performance stats (note: AUS 3.0 is an active production, so these stats are only accurate as of 9/26/24):

Fun Fact: Chiara became the first swing/alternate to perform in a Howard ponytail dyed their alt costume color in the AUS 3.0 production. While there are behind-the-scenes pictures of Elizabeth Walker (Bliss 1.0 swing) with a teal ponytail, she never performed in it.