The Three Billy Goats Gruff is festive Minerva hit in Chichester

With music by George Stiles and book and lyrics by Anthony Drewe, it is being directed by the CFT’s new artistic director Justin Audibert (December 14-January 7).

“I was part of the original cast, and it was great,” Tiajna says. “It wasn't the first production but it was the European premiere and it just went really well. Everyone responded to it so nicely and everybody really enjoyed the songs and some of the children got so excited that they tried to barrel roll onto the stage! I really enjoyed it and the cast was so talented and everybody was just so incredible from the sound and the lighting and the theatre staff and all the company and that's part of the reason I said yes to coming back to it now because it really had been such a great show.

“But I think when you come back to a show you have to try to do things a little bit differently. I'm not the same person that I was at Easter. I know I'm a little bit different as a person and also we've got three new goats for the show. They're really talented, really amazing people and obviously we've got a new set at Chichester Festival Theatre. We've got a very different space there. In the Unicorn Theatre it was quite like a proscenium stage, and the Minerva is going to be very different to that. It means that our attention has to be different, our focus, how we play it. It means that the children are going to be all around us on all sides and it means that we will be much closer to the audience too. I think it’s going to be a much more intimate experience.

“I have never been to Chichester Festival Theatre before and I'm excited to look at it and I'm excited to see what kind of audience we're going to get.”

Part of the attraction is that the show is not just fun but it also comes with a lovely message: “Sometimes being contented with what you have is better than trying to jump into another situation that might not be very safe or might even be scary and that might not even be very good for you anyway. It shows that the grass is not always greener on the other side. That’s one of the messages but really it's also about friendship and love and these characters that are working together as a team to get over an obstacle. It is about togetherness and it's also about working together.”

Tiajna graduated around three years ago from the National Youth Theatre REP company. Her theatre since then has included the one-woman play cheeky little brown (tiata fahodzi/Bristol Old Vic/Belgrade Theatre/The Lowry/Derby Theatre).

“It was very different to this. It's about a person called Lady who crashes a party and ends up having a drunken failed night out and it's really why she has come to this tumultuous relationship with her best friend. It wasn't a show for children at all!”