April 2009 Archives

I’m not quite sure why it has taken so long to reach me but Actors’ Yearbook 2009 has just landed on my desk, courtesy of A&C Black. And as ever it’s a pretty eclectic and compelling read: ‘wonderfully comprehensive,’ as Christine Payne of Equity describes it in her foreword.

As you’d expect, I’m initially drawn to the training section which comes at the beginning of the 460 page Yearbook. And this would be a pretty good place for raw wannabes (perhaps a bit short on informed careers advice at school) to start. I hope, incidentally, that it’s in all school libraries for that reason?

The introduction to the section on drama schools explains the role of the Conference of Drama Schools, the National Council for Drama Training and how they intersect. It also gives some baseline advice about funding and then lists drama schools with their contact details and, in most cases, some information about courses.

There are also separate sections devoted to training for under-18s, university acting-orientated courses, short & part-time courses and private tutors & coaches.

New for this year is an essay by Saul Hyman, Executive Secretary at Conference of Drama Schools, who explains what his organisation is and how it works. So you get it from the horse’s mouth as it were.

The whole book is arguably about training, actually, because someone who is new to, or trying to get into, the industry could do a lot worse than study carefully the sections on agents and how they operate. And in the section called ‘theatre’ there’s a piece by Simon Dunmore (also the Year book’s editor) about effective audition speeches and another by Sinead MacManus about finding funding for projects, among may other useful articles.

And for me, at least, it’s always very helpful to have an up-to-date list of Children’s, young peoples and Theatre in Education companies handily in a book which can sit easily on my desk.

So, all in all, I think the Actors’ Yearbook is a Good Thing but I’d be interested to hear from people who have used, or benefited from it in the past. Peter Hall is quoted on the cover (publishers’ hype?) as declaring it ‘Indispensable to the young actor’ and Judi Dench, apparently, regards it as ‘a huge help to those undertaking their new journey.’ But Sir Peter and Dame Judi are both nearing the end of their respective distinguished journeys and I’m a journalist not an actor so we may not be the best judges. Please, therefore, let’s hear some views from drama students or young actors about the usefulness (or not?) of this annual publication.

Here’s something good. And, like all the best things in life, it’s free. Teachers have always taken school pupils to theatres - I taught in secondary schools for many years and I must have organised hundreds of theatre trips, usually in connection with work we’d already done in class but not necessarily. It really is one of the most enlightening, educative, development experiences you can give them.

But teachers, who may not personally be fully au fait with the theatre scene, need information. And theatres, of course, are keen to get it to them - hence EducationLive 2009. It’s a free event on Saturday, 9th May from 12.00 noon - 5.00pm at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London EC1. Its purpose is to acquaint UK teachers with the extensive range of London theatre productions on offer and the educational opportunities they provide.

You might even get to meet Lesley Garrett, the well-loved opera singer and star of the current production of Carousel, who will be there to open EducationLive.

So who else will be there? Education officers, producers and marketing teams from a wide range of 30 commercial and subsidised theatres, production companies and venues across London. And they will be able to tell you what theatre productions are coming up in next 12 months and discuss with you their education programmes, workshops, teachers’ resource materials, special events and school group rates.

The event also offers free, hands-on workshops throughout the day led by the exhibiting producers and companies.

A new website developed specifically for teachers, www.learnaboutlondontheatre.co.uk, will be launched at EducationLive too. If you go you will be able to try out its search engine in Learn About London Theatre’s own internet café to discover the many theatre education opportunities available across London theatres.

Shows and companies that have confirmed stands at EducationLive include: Carrie’s War, Duet for One, The Gruffalo, The Lion King, A Little Night Music, Lyric Hammersmith, Mousetrap Theatre Projects, Royal Court Theatre, See Tickets, Society of London Theatre, Spring Awakening, Unicorn Theatre and Wicked. Some productions will be offering free, or specially reduced priced, tickets exclusively to EducationLive attendees.

Launched last year as a pretty successful education event, EducationLive is a collaborative project run by Mousetrap Theatre Projects, the Society of London Theatre and See Tickets. See you there?

I’m sitting in on auditions at the Drill Hall with the cheerful, penetrative sounds of opera rehearsal in the background along with the roar of traffic from nearby Tottenham Court Road. Nine young people are trying to get into drama training. No, not on one of the big NCDT accredited courses and or in one of the 22 CDS schools.

This is a small, new school due to open with 20 students in September, based in the Drill Hall, and it looks to me as though it could be pretty good.

Never underestimate the power of performing arts to civilise and save people who are at risk or have been in trouble. Intermission Theatre: Acting to Re-Direct, based at St Saviour’s Church in SW3, is a good and rapidly developing example. Intermission Youth Theatre (IYT) was founded in September 2007 as a branch of Intermission Actors which began the previous year. It uses the dramatic arts to connect with young people aged between 14 to 20. They come from inner city communities throughout London and they are ‘at risk of offending.’ Much better, obviously, to work with them at this stage than later. And many of them have talent waiting to be harnessed.

The idea is that weekly workshops with leading practitioners such as Cecily Berry and Sylvia Sims help them to develop their theatrical skills. Inevitably they also grow as individuals and some may be inspired to go back to their own communities and make a positive contribution. The workshops lead up to an annual production.

You can see the work in action this week until Saturday 25th April in a play called Wasted - a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar devised by these young aspiring actors alongside IYT’s Youth Theatre’s professional resident director Darren Raymond - himself a graduate of London Shakespeare Workout’s Dream Factory Project who grew up in Hackney where there was little to do and a lot of trouble to fall into.

The cast of Wasted consists of four professional actors and aspiring teenage performers who come from all over London.

If you have been in prison and benefited from drama there or have led workshops in prisons, young offenders’ institutions, or with ‘at risk’ groups I’d love to hear your thoughts. How, for example, can we get more of this sort of work going? What can we do to educate the wider public about the value of the performing arts for such groups? I’m not, sadly, going to be able to get to Wasted this week. If you do or if you’ve already seen it then - please - tell us about it here. Let’s applaud the work as loudly as we can.

One of the Big Scandals of 21st century educational life is the routine saddling of almost all higher education students - and drama students in particular - with massive debts before they even start work. If we really valued education we would make it freely available at all levels (as it was when I left school in the 1960s) rather than charging rising contributory tuition fees and making most students pay for their own accommodation. Of course free provision would mean fewer students. And HE providers would have to be more selective — which wouldn’t sit well politically, because the government needs as many 18-21 year olds in higher education in order to keep unemployment figures down. So it won’t change.

But can you outfox the system? Is there any way of funding yourself through drama school or whatever without incurring crippling debts (apart from getting yourself born into a family which can afford to support you)? Enter a forthcoming new book called Free Degrees by Lyndi Smith. Having been offered an acting place at RADA in 1998, Smith - now associate director of Mad Half Hour Theatre Company - was determined to find debt-free funding to pay for her course. She raised over £26,000 from more than 350 different sources.

Her account of how she did it - and how other people might do it - is subtitled “How to fund your own education and avoid student debt”. It is both inspirational and exhausting because you don’t single-handedly raise that sort of money without a great deal of hard work underpinned by admirable creative thinking. Lyndi Smith - about whom there will be more in the Music Theatre supplement in The Stage on 28 May - shows that it can be done. Her very practical book (published by White Lion Press) should be recommended reading for every sixth former or intending student.

Meanwhile let’s hear your views about funding training. Who should pay? Would it be better to have fewer students properly funded than more students largely left to fend financially for themselves only later to face lack of suitable work opportunities? Has anyone else raised funds for training as Lyndi Smith did?

Welcome to a spicy new education project, courtesy of Endymion, the cutting edge chamber music orchestra which celebrates its 30th birthday this year.

‘Sound Census’ is a commissioning, education, recording and performance project. Its creators predict confidently that its ‘long-lasting, international impact’ will ‘invest in young people.’

It began last term with nine A-level students and one GCSE student from schools in Camden and Westminster. In four day-long workshops with composer Elspeth Brooke and four players from Endymion, they created a collaborative piece to be performed alongside new commissions. It will be premiered at Kings Place in the Sound Census concerts, a mini-festival, running from 3-6 June. Later it will be recorded by NMC recordings. The students’ work can be counted as part of their A level coursework too.

But that’s not all. Between now and the mini-festival Endymion is also working with four primary schools in Tower Hamlets. Music animateur, John Barber with Endymion players and professional composers will visit the schools to help 130 children devise pieces which the pupils will perform at Kings Place. And there are lots of plans to make all this more widely available through the Internet, and CD distribution channels.

It’s very encouraging to hear of children and young people being helped to develop musical composition skills. Although music is a compulsory part of the National Curriculum for 4-13 year olds, we all know that provision is patchy to say the least. Some children get excellent music teaching. Others get almost none - often because of the lack of available experts and/or funding.

When I was at primary school (in Lewisham, back in the Dark Ages) I had free violin lessons which I opted into and high quality weekly singing lessons when Mr Oliver James, a specialist who was also a class teacher in the school, swapped classes with our regular teacher. He also ran a good choir of which I was a member and we sang in local festivals. Then there were ‘music appreciation’ sessions casually dropped into assemblies. At the time - it was a bog standard LCC primary - it didn’t feel privileged. With hindsight and, by today’s standards, it was.

Any project such as Sound Census that can give some children breadth of musical knowledge and experience is good news. If you are involved in music teaching, music project work or, like me, benefited from life-changing music training in childhood (or lost out for the lack of it) do share your thoughts.

So Theatre Tokens are 25 years old - and I wonder just how many people have benefited educationally during that quarter century? I bet it’s a lot.

Those jolly little theatre vouchers, often bought by grannies and aunties as Christmas and birthday presents for theatrically inclined youngsters, can be exchanged for theatre tickets at over 230 theatres nationwide, according to the publicity surrounding the quarter century celebrations. And I have to admit, to my shame, that I didn’t realise until recently (when I went to buy some for someone who lives in Brighton) that they are extensively valid outside London too. Whoever it was who dreamed up the performing arts’ answer to the much longer established Book Tokens was clearly on to a pretty good idea.

Determined to make us aware that they have stood the test of time Theatre Tokens has now created a Celebrating 25 Years logo and a commemorative Celebrating 25 Years voucher booklet which you get with any Theatre Tokens order made via www.theatretokens.com and via Tokenline until the end of September.

The latter includes special offers such as 25% off at popular restaurants such as Strada, Café Rouge and Bella Italia and various other retail outlets.

Theatre Tokens are available in £5, £10 and £20 denominations and can be bought online, by phone - Tokenline on 0870 164 8800, or in person at participating theatres and a range of retail outlets including selected branches of WHSmith, Waterstone’s, Borders and Books etc. It really is a well established way of giving theatre experiences as gifts and quite a success story.

Is there anyone out there with memories of pivotal (life changing?) theatre visits via Theatre Tokens? Or has anyone had negative experiences with Theatre Tokens? How do they affect education, training and learning?

I’m at the top of the building in the less than scenic Bromley Road, Downham - the back end of the Borough of Lewisham. Tardis-like - notwithstanding the unpromising narrow entrance at street level - D&B Studios is surprisingly spacious when you get up to it. And the end-of-term, in-house show for parents and invited guests, including agents, is tremendous fun.

D&B School of Performing Arts (named for its owners/founders/principals, Donna and Bonnie Sullivan) is a private dance and drama school which has, for many years, since it opened in 1988, done a lot of fine work with children. More recently it has expanded to become also a full-time Further Education (FE) College and it now has 39 students aged 16-19, some of whom are showing us their talents in a witty 1960s extravanganza with good tunes and frocks which take me back (how well I remember, circa 1964, longing for a pair of those shiny, coloured boots).

April fool spoofs, daffodils in St James’s Park and shops full of make-you-fat Easter nonsense: it must be spring and the beginning of the drama school end-of-course showcase season.

But how on earth do you put together a really good showcase using an entire student cohort as your company?