June 2009 Archives

Here’s some potentially rather good news. Two Somerset organisations are getting together to make sure that performing arts students can have hands-on training locally. Somerset College and The Brewhouse Theatre & Arts Centre in Taunton are sharing resources in a new partnership.

It will mean that students at the College gain experience of working in a professional theatre as part of their course. The idea is that they will learn about the technical side of mounting a performance as well as learning the creative side by performing to paying audiences in the theatre.

So what’s in it for the Brewhouse — a go-ahead but threatened venue in a pretty setting, which I visited last year to take part in a training seminar? Quite a lot, it seems. The riverside arts centre will be able to call upon the Operating Theatre Company — second year students studying the National Diploma in Performing Arts at the College — as its own theatre company. So it can mount high quality shows which are part of the education scene at low cost - an attractive prospect for any arts organisation.

Suppose you are a 14 year old. You’re very good at design technology and at the carpentry and other skills which go with it. You are also passionate about theatre and have had roles in a few school plays. You love the buzz but you know you don’t have enough talent to make it as a performer. Have you thought about taking your practical, making skills into the entertainments industry? What about a career as a set or scenery builder?

Sadly such connections don’t occur very readily to most careers teachers and advisers so you may not have thought of it.

It’s good to hear of provision being made for a usually unnoticed group. If you are young and lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) or have an LGBT family then you might be feeling a bit isolated.

Enter a new, one-week youth theatre designed for kids aged 11-14 with LGBT families. Based at the Drill Hall in London and funded by London Councils and Camden Council it costs participants just a nominal £50.

During the week the children will work together as a group to make a short piece of theatre to be presented to family and friends at the end of the week. Running from 27-31 July and directed by Barcy Cogdale, it could be a fantastic opportunity to meet new people, learn new skills and act in a professional theatre.

There are no auditions for this but, Barcy Cogdale says, you do ‘need to be enthusiastic, want to work hard and have fun.’ Application forms are available by emailing dhyt@drillhall.co.uk or calling 020 7307 5060.

There is also a similar two week youth theatre option directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair for 16-19s from 27 July to 07 August. The charge is £80 because, as for the under-14s summer school, there is funding from London Councils and Camden Council,

This group welcomes everyone, regardless of whether they are ‘gay, black, lesbian, Asian, bisexual, white, queer, straight or whatever.’ Beadle-Blair says: ‘The only criterion is that they must love performing.’

During the two-week summer school, teenagers will have the chance to experience the behind-the-scenes atmosphere of a professional theatre. They will perform theatre exercises, explore improvisation, text, movement and voice skills, and look at how different types of people are represented in modern and Shakespearian texts. At the end of the two weeks, participants can show off what they have learnt to their families and friends in The Drill Hall theatre.

For the 16-19s programme, The Drill Hall is holding group auditions at the beginning of July - email dhyt@drillhall.co.uk or call 020 7307 5060 for an application form.

Julie Parker, The Drill Hall’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive, said: ‘We are proud to be one of Camden’s flagship venues. Through our education work, we have produced an exceptional programme for schools and young people that addresses homophobia and its consequences. This has included Grace Barnes’s adaptation of Jackie Kay’s Trumpet, for which Cathy Tyson won Best Actress in a Visiting Production at the Manchester Evening News Awards.’

She continued: ‘We are particularly proud of FIT, written and directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, which toured to schools and young people’s organisations throughout London and the UK. We were overwhelmed by interest and will be touring this outstanding play again later this year.’

If you are aged 16 to 25 with a creative idea that that you want to take further — perhaps a play to mount, work you want to commission, something you’d like to take to Edinburgh or whatever — then you have until the end of this month to apply for a grant from IdeasTap.

Part of the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust, IdeasTap is an interactive platform — in effect, an online magazine — that works with many partners including The Old Vic, National Youth Theatre and Polka Theatre. ‘Our aim is to be a catalyst for the development of creativity in young people,’ Paul Sternberg, Chief Executive (Arts) at the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust, told me.

The forum - which has 10,000 signed up members, two thirds of whom are primarily interested in performing arts - allows young creative entrepreneurs and artists to promote their skills, meet new people, take part in live creative briefs and search for new work and opportunities. About 3,000 members are actively involved in IdeasTap education programmes either online or on the ground. So if you haven’t yet discovered this you may be missing something really useful.

And now IdeasTap is piloting a new £50,000 Ideas Fund. It wants to find young people who have original interesting ideas which they are not quite sure what to do with. I meet plenty of these on my travels around schools, drama schools, festivals and other arts events. Sadly most of their ideas wither on the vine for lack of funding - and that’s what the new fund is trying to prevent. So it’s jolly good news in my view.

But - and there is always one - there is bound to be a lot of competition and, although most welcome, £50,000 is not a huge amount to share. A judging panel drawn from the Old Vic, Tate Britain, Channel 4 and National Youth Theatre along with IdeasTap members will select the best.

Grants of £500, £1,000 and £5,000 are available. So do the maths. The number of winners has to be between 10 and 100 which isn’t all that many given all the talent out there. But remember that chap with the allotment who won £25 million on the lottery this week? Well, these things happen. He wouldn’t have won if he hadn’t bought a ticket. And if you have an outstanding idea you stand a much better chance than a random lottery winner.

Anyone who gets a £5,000 IdeasTap award will also get mentoring and professional development advice provided by IdeasTap partners so, for the best, this really is quite a training opportunity. What are you waiting for?

I’m talking to Sue Roberston, now nearing the end of her first year as principal of Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in Haringey. I’m curious to know where she comes from and where she’s going.

It’s an impressive CV which includes having been Chief Executive of London Arts, Executive Director of Southern Arts, Director of Education Programmes at the South Bank and Senior Education Officer at the (then) Arts Council of Great Britain. Robertson is also Vice Chair of Soho Theatre, a trustee of Shakespeare’s Globe and a board member at the Barbican. She has twice served on the Olivier Awards judging panel. For five years before going to Mountview, she was Dean of the School of Arts at London’s City University.

Four months into her new job Robertson, 56, was given a Christmas gift by her staff and students. It was a star inscribed ‘Most promising newcomer’ which now sits proudly on her desk.

The feeling seems to be mutual. ‘It’s a wonderful place and nothing I was told in advance was exaggerated,’ she says bubbling with praise for Mountview’s good focus on individual students — easily lost in bigger universities.

So what, I ask her, has impressed her particularly?

Three good training opportunities, which you might find useful, are coming up at the National Theatre this month and next. Simon Callow will talk about Acting in Restoration Comedy on Friday June 19 at the Olivier. There’s a talk on Acting in High Comedy by Maria Aitken on Wednesday July 8 in the Lyttelton, and Janet Suzman completes the series on Friday July 10 with Acting in Shakespearean Comedy, also in the Lyttleton.

The Acting Series… Revisited harks back to the BBC series of acting masterclasses in the 1980s which featured a stellar line-up of Maria Aitken, Michael Caine, Simon Callow, Brian Cox, Jonathan Miller and Janet Suzman, working with young actors on acting in particular genres.

Now, twenty years later, some of the ‘masters’ (and mistresses?) are revisiting their topics and looking back to see how their work and approach have changed - or not - and share their thoughts on contemporary acting with extracts from the original series.

• The BBC Acting Series: The Complete 6 DVD Set from Amazon.co.uk

The Spotlight Casting Symposium ‘09 on June 27 — part of Scotland Actor Expo — sounds pretty good too. An international panel of top casting directors will speak about the process of casting actors in the Internet age.

The discussion is billed to focus on how Scottish actors can break into the international scene, and the importance of the internet in casting and actor marketing. In the online age, casting happens faster than ever, with almost 100% of submissions made online. The idea is that you learn from a panel of experts about how to get an edge in marketing and presentation through Internet sources.

The two-hour symposium from 3.30-5.30 is at the Bistro in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange and will include a one-hour question-and-answer session with casting directors taking questions from the audience. Spotlight’s Will Davies will be in the chair with panelists Nancy Bishop (US/Prague), Kathleen Crawford, (Scotland), Andy Pryor, Suzanne Smith and Emma Style, (all London).

Spotlight is sponsoring this symposium following the success of previous events in Edinburgh (2008) and Dublin (2009).

It would be good to hear from anyone who attends any of these training events. Tell us how you found them and whether we should press for more of this sort of thing.

Are you an ambitious young performer wanting to know more about the industry, how to get started and to progress? Well now is your chance. And it won’t cost you anything except effort.

This week (8-11 June) is Young Performer Week and it really is a fine opportunity for all aspiring professionals to get clued up. The first lesson, probably - and for some it will be the hardest - is to understand that there’s a great deal more to training for lasting, successful performance careers than appearing in TV talent shows such as Britain’s Got Talent.

The good news is that Young Performer Week is a free online event. It is designed to be as accessible as possible. The range of advice and resources on offer is really impressive. For example every young performer who registers at www.youngperformerweek.com will get unlimited access to:

• Expert advice on the performing arts from leading professionals
• Performer podcasts to help young performers develop their skills
• Opportunities with the UK’s top arts organisations
• Information on the performing arts schools and youth theatre offering key training
• Competitions for young performers to win an exclusive range of prizes

Director of Young Performer Week, Maxwell David, said:

Like millions around the world, I love to watch shows like the X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and I’m always staggered by the number of people who have the confidence to get up on stage. However, I start to get worried when I meet young people who think the only way to achieve success on the stage is to get on a TV show. This year’s Young Performer Week will begin to resolve this.

Young Performer Week is a collaboration between National Theatre, UK Guide to Performing Arts, DanceXchange and Trinity College of Music among others. The aim is to reach out to many thousands of young people nationwide. So what are you waiting for?

And once you’ve accessed it, we at The Stage and other readers of this blog would be really interested to hear how you got on. So leave a comment here.

I’m at the MacOwan Theatre at Earls Court courtesy of LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art). It is ‘only’ a student production put together in five weeks - so I haven’t come with high expectations - but, in the event, I’m thoroughly enjoying this musical version of Passports to Pimlico performed by the 28 students who are just completing their two year acting course.

Written by Stephen Smith (book and lyrics) and Anthony Ingle (composition and additional lyrics) at the invitation of LAMDA principal Peter James, Passports to Pimlico - loosely based on TEB Clarke’s screenplay for the famous Ealing Comedy - is part of LAMDA’s 2009 New Writing Project.

In the past LAMDA plays commissioned this way — Mother Clap’s Molly House by Mark Ravenhill, for example, which later ran to great acclaim at the National Theatre in 2001 — have been successfully taken up elsewhere. It is quite possible that this jolly but poignant, ultra-English piece set in the 1947 heat wave, complete with rationing, a royal wedding, austerity and bloody-mindedness will do likewise - not least because of Ingle’s resonant, clever, often parodic music with its echoes of, for instance, Sullivan, Elgar and Coates.

And there are some outstanding individual performances in the strong ensemble. Katie Scarfe who plays Mollie with such sensitive intelligence must surely be at the beginning of a good career. I warmly admire Nicholas Taylor as Mr Wix and Michael Bryher as Frank Huggins too - although I’m not here to review the show. I’m just a hack who sees a lot of theatre and it is, generally, the entertainment factor which I rate rather than the industrial usefulness of a drama school training production.

Nevertheless, as I strode towards Earls Court Station and the District Line humming to myself afterwards I found myself thinking about how schools should or do present their ‘product’ to the industry. LAMDA’s Passports to Pimlico had a run of nine performances. I saw the penultimate one and there were several agents and other ‘talent spotters’ in the audience. The students had had time to bed their performances in. They were confident and professional, appeared to be enjoying themselves, and we really did get the chance to see what they can do. And it is impressive.

Compare that with the tortured, nerve racking, - almost confrontational - experience which is what too many drama school showcases turn out to be and ask yourself which is the better way of judging someone’s ability. On the other hand every actor has to be able to audition - against substantial odds - and deal with rejection. Are showcases, which are really only a series of auditions, a good way of preparing for that?

Perhaps, more crucially, schools should be asking the industry - all those agents, casting directors, talent scouts and the rest - how it wants new talent presented. More ‘proper’ shows, differently managed showcases, something quite different or stick to the status quo? Some thoughts here would be good too.

It’s what starry-eyed teenagers fresh from the latest uplifting episode of Britain’s Got Talent really mean when they tell their no-nonsense, feet-on-the-ground careers teachers that they want a job ‘in the performing arts.’

Unfortunately working in television is not like becoming a doctor, bus driver or supermarket manager. There is no agreed career path or training and the bad news is that over 70% of hopefuls rely on contacts even to get a toe through the door. So if you don’t have contacts where on earth do you start? The careers teachers and advisers don’t know the answer any more than the teenagers do.

But Elsa Sharp might.