October 2009 Archives

I’m at the Leicester Square Theatre — a first for me — attending the first two showcases of the season: LAMDA’s Three Year Acting Course and Two Year Acting Course. And what a splendid venue for a showcase. Not only is the auditorium spaciously wide with good sightlines and comfortable seating (no cramped knees or ancient springs digging in your bottom) but drop-down screens (think pop concerts or the Crucible at Sheffield during the snooker) mean that the names of the students can be can be displayed with photographs while they perform so there can be no mistaking who they are.

And that’s just one of the features which make these some of the best managed showcases I have been to — and I could write a book (perhaps I should!) about badly run showcases and how not to do it. Earlier this year I was even invited by a Conference of Drama Schools member which I shall be kind enough not to name (although it deserves otherwise) which actually — incredibly — gave me the wrong date so that I traipsed to the Criterion theatre from my north Kent home, which takes two hours each way, only to find nothing doing.

Well, if it works it will certainly make a difference, so let’s hope it’s been thought through properly and that a change of government won’t kill it. Last week Kevin Brennan, Apprenticeships Minister, announced that the National Skills Academy (NSA) for Creative and Cultural Skills, which started in 2008, has now got the funding for up to 1,125 new apprenticeship places. The Apprenticeship Training Company (ATC - more initials to remember) has been set up to manage it.

The apprenticeships will be available from April 2010. 16-24 year olds can choose from opportunities which range from those based with live music events and festival organisers, through to others based with local arts organisations and venues. The training positions, each of which will pay a decent wage, will vary from financial management to technical theatre, business administration to wardrobe and costume design.

The ATC, working with the NSA’s 19 founder colleges, will - we are told - take full responsibility for managing and administering the apprenticeships. It will also recruit apprentices and organise their training.

It’s probably something to do with Christmas creeping up but performing arts training books seem to be cascading onto my desk in large numbers at the moment. So it’s time I told you about some of them so that I can find shelf room for the ones I want to keep and dispose of the others so that I can see the wall opposite once more. Here, then are just five of the best.

Beginning Filmmaking: 100 Easy Steps from Script to Screen by Elliot Grove (Methuen Drama) is my first choice. Grove founded the Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards. His book gives anyone wanting to make films a comprehensive, fully illustrated, behind-the-camera run down on how the professionals do it.

Grove discusses how to come up with an idea and then develop a character along with useful advice about budgeting, lighting, organising a shoot, editing, marketing and attending film festivals. I like the A4 format and the accessible way this book is laid out with lots of very practical information based around illustrations (think Dorling Kindersley). A welcome Christmas present for film students and film studies students, I would have thought.

Another book I’m taken with is Caroline Goyder’s The Star Qualities (Sidgwick & Jackson). It is subtitled “How to sparkle in all aspects of your life” and includes lots of advice from Big Names such as Helen Mirren, Ewan McGregor and Kate Winslet and many others all of whom the author has interviewed. We’ve had plenty of books about confidence and presence before, but it is good is to present some of the information in authoritative vignettes like this.

Many actors and drama students, for instance, will know just what Frances McDormand means when she says, “The occupational hazard of leading a transformational existence is that one feels like no one between transformations.” Or consider Bill Nighy’s observations on stage fright: “It is perfectly legitimate to be afraid in these circumstances. It’s a healthy, normal reaction. You are supposed to be afraid. Only the mad are not.”

Plenty more where these came from courtesy of Goyder, who trains actors at Central School of Speech and Drama as well as coaching professionals such as broadcasters and politicians. I learned a lot from her book.

Secrets from the Casting Couch by Nancy Bishop (Methuen Drama) gives practical advice for actors from a casting director’s point of view and teaches the craft of film casting in front of a camera. It shows how actors can use today’s internet technologies to get cast and includes tips on how to get yourself noticed (very similar to some of Caroline’s Goyder’s hints) with practical, script-based exercises and plenty of information.

Nancy Bishop, who has worked with directors such as Roman Polanski and Joel Schumacher, was involved with TV series such as Charles II and Anne Frank, the whole story (both BBC) and feature films such as Prince Caspian and The Bourne Identity.

Stanislavski-influenced Sam Kogan (1946-2004) arrived in Britain in the 1970s, in flight from Soviet Russia where he had studied at Moscow Institute Theatre Arts. He established the science of acting as a standalone technique.* The Science of Acting* by Sam Kogan, ed Helen Kogan (Routledge) is a useful introduction.

Famously, Kogan uses neuroscience and psychology and explores the ways in which they relate to acting. Practical exercises give the reader a surprisingly accessible step-by-step guide to creating a character: by working out his or her (and your) ‘mindprint,’ for example. There’s good advice on the nature of different kinds of thoughts, many of which think themselves. I enjoyed too the assertion that actions are for an actor what sounds and silences are to a musician or shapes and colours to a painter. It all adds up to an immensely detailed and illuminating take on the actor’s craft and the knowledge which underpins it.

Lastly, it’s always a good moment when that well established annual - Actors’ Yearbook 2010 (Methuen Drama) - arrives. The 2010 edition certainly doesn’t disappoint, clad in its usual elegant grey cover. New for this year are a checklist of drama school deadlines, a piece about the Co-operative Personal Management Association (CPMA) and a rundown on the drama schools’ new Essentials Guide which tells you what to look for in good vocational training. The listings - relating to casting directors, companies, producing theatres, opportunities for disabled actors and many more - are as comprehensive as ever. All credit to editors Simon Dunmore and Hilary Lissenden for doing such a good and comprehensive job on what Christine Payne of Equity calls a ‘valuable companion’ for actors wherever they are in their careers.

Strange, isn’t it, how artistic talent often runs in families but comes out in different forms. It has long fascinated me that actor David Threlfall and Director of Music at Chetham’s School, Stephen Threlfall, are brothers. Or what about the near-legendary Attenborough brothers: one (Lord Attenborough) a veteran film director and the other (Sir David Attenborough) an iconic TV naturalist?

Now I discover that actor Julian Rhind-Tutt who starred in Green Wing and has acted in numerous films is brother to musician Mort Rhind-Tutt, who - among other things - accompanies Rolf Harris on the trumpet.

Mort Rhind-Tutt is newsworthy just now because he has written what claims to be the first ever A-Z school textbook for beginners in music technology. Music Technology from Scratch is to be published by Rhinegold Publishing early next month.

Currently head of the music department at Millfield School in Street, Somerset he says: “Many schools spend a great deal of money on new technology but the teachers are not trained to use it. There are plenty of courses but they are very expensive.”

Mastering music technology can, I gather, be made much more interesting if students use their own guitars. Rhind-Tutt says: “The music in ‘music technology’ is all too often treated as an afterthought. It doesn’t have to be a boring, theoretical, ‘bolt-on’ but can be integrated into the course, using the technology and the students’ own instruments and having some fun in the process.”

The book describes how sound works, how you can record a range of instruments, how to record, mix and master a track and how to use MIDI for sequencing and arranging. Rhind-Tutt has also produced the illustrations and photographs and designed an accompanying website.

He studied at the Royal Academy of Music which led to a career as a professional trumpeter with big orchestras all over the world. Rhind-Tutt has accompanied Rolf Harris for many stage performances, most recently being at last summer’s Glastonbury Festival. He also accompanied Harris for his recent DVD, Rolf Live.

Mort Rhind-Tutt, who is 52, taught him how to use Music Technology and was one of the first to teach it. He joined Millfield School 12 years ago and was before that Principal of Ealing Junior Music School in London. He is a senior examiner at A level for Music Technology.

Clad in a (rather wobbly) hard hat and a fluorescent vest, I’m exploring the cavernous space of the former Eleventh Church of Christian Scientists, just off London’s Edgware Road.

Project Manager Anthony Coverdale is supervising my careful negotiation of the rubble and scaffolding as his 22 men beaver away to convert the building into a five storey, 40,000 square feet, state-of-the-art stage school. After Christmas he will have 60 people on the job.

This will soon - by summer 2010 - be Sylvia Young Theatre School’s new home in Nutford Place. It will have 11 academic classrooms, two floors of studio space, a large canteen area, a spacious foyer and plenty of office space for both the school and the agency. Sylvia Young herself, and her husband Norman, will live ‘over the shop’ in a top floor flat.

Architect Simon Judd has thought of imaginative ways to use the space as well as retaining original features such as a large stained glass window which will, by reflection, be visible from every floor. Lovely wrought iron work on the oak staircases is being carefully preserved too and some of the church’s pews will be placed in corridors as informal seating.

The contrast with the unlovely, cramped shabbiness of the Rossmore Road building from which I have just walked couldn’t be more marked.

Hundreds of drama teachers and others involved in developing performing arts skills in children are gathering today at a spacious hotel in Sutton Coldfield from all over the country.

This is the Stagecoach Theatre Arts annual conference and such is the success of the organisation with its 600 schools and 30,000 pupils that franchisees - the principals of the schools - and others will be there in large numbers.

This afternoon they register and can talk to suppliers keen to do business with them. Then there’s a drinks reception and dinner, with performances, tonight until midnight.

Tomorrow it’s down to Real Business. And let’s hope there won’t be too many hangovers because three of these sessions are billed as ‘compulsory attendance’ so bunking off to the apparently excellent on-site golf course with partners is not an option.

Stagecoach founder directors Stephanie Manuel and David Sprigg will start the day and finish it by rounding up new developments including Web TV - Ten Alps Publishing.

There is also a session on that all-important topic for performance teachers of ‘appropriate touch,’ a talk by the National Council of Drama Training and a slot to discuss and/or find out about Stagecoach parties. And Veronica Bennetts (Head of Education at Stagecoach) and Jeremy Ward are leading training on Performance Arts Awards.

It should add up to an interesting couple of days. How very encouraging it is, for the state of children’s part-time training and personal development in general, that Stagecoach continues to lead the way so professionally.

Any delegates out there reading this? We’d love to hear how the conference went … add a comment to this blog?

I’m at the Royal Overseas League in London’s St James. In my bag is Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall which I have been lapping up on the train and which cries out for dramatisation.

On my way into the Alexandra Hall, by a strange coincidence, I spot Hilary Mantel sitting alone in the foyer waiting for someone. She is, I presume, in London for the Man Booker Prize awards which I hope her marvellous novel about Thomas Cromwell will win in 24 hours time — and it does.

But I’m not here for literature — or only indirectly. The event I’m attending is to celebrate LAMDA becoming the first awarding organisation to gain accreditation for graded examinations within the new Qualifications and Credit Framework and to launch its new anthologies for examinations.

LAMDA Examinations’ QCF-accredited qualifications now form part of the government’s major reform of Britain’s vocational qualifications system. The idea is to make practical qualifications, of all sorts, more straightforward to find out about and use - and therefore more accessible to more people. For the first time, courtesy of LAMDA, the scope will now include getting credits for oral work, presentations and other drama and speech-related work.

The QCF is a way of getting qualified in ‘bite-size chunks’ because it recognises smaller steps of learning, including work-based training, and allows learners to build up qualifications bit by bit. It is also designed to help people achieve skills and qualifications which meet the needs of all sorts of industry.

‘Now that we are part of the QCF, LAMDA Examinations are unitised and carry a credit value.’ explained Kirsty Pitt, LAMDA Examinations’ Marketing Manager. ‘This credit allows individuals to take their learning with them as they progress and, in some cases, it can also be used towards another qualification: for example the new diplomas, so the learning does not have to be repeated.’

Back to literature. Alongside teachers, writers, LAMDA staff and others I enjoy the performance by staff and LAMDA students of items such as Gervase Phinn’s poem ‘Creative Writing,’ an extract from Horrid Henry by Francesca Simon, Pip’s first sight of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations and Kipling’s poem ‘My Rival’ - just some of the extracts and poems which students and teachers can choose to present in their LAMDA exams. It’s all good stuff of which the English teacher in me heartily approves. And there are some sparky monologues and duologues in the companion volume, some of them published here for the first time.

To request a copy of the syllabuses for LAMDA Examinations’ QCF-accredited qualifications contact Bianca Patterson at bianca.patterson@lamda.org.uk. Further information about the QCF is on the QCDA website.

I’m sitting in on a rehearsal of Just Me, Bell by Sophie Partridge at Graeae in the company’s wonderful new super-accessible building, a converted Victorian tramshed in Hackney. This is the pre-lunch end-of-rehearsal discussion.

Rachel Bagshaw, dynamic and sensitive director is leading from her wheelchair. Nicola Miles-Wildin, associate actor with Graeae, and playwright Sophie Partridge are wheelchair users too. The rest of the group comprises two actors without disabilities (because the script requires it), one who is disabled but ambulant and a notetaker for Sophie Partridge.

I’m humbled and inspired by what is going on, as I usually am when I’m among commensurate professionals at work on something which I know I couldn’t begin to do myself. I’m not there to pity these people - who are feistily getting on with their fulfilling lives - anymore than the play’s audience will be. As Sophie Partridge told me afterwards: “People with impairments want their difficulties acknowledged and respected but not pitied.” Partridge is a Graeae-trained actor who has appeared in several of the company’s own productions as well as having a strong track record of work elsewhere.

Founded 30 years ago by Richard Tomlinson and Nabil Shaban, Graeae is a disabled-led theatre company which profiles the talents of actors, writers and directors with physical and sensory impairments. It has been led by Jenny Sealey since 1997 during which time there have been productions of Mother Courage and her Children, Rent, Blasted, Flower Girls, Whiter than Snow and many more.

Just Me, Bell is, effectively an education project touring to schools this month and next. The play is about a disabled 14 year old girl, Bell, who is struggling with yearnings for boys, clothes, make-up and a bit of space clear of her pushy dad - just like any other teenager. The idea is to get audiences to recognise that young people like Bell have far more in common with their able-bodied contemporaries than some, in their ignorance might think. It’s interactive too so students will be able, to some extent, to control the play’s outcomes. No wonder the actors I’m listening to are so concerned to get right inside their characters.

The tour, which is almost sold out, will - I am sure - go down well wherever it goes. Meanwhile I’m enjoying the spaciousness of the imaginatively converted redbrick but glassy building. In the nineteenth century the trams remained at street level and the horses were led up ramps to their first floor stalls. It took a long time to get comparable facilities for human beings!

Interesting things are happening in Suffolk on the performing arts training front. Husband and wife team, Phil Hawkins and Libby Newton set up the Venue of Performing Arts at Lowestoft in Suffolk three years ago.

They now run dance, singing and drama sessions for the local community and for people with learning disabilities, social care staff and support workers. Their business was the first centre for performing arts in the area and since its launch eight of their performing arts students have been accepted onto performing arts courses around the country, all of them on scholarships - quite an achievement by anyone’s standards.