October 2010 Archives

I’m attending assembly at Herne Bay Infants School in Kent and it’s a special occasion for these excited but beautifully behaved five and six year olds because Jim Bernardin of World Music Workshops is introducing the children to a really wondrous range of percussion instruments.

I’ve seen Bernardin - who is a natural entertainer and educator - in action in schools before and have always been impressed. When I catch up with him this time, he’s spending two full days at Herne Bay so that every class in the school gets a hand-on workshop as well as this assembly.

Bernardin, now 43, learned drums in his teens and then spent six years drumming professionally on cruise ships. ‘Excellent training and experience’ he says, ‘because we had to accompany any kind of act, often at short notice.’

Then, in his late twenties came the urge to settle (he is married with daughters aged 11 and 12) so he did a music degree and fell in love with education.

‘I still do the odd gig’ he says, ‘but I’m a bit out of the loop now and I’d rather spend evenings with the family.’ He is kept very busy, though, with corporate events, a busy timetable of workshops in schools, teacher training sessions and weddings - for which his steel pans are very popular.

Not so long ago entrance to higher education - usually in universities - was governed almost entirely by A level and a handful of other school examination results aggregated into a crude points system. Many of the students I was teaching at the time regarded this as unfair because it failed to recognise their other achievements, especially in the arts. Many of them, for instance, had worked, or were working, very hard to pass high level instrumental graded music exams but felt that there was no mechanism for admissions tutors to recognise this.

Then came the announcement in 2003 that Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) exams at Grades 6, 7 and 8 would, on a scale dependent on the student’s specific achievement, be part of the sum total of UCAS (University Clearing and Admissions Service) points system from 2004/5.

Since then a wide variety of other music, arts (and sports and community) examinations, achievements and awards have gradually become eligible for inclusion.

One of the latest to have been recognised on the UCAS Tariff is the Level 3 Gold Arts Award. Upon successful completion, students will be awarded 35 tariff points, which compares to an AS Level qualification C Grade (40points), Higher Sports Leader Award (30 points) and Music Theory Examinations Grade 8 Distinction (30 points). Students applying to university for the 2011/12 academic year who have achieved a Gold Arts Award will be able to include it on their application form.

Founder and Director of the part-time performing arts chain, Razzamataz Denise Hutton-Gosney tells me that young people aged 11 to 25 can now work towards Level 3 Gold Arts Award (as well as at bronze and silver levels) at ten of her franchises. There are plans to include the other 30 or so schools in the group in the medium to long term.

At each level, young people are assessed on their planning and review skills and can explore any of the art forms including performing arts, visual arts, literature, media and multimedia.

I’m always pleased to see a new performing arts provider arrive on the scene, especially when it’s an organisation such as Nationwide Independent College of Higher Education (NICHE) which seems to be providing music education rather more imaginatively than some of its rivals.

Mexborough-based NICHE has five faculties of which one, Music and Performance, is headed by Professors Simon Kerwin and Tabby Clegg who have been working together on other education projects for some time. At the back of all this is principal John Morahan who says, as you might expect, that he wants NICHE to be ‘inspirational and transformational.’

Two successful London long runners have established successful, far-reaching education programmes and both, despite the gloomy economic climate, have now renewed their commitment to taking ever more learning and opportunity to young people.

Billy Youth Theatre 2010 involved 115 groups and over 5,000 young people. From Stirling to Southampton, groups staged productions of Billy Elliot locally, with invited groups going on to perform at seven regional showcases. In July this year 14 groups took part in the BYT West End Gala at the Victoria Palace Theatre by performing Lee Hall’s adapted version of Billy Elliot The Musical in front of a sell-out house that included Hall as well as Billy Elliot director, Stephen Daldry.

The producers of Billy Elliot The Musical have just announced the second year of this countrywide scheme which allows participating schools and youth groups to stage their own production of the show. Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall, together with Martin Koch (Musical Supervision and Orchestrations), have adapted their original script and orchestrations to produce a shortened version of the show suitable for such groups.

Participation can have dramatic results. Take Connor Lawson, 12, who comes from a mining family in the former mining town of Shotton, County Durham. In July this year he played the role of Billy’s best friend Michael in Shotton Hall Theatre School’s performance at the 2010 Billy Youth Theatre West End Gala. Next month he joins the London cast of Billy Elliot The Musical in the same role.

Applications for Billy Youth Theatre 2011 are invited from schools and established youth organisations in England, Scotland and Wales. Participating performers must be aged 10 - 19 on 18 March, 2011. Between May and June 2011 regional showcases will be held at professional theatres across the country at which invited groups will be asked to perform an excerpt from their production. In July 2011 selected groups from around the country will be invited to perform at the Billy Youth Theatre West End Gala at the Victoria Palace Theatre, London.

Lee Hall, who originally conceived the idea behind Billy Youth Theatre, said: “I was completely overwhelmed by the response to our first Billy Youth Theatre. The level of energy and commitment from everyone involved was exceptional. I hope we can repeat the excitement and enthusiasm in our second year. We are looking forward to getting started.”

Full details of how to apply for the Billy Youth Theatre and updates throughout the project, go to www.billyyouththeatre.com.

Meanwhile, last month the London production of Disney’s The Lion King welcomed its 500,000th school pupil as part of the show’s education programme - quite an achievement by any standards.

The 500,000th school pupil was part of a group of 6th form students from Gateway College in Leicester who were visiting London specifically to see The Lion King. Following the performance, the entire group was treated to a backstage tour of this award-winning musical where the students had the opportunity to meet some of the cast.

As The Lion welcomed this record-breaking school visit, the show also celebrated the highest annual attendance from school groups in the show’s history. Over 67,000 school pupils from around the UK saw the show during the period October 2009 to September 2010, with the highest monthly attendance in June with over 10,000 visits.

School groups which book tickets to see The Lion King get access to the show’s curriculum-linked education programme. This includes primary and secondary teachers’ packs, supporting activity sheets, an hour-long educational DVD Behind the Scenes with comprehension questionnaires as well as curriculum links and additional online resources

Earlier this term a new website - exploringthelionking.co.uk - was created. It enables pupils to explore the inspiration behind the show’s costumes, masks and puppets. Originally part of the exhibition, Exploring The Lion King, the new online resource, opens the same information to more young people.

See also: www.lionkingeducation.co.uk

It’s always encouraging to hear of a well known and established drama school thinking outside the box. So it’s good news, I think, that East 15 Acting School, part of the University of Essex, has launched a professional theatre company.

15 Degrees East Theatre Company’s raison d’être is to produce work by former students of the school - an interesting way of making sure that your graduates are in work and a strong indication of the school’s faith in them and in its own methods.

The new company’s first commission is from the British Council which has invited 15 Degrees East to stage Romeo and Juliet at the UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010. The production opened this week and runs until the end of the month.

East 15 is based across two campuses in Loughton and Southend, and has over 650 students studying acting, directing, technical theatre and film. ‘We regarded it as a logical next step to create a company which could help ensure career progression for the school’s alumni,’ said a spokesman.

Earlier this year veteran critic, Michael Coveney went to East 15’s production of Real Britain, which launched the Clifftown Studios in Southend-on-Sea. He seemed to like what he saw. Not only did he praise the venue as “one of the most spectacularly brilliant architectural conversions I’ve ever seen,” but he also voiced the thought: “One only wonders why they (East 15) don’t now form a professional company to take the training work straight into the mainstream, like all great companies once attached to drama schools — the Maly, the Moscow Art, the Bristol Old Vic.”

East 15 has now done just that. Led by the school’s director, Leon Rubin, the new company plans to produce shows and tour both nationally and internationally. It will also establish a permanent summer season in Southend-on-Sea from next year.

Meanwhile the hour-long Romeo and Juliet showcases physical theatre and the distinctive style of East 15. The show is designed by Charles Cusick-Smith with fight choreography by Nicholas Hall and music by Colin Sell.

Two years ago I celebrated World Toilet Day in this space by making a case for theatrical lavatorial education - aka for heavens sake get more ladies’ loos into theatres. I was, I said, convinced by the evidence in theatres and other performance venues, especially new ones, that most - male - designers have yet to understand the ‘sartorial and biological differences’ between men and women.

Let me spell it out, as I did then: penis-less women have to take down and pull up knickers, trousers, tights, skirts or whatever and seat themselves in an enclosed cubicle to urinate. It takes, on average, 60 seconds, as opposed to the male 35 seconds at a urinal. And all of that is before hand washing. So, I asked architects and co to note that you need almost twice as many facilities for women in a venue as for men if their needs are to be processed at the same rate.

Well someone was listening. There’s only a month or so before this year’s World Toilet Day (19 November) and also to the eagerly awaited opening of the re-built Shakespeare Theatre Stratford and guess what… it has no fewer than forty seven - yes FORTY SEVEN ladies’ lavatories.

That means, that assuming roughly 50% of the 1,000 strong audience is female, there is almost one loo for every ten women. Music to my ears, and I’m sure to those of any other woman who has ever queued a quarter of an hour or more for an interval pee in a theatre or concert hall.

By golly a lot of enlightened training must have gone on over the designers’ boards and in discussion with the RSC. It will make the theatre, on a lavatorial level at least, the most attractive in the country. And the shows might be good, too.

I always know it’s autumn when the annual Actors’ Yearbook turns up from Methuen Drama, an imprint of A&C Black. Modelled on the much older Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, it has - in just a few years - become a reliable old friend as welcome a seasonal arrival as shiny conkers and the scent of bonfires.

And although much of the material - and the format - is familiar from year to year there’s always plenty of new material. For instance the 2011 edition includes, for the first time, Casting for film and TV, Exploring Fringe Theatre and Site Specific Theatre. The most useful component is probably the contacts: companies, producers, agents, theatres, colleges, course providers and so on. But be aware that, as with any print directory, it is (marginally) out of date even before it is published because people change and organisations move, close and merge all the time. So use the contact details as a starting point and check the facts via websites before you use them.

I think this book is a must, especially for actors who are just setting out and need as much help and information as they can get. There’s a lot here for drama school applicants and students too with detailed information about what organisations such as Conference of Drama Schools and National Council of Drama Training do and how to apply for vocational training. At another level the yearbook is a useful top-up training book with helpful essays on Children’s, Young People’s and Theatre in Education, Cabaret for the 21st Century and Producing Theatres.

I’m quoted on the flyer which came with my copy as writing in The Stage about a previous year’s edition: “An excellent guide for those at the outset of their careers”. I stand by that for the 2011 edition, but with the proviso that you don’t have to be just starting out to find this book useful. And it’s more fun to read than playing conkers.

• Actors’ Yearbook 2011 edited by Simon Dunmore, Methuen Drama £14.99 ISBN 9781408128404

A few weeks ago I was taken to task on the letters page of The Stage by the principal of a Conference of Drama Schools institution who accused me of generalising about the 22 CDS members, each of which is different from the other 21.

Well, of course, I know that no two training organisations are the same and that each has its own highly distinctive features. Some CDS members, such as LIPA, are not even drama schools in the accepted sense. Several are, effectively, university departments. Some are also music conservatoires. And nearly all have diversified in recent years to meet the industry’s changing needs.

Nonetheless, although uniqueness is an absolute quality shared by all members, some certainly seem to have more USPs than others. Take Cygnet Training Theatre (CTT) in Exeter. It is the only CDS member in the South West peninsula - Bristol Old Vic, the nearest rival, is a long way off if you live in Penzance.

Founded in 1980, CTT is a company of actors, aged mostly 18 to 35, which functions as a small-scale touring company throughout the south west. An extensive programme of work in and with schools is part of the training.

CTT grew out of an association between the late Monica Shallis, Mary Evans and Exeter’s Northcott Theatre. Its unusual way of working - ‘the best of conservatoire and practical experience of working in a theatre ensemble’ - means that there are only four or five ‘graduates’ each year. And, especially toward the end of the course, almost everything they do is, effectively, a showcase.

CTT’s three-year, full time Professional Acting Course is arranged in nine terms. Acting with Music and Acting with Drama are other options. There are intensive short courses for actors too at Easter and in the summer: 26-30 April and 8-11 August in 2011.

Recent productions have included Women of Troy, Blithe Spirit, Just So and The Tempest - a mixed and varied bag by anyone’s standards.

So it’s another way of working - and, I think, a sensible option to investigate if you don’t want college based training. Is there, I wonder, scope for the replication of CTT’s methodology in other parts of the country ill-served by the Big Players?