December 2010 Archives

In dance the emphasis is usually on performance training, so it’s good to find an ongoing project which focuses on choreography.

Over 100 young people — 56 young choreographers and 50 dancers — recently took part in choreographic workshops at London’s Royal Opera House. They were applicants for YDE Young Creatives, a national choreographic development programme for young people. This was the selection weekend.

Eventually thirteen choreographers were selected by a panel of dance professionals including: Samantha Raine, soloist at The Royal Ballet, Kate Flatt, world-renowned choreographer whose work includes Les Miserables and Freddie Opoku-Addaie, Royal Opera House2 Associate Artist and Place Prize 2010 finalist.

Participants were set creative tasks by ROH2 Associate Artists Sarah Dowling and Freddie Opoku-Addaie. They were asked to create two original pieces of dance for performance to the panel and their fellow applicants. These performances and the work done in the workshops enabled the panel to choose the young choreographers who will now, in the early months of 2011, take part in the YDE Young Creatives.

I’ve been thinking about translation. Well, what else was there to think about over the weekend?

I’ve long been fascinated by the way plays can be taken from one language and culture and reinvented in another, without — as far as I can tell, and I’m not a linguist — much loss of authorial integrity.

How much knowledge of the language you’re translating from do you really need as long as you have a literal translation to work from and you are talented in the use of the ‘receiving’ language?

An (English) friend of mine, who has lived in Italy almost all her adult life, tells me that seeing Shakespeare in Italian is a very strange experience because the language is modern. Obviously there would be no point in trying to translate it into 17th century Italian.

Is it possible to give an indifferent play a new lease of life if you translate it sparkily enough? Well yes, I think you can. I vividly remember Carlo Goldoni’s The Venetian Twins, directed by Michael Bogdanov for the RSC in 1993. A great play it certainly isn’t. Great theatre it definitely became in Ranjit Bolt’s hilarious translation and with David Troughton’s unforgettable performance. So whose play was it in the end: Goldoni’s or Bolt’s?

And what about verse? Can you translate the iambic pentameter into another language? Do Moliere’s Alexandrines work in English? So many questions.

There are now a number of courses - mostly at postgraduate level - which teach aspirant playwrights to write plays. The Universities of Birmingham, Kingston, Exeter and Goldsmiths, University of London all offer one, for example, and there are others. Although some of these may dip into the world of translation, and/or encourage students for whom this is an interest, I know of no training which specialises in translation for performance.

Enter Ranjit Bolt’s very readable little book The Art of Translation, published by Oberon Books. In it, Bolt describes his working methods, answers most of the questions I pose above and is, effectively, a master class in translation. Bolt, of course, has translated most of Moliere and classics such as Lysistrata as well as that enjoyable The Venetian Twins and many other things. He is - a fairly unusual career - a full time professional translator of drama.

If you’re interested in writing plays you need to read The Art of Translation. Even if you have no intention of translating a play, but plan always to write from scratch, Bolt has a lot to teach about how dramatic language works.

• The Art of Translation by Ranjit Bolt (Oberon Books) £9.99 ISBN 9781840028652

What I affectionately call the ‘pantomime season’ ended for me on Tuesday with two shows in Tunbridge Wells: Cinderella in the vast Assembly Hall and Mr Toad in the more intimate Trinity Theatre. Since the beginning of the month, I have seen children’s shows - by no means all of them pantomimes - from Margate to Hammersmith and (almost) all stations between.

As always, I am struck by the enormous amount of fine and dedicated work which goes on every year to provide kids with what is, for many, a first taste of live theatre as well as hundreds of roles for actors who might otherwise be resting. Children’s shows at this time of year also make profits for companies and venues which desperately need them in this climate of cuts. There have been rumours this year, for instance, that the site which includes aforementioned Assembly Hall at Tunbridge Wells may have been earmarked for development by the council.

Another, often overlooked, bonus of Christmas shows is the range of training opportunities they offer their casts. Local dance schools, typically, produce several teams of young dancers. Some principals are still in training. There are always some for whom it is a first professional job. Yes, there’s a great deal of learning and development going on here.

And what a lot the audience get from them - not just children either. One of my most treasured memories of this year’s shows is of something which happened at the end of The Mouse Who Saved Christmas at Brook Theatre, Chatham. The charming walk-through show is aimed primarily at under-5s, but I attended a morning performance along with a group of mentally disabled adults. One quite elderly man, ambulant but without speech and clearly with severe learning difficulties, wanted desperately to communicate with Miriam Cooper, who looked stunning and magical in white as a snow fairy. With elegant grace and without a shred of condescension or fuss she shook his hand and curtsied. Yes, curtsied. It gave him dignity and quietly conferred respect. Then she pecked him on the cheek. It brings tears to my eyes (again) just describing it.

There’s a lot of puppetry about too and opportunities for actors to master some of its skills. The rodents in the lively Beauty and the Beast were the first puppets I’ve seen used at Unicorn theatre although they have, of course, long excelled at it at Little Angel Theatre, where I saw a hugely enjoyable Alice in Wonderland at the beginning of the month.

I’m struck too by how well companies and writers know their audiences. Evolution Pantomimes produced both the funny and sophisticated Robin Hood at the Marlowe Arena, Canterbury and the much coarser Jack and the Beanstalk at Central Theatre, Chatham. Paul Hendy wrote both shows. He knows that what will work in Canterbury won’t work in Chatham and vice versa. The differences and nuances really are very interesting. Might make a dissertation topic for an MA student somewhere, some time?

I think companies, devisers, writers and other creators of theatre are also to be commended for finding more and more ways of making theatre interactive for children. This year I’ve made paper chains at Brook Theatre, Chatham and hurled snowballs at the cast at Lyric, Hammersmith with the youngest children. And Kings Theatre Chatham, as ever, puts its own spin on the whole concept of interactivity by bringing children onto the stage continually during the show to help the cast to tell the story of Peter Pan on Dinosaur Island - although the performance I was due to see lasat weekend fell victim to the snow and I’ve still got this one to look forward to next week as a sort of unexpected post-script.

I’m always a bit sad when it’s all over, to tell the truth, because I get such a buzz out of seeing so many people, especially children, benefiting so much. Roll on the 2011 pantomime season - although I need a bit of rest first. Oh yes I do.

And here as promised, in case, you still haven’t finished the Christmas shopping, are a few more last minute present suggestions related to the performing arts and learning, direct and indirect. (Catch up with the first part of our guide to Christmas books - Ed.)

Between the publication of the first edition of The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller, edited by Christopher Bigsby, in 1997 and Miller’s death in 2005, he wrote three more plays, was involved in three films and wrote a cluster of short stories. This updated second edition is, therefore, welcome, especially in a year when we’ve seen so many fine productions of Miller plays in the UK (The Crucible at Open Air Theatre, Regents Park, All My Sons at the Apollo and Death of a Salesman at West Yorkshire Playhouse, for example).

Like the other companions in this Cambridge series, the Miller volume comprises a series of in-depth essays by variously qualified writers on different aspects of Miller’s work. Thus there’s a section by Brenda Murphy on the Greek dramatists who inspired Miller, especially in View from the Bridge which uses a narrator as an occasional, quasi-Greek chorus. Then there’s Stephen R Centola on All My Sons and June Schlueter on Miller in the Eighties among many other inclusions.

Because of his left-wing, anti-establishment politics and willingness the to stand up and be counted vicariously on stages worldwide, Miller was not, of course, universally revered in the US, as several of these writers make clear.

R Burton Palmer contributes an interesting discussion of Miller and film. Seventy two films (so far and as at mid 2009) have been based in some sense on Miller’s work - although he was deeply suspicious of film. He regarded it as passive and inferior - unlike theatre which requires intellectually interactive engagement. Not until his son Robert produced a successful film of the Crucible (1996) directed by Nicholas Hytner and using Miller’s own screenplay was there a film in which the playwright ‘took total pleasure.’

Anyone studying Miller’s plays, or working on them with a view to production, could learn a lot from this information-packed book which also has the minor advantage of being very nicely produced on good quality paper so it’s pleasant to handle.

In a completely different mood (and not, strictly speaking, a training book — although there’s plenty there to learn from) comes Lost and Found: My Story by Lynda Bellingham.

It has taken the restless, troubled Lynda Bellingham, who so often handicaps herself through foolish behaviour and bad decisions, sixty years to find peace and love in her life. Now happily married to a man she adoringly describes as a “smoothie”, the actor best known for Oxo commercials looks back on a life of violence, drink and unhappiness, although as she frequently points out, there have been many good times too.

Her account of bludgeoning her way into Central School of Speech and Drama is entertaining, although it isn’t exactly the method I’d recommend on The Stage’s education and training page. She is also mildly interesting on the plays, films and shows she has been in and the people she has worked with from ASM at Frinton with a few small parts to the lead in Calendar Girls in the West End last year and now touring and her regular Loose Women appearances.

But it is Bellingham’s personal life which makes this book unusual for several reasons. First there is the astonishing frankness with which she describes her sexual encounters (just a blow job for Greg Smith on her first wedding night) and the decades of heavy drinking. Perhaps because she (and her new husband) are now ‘dry’ there is a whiff of the confessional about this.

Then there’s the moving story of her adoption in babyhood by a couple who became her totally supportive and adored parents until their deaths in 2005. Twenty years earlier, with their blessing, she traced her birth mother and formed an ongoing relationship with her. So there are some implications to ponder here on the evergreen topic of the rights of all parties in adoption cases.

But most startling of all is the open way she describes the horror of her marriage to Nunzio Peluso, father of her two sons. He abused her physically and mentally for many years and continues, she alleges, to make difficulties for her. In her rather breathy, over exclamation marked, style she provides some real insights into how low self esteem and fear over many years prevent battered wives from freeing themselves. The reader is not surprised when she mentions in passing that she gives talks to groups of abused women.

Buy it for young actors and drama students — as a warning?

Did you see The Railway Children at Waterloo Station this year? I took a 12-year old and an 8-year old in October. What a lovely time we had and what a lot we learned.

Adapted by Mike Kenny, this York Theatre Royal/National Railway Museum production famously features a real steam train, and less famously uses a ‘chorus’ of children. Well, the good news is that you could stage it perfectly well without the steam train and Nick Hern Books, which has just published the text (a delight to read and re-live the splendid theatre it is), is hoping that companies will. It would be an excellent choice for youth groups, for example.

• The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller ed by Christopher Bigsby, Cambridge University Press, pb £18.99, ISBN 9780521745383

• Lost and Found: My Story by Lynda Bellingham (Ebury Press hb £17.99, ISBN 9780091936402

• E Nesbit’s The Railway Children, adapted for the stage by Mike Kenny, Nick Hern Books pb £8.99, ISBN 9781848421318

Still looking for Christmas presents for thespy friends and relations? Well there are so many good informative performing arts books in the pile on my desk (in addition to the ones I featured in The Stage last week) that I’m going to draw your attention to one batch here and a second group on Monday. And I hope that solves a few gift problems for you.

In Acting for Love and Money: Connecting the Craft to the Industry by Paul G Gleason & Gavin Levy, two Hollywood-based authors (although Levy is British), carefully place ‘love’ before ‘money’ in their title because the thrust of their teaching is that you have to be totally committed to acting - something you simply have to do - in order to be commercially successful at it.

Almost a specialist study skills book, this guide is intended to teach the reader not how to act but how to study acting. The result is a densely packed text in small print without much ‘white space’ on the page under 75 headings including, for example ‘Mask yourself,’ ‘Air Bubble’ and ‘Alexander Exercise.’ Each is followed by an account of one of the authors taking student(s) through an activity with several paragraphs side-headed ‘Food for Thought’ and then a ‘Diagnosis’ offering what most British actors would call an ‘analysis’ or a ‘reflection.’ It is all a bit crowded.

Buried in all this is some useful advice, but the format means that you have to dig quite hard to find it. For example: Use the Internet to find out about, and study with, the greatest living and dead practitioners, actors and teachers such as Michael Caine, Sanford Meisner and Uta Hagen. Technology means that you can, the book suggests, have a masterclass with almost whomever you wish, free and whenever you like.

There are some good statements to make you think too, such as ‘An actor should be the most empathetic person in the world,’ ‘Auditioning is, by definition, adapting to a situation’ and ‘Every technique in acting is about two different people who exist in the body of one person.’ Yes, the tone is American - as are most of the examples - but much of the advice is universal.

A useful book for actors, teachers and drama students then, but its presentation does it no favours.

Playing Shakespeare by John Barton is a new edition of a very practical book originating from a 1984 Channel 4 TV series.

Barton, who has been with the RSC since 1960, ranges over topics such as Using the verse, Using the prose, Set speeches and soliloquies, Irony and ambiguity, Exploring a character and much more. There’s a foreword by Trevor Nunn and nitty-gritty discussion with actors such as Tony Church, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Michael Pennington and Ben Kingsley. Barton also looks specifically at Shylock’s character and rehearses a passage from Twelfth Night.

The detail is impressive. In the section entitled Passion and Coolness, Barton has Ben Kingsley as (‘He’s volatile and he’s variable’) Brutus reading four speeches as a means to exploring Brutus’s mixture of feelings and passions. ‘He prides himself on being cool. But how cool is he?’ asks Barton. Kingsley comments later that there are ambiguities and contradictions in Brutus which are set antithetically against one another - a microcosm of the whole play. Another impressive section finds Jane Lapotaire and Lisa Harrow discussing with Barton the use of verse and prose by Desdemona and Emilia in Othello and the effects of the different and changing language styles. It is like sitting in on a masterclass rehearsal.

What the book does, as Trevor Nunn observes, is to reveal the method and principle which has been fundamental to the RSC since it was formed. ‘It is not didactic or political or scholarly or literary’ says Nunn, adding that ‘It relies a good deal on analysis, but just as much on commonsense and pragmatism and a sense of theatre and character.’

The new edition of this useful, down-to-earth training book includes an 80-minute DVD so you can hear, as well as see, some of the exemplar material - Barton in conversation with Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench and Jane Lapotaire. Definitely one for actors, drama students, teachers and anyone studying Shakespeare.

I also enjoyed Ruth Leon’s The Sound of Musicals, a slim and succinct account of the handful of 20th century musicals which, in Leon’s very well informed and experienced opinion, have changed the genre for ever. She puts, for instance West Side Story, My Fair Lady and Guys and Dolls firmly in this camp and makes a strong case for the inclusion of Sweeney Todd, Fiddler on the Roof, Sunday in the Park with George and South Pacific. In each case she explains the genesis of the piece and analyses its unique originality. I learned a great deal.

Buy it for the musical theatre students on your list and for anyone else who loves or works with musicals and might like to know more about the background of the pivotal ones.

Presumably you stop - or should stop - being a “girl” (or a “boy”) when you reach something approaching adulthood: say at age 16 or 17?

Well not within families you don’t, in many industries you don’t and you certainly don’t in the performing arts world. And I’m wondering how much it matters that we don’t dignify each other with the adult terms “women” and “men.”

Families first. I was 50 when my father died. And to the end of his life, if he needed to refer to my sister and me collectively we were, of course “the girls.” My sons are grown up - really they are - but of course we still call them “the boys.” People often ask after “the boys” too. All of that seems quite natural.

I’m a lot less comfortable, though, with referring to an elderly, hard- working man as “the bell boy” when I stay in a hotel in the US, or a mature sales assistant in a London store as a “shop girl” and try quite hard not to do it.

In the performing arts industries the use of “girls” and “boys” for cast members is so entrenched that I’ve always regarded it as show biz jargon. At student graduation showcases, for example, casting directors and agents will routinely discuss the merits of one “girl” or “boy” over another. All-singing, all-dancing adult casts in musicals are always known as “boys” and “girls.” Pantomimes have principal “boys” (who traditionally are “girls,” of course, just to confuse the issue). That’s just how it is.

Or so I thought until, that is, a chance comment on Twitter recently made me stop to wonder whether this isn’t revoltingly patronising and that there could be a training need here to get people out of this habit.

So I sought a few views from other performing arts journalists and trainers. Annemarie Lewis Thomas, principal of Musical Theatre Academy (MTA) and for 20 years a composer and MD, says she often asks casts whether they mind and no one seems to. “I’ve asked my students too,” she tells me “and they say they don’t mind what they’re called as long as they’re employed.” Well I suppose that’s healthy.

David Cookson, another musician, MD and former teacher, says that he is unashamedly “old fashioned and un-PC” and always uses “boys” and “girls” to address adult groups of participants along with “ladies” and “gentlemen.” Well, yes, I really can’t imagine a conductor saying to a choir. “Come on, women, we must sort out bar 10.” It reminds me of my father again, incidentally, who always insisted that only prostitutes and prisoners were women. All other females, as far as he was concerned, were ladies.

Journalist colleague Paul Vale, who has a performing arts background, says: “To be honest it has never really bothered me and indeed I have always seen it as a term of affection. It is also rather an inclusive term, indicating team work over an autocratic leadership.”

Vale continues: “The captain of a rugby or football team will refer to the ‘boys’ in the team, but a captain of a regiment will refer to the ‘men.’”

Jamie Read, principal of Read College in Reading, thinks the habit, which he finds “funny” (and I think he means odd rather than hilarious) may have something to do with aspirations of youth. Paul Vale agrees: “There is the Peter Pan element, I suppose, where grown actors are basically still children playing ‘lets pretend’ and rehearsals are the first day of school.”

Scott Matthewman, assistant editor at The Stage, notices - more disturbingly - that the terms tend not to be used for leading men and ladies. “Maybe it’s a way of reinforcing hierarchy among casts?” he wonders.

So, do we use these terms out of habit because no one challenges their use? And, if so, should we be trying to change things - the training need I mentioned earlier? Or do we go with those MTA students and accept that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and that it’s too trivial a thing to be worrying about?

Lots of views, please!

If you want to be considered for next year’s National Youth Theatre company, you have just 29 days to get your application in. The closing date is January 7.

Daniel Craig, Matt Smith, Orlando Bloom, Matt Lucas, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Catherine Tate, David Walliams, Sir Derek Jacobi, Chiwetel Ejiofor OBE, Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Ben Kingsley all once trod the boards with the NYT, so today’s participants have a great deal to live up to.

But it’s not just stars-in-the-making the NYT is seeking. It also wants behind-the-scenes technical talent. Applications are invited for costume, lighting and sound, scenery and prop making, and stage management courses as well as for acting.

Singer and NYT alumna, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, said:

I absolutely loved being a part of The National Youth Theatre. It was so much fun and really boosted my confidence. As an adult, I’ve carried on going to see the wonderful plays they put on each year and am always so impressed with their work. It’s a fantastic organisation, with massive benefits for anyone that gets involved.

Paul Roseby, Artistic Director of National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, added:

We’re looking to illuminate the raw talent of young people from across the UK with spark, passion, focus, enthusiasm, commitment and generosity. At the NYT we have over 50 years’ experience of investing in the training and personal development of young British talent and showcasing it on exciting platforms all over the UK and around the world.”

Recent productions include Relish at the Tramshed in London - the true story of a Victorian chef who captured the imaginations and taste buds of the British public long before Delia, Jamie and Gordon. Another highlight was Stars over Kabul in Glasgow - a tale of modern love and loss set against ‘Afghan Star’ - an X-factor style TV talent show that swept the war-torn nation. In the summer, the NYT travelled to Shanghai to perform Living the Dream - a fresh take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream - at the World Expo 2010.

The NYT offers young people the chance to work together in a professional environment, giving them artistic and technical skills as well as the invaluable experience of working as part of a dedicated team.

The closing date for applications is January 7, 2011. Applicants must be aged 14 to 21 on August 1, 2011. Auditions and interviews will be held at venues across the country during January and February 2011. Everyone who applies will be offered the chance to “try out”, regardless of previous experience.

There is more information about applying at www.ideastap.com/nytapply or forms are available from The Auditions Department, The National Youth Theatre, Woolyard, 52 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3UD, 0207 281 3863.

Last night I was at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith being blown away by an entertaining, thoughtful new opera by Stuart Hancock (music) and Donald Sturrock (words). But what blows me away even more is that the 85 people on stage are aged 9-18 and they’ve been working on this only since September.

Rain Dance was W11 Opera for Young People’s 2010 production and the eighth to benefit from having Knight Frank, the estate agent, as a lead sponsor - although this is not a cheap thing to mount and the earnest quest for donations is ongoing.

Over 3,000 young people have taken part in such a show since W11 started in 1971 - including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Saskia Wickham, Jemima Rooper and Eve Best, in their youth.

Although the first ever W11 opera was Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, for many years now the organisation usually commissions a new work each year - arrangements are well in hand for 2012 and 2013. So a repertoire of over 30 new works has been created.

“Open auditions attract a cast drawn from around 35 schools across London,” Sarah Johnson, W11 Children’s Opera Trust trustee, told me before the show, adding that some individual financial support can be offered if a child cannot participate without it.

Having survived the trenches, injured but recovered, my grandfather, William Hillyer, trained to be a primary school teacher, completing his qualification and starting his classroom career in 1921. I have his certificate and a lovely photograph of him and his fellow students at the end of their course - looking very serious, all done up in their ties and formal shirts. The training institution? Regent’s College.

Well I bet he wouldn’t recognise it now - apart from the attractive park-side buildings. Today Regent’s College is a university campus-style private college comprising seven separate schools with a strong emphasis on overseas students and study abroad programmes.

The newest school there is the London School of Film, Media and Performance (LSFMP). It opened in 2009 and is one of four schools within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Science. I am quite impressed by the quality and breadth of what’s being offered under the leadership of David Hanson, TV script writer (Not the Nine O’Clock News, Jasper Carrot, Lenny Henry, Max Headroom) with Hollywood experience.

There are, for instance, four separate BA Hons courses: in Creative Industries; Film, TV & Digital Media Production; Screen Writing and Producing; and Acting and Global Theatre. Then there’s an MA in Writing for Screen and Stage and an is-it-for-me? one-year acting foundation course - among other courses. The degrees are validated by the Open University and accredited by the British Accreditation Council.

The downside is the cost. This is a private college so unless you win a scholarship (which could give you up to 50% fee remission) you have to pick up your own tab: £8,520 for the foundation course, £13,050 per year for BA Hons courses and £9,950 for the whole MA course from 2011. There’s good quality accommodation on site but of course that isn’t cheap either.

If - and of course that’s a big ‘if’ - you are able to self-fund, it could be worth looking at, not forgetting to ask all the usual questions about tuition hours and the professional experience of tutors. The next Open Day is next Tuesday (07 December). Or you could visit on 04 January or 01 February and other specified dates during 2011 listed on the LSFMP website.

Meanwhile I’m still grinning at the contrast between the relaxed, jeans-clad 21st century students depicted in the LSFMP 2010-2012 prospectus and those stiff gentlemen completing their post-war teacher training.