March 2011 Archives

Last week, quite by chance, while reviewing a show for The Stage I ran into a former teaching colleague whom I hadn’t seen for 25 years, so there was a deal of catching up to do in a short time.

One of the things she said, in passing, which worried me was this. An English graduate, she has taught secondary school drama for many years and is delighted by the number of ‘her’ students who go on to do drama in universities. “But don’t any of them go to drama schools for vocational training?” I asked. “Not many,” she replied, adding warmly: “I always advise them to go to university first and then go on to drama school afterwards if they want to.” I gulped and muttered something about that being OK if you can afford it but quietly thinking that for most young people who want a hands-on performing arts career, my former colleague’s is totally the wrong advice.

Then, a few days later I received a letter. Now, normally I have nothing to do with anonymous letters on the grounds that if you want to say something you have to be prepared to stand up and be counted… but this one is signed “angry graduate”. As I reached across to bin it, the subject matter caught my eye. So I’m going to break my own rule and refer to it here.

The nameless student graduated from an acting course last year. S/he says: “Having spent three years and nearly £20,000 on the course, it is with great annoyance that I am coming to terms with the deficiencies in it.” And it’s quite a horror story which I will summarise:

• Only one voice module taught by qualified coach in three years
• Classes of 40
• Most ‘teaching’ read to students out of books by academics with no professional experience
• Promised a London showcase which did not come about
• Promised exposure to industry professionals but got only ‘a couple of projects run by small, local theatre-in-education companies

The alarming thing is that the student (probably initially advised by someone like my former colleague) had no idea until s/he had completed the course that there was anything wrong with it. Having now compared notes with graduates of drama school courses the problem is all too clear to him/her and the only option is an expensive post-graduate course in a recognised drama school in order, as the student puts it, “to receive the training that I thought I had already paid for.”

It really is high time the performing arts industries - and the training industry within them - found ways of getting the right careers advice and information to school students before they make these big, expensive, life-affecting decisions. Teachers are, in general, hopeless at careers advice - not their field, after all. Creative and Cultural Skills is working hard at this and RSC has run some good careers events, but there needs to be much, much more.

Do post your thoughts, experiences and views below this blog. I think we need a debate on this one. And if that angry graduate is out there, for goodness’ sake get in touch. My name’s Susan. What’s yours?

It’s good to hear of a student creating something so impressive and worthwhile that it develops an ongoing life of its own even after the student has graduated.

Bound, the play created by East 15 Acting School graduate, actor, playwright and director Jesse Briton, has now added to its extraordinary awards tally, this time in Australia.

The play was written and devised while Britton was still studying on the BA Acting and Contemporary Theatre course at East 15. Last year he and a group of fellow East 15 students formed Bear Trap Theatre Company with a view to taking the play to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Many plays and shows include child characters. So how do you manage it? One way, obviously, is to employ children as children - as the currently touring Goodnight Mister Tom does - along with London shows such as Billy Elliot, The Lion King and so on. But it means having several teams, obtaining licences, working with chaperones and other costly complications.

So some companies - such as National Theatre, Unicorn, Polka and many others - do not employ child actors. Instead they use adults as children which requires very specific acting skills. And that, of course, means training.

Enter a series of masterclasses under the umbrella title “Acting Like Children” coming up from Travelling Light, Polka Theatre and Action Transport Theatre. Led by theatre directors Kevin Dyer and Jonathan Lloyd and artistic producer Jude Merrill, the classes will explore why children are often so badly portrayed on stage and debate whether or not there is a secret which actors and directors are missing.

When I agreed to be a judge for Theatre Centre’s Brian Way Award 2011, I had no idea how hugely enjoyable it would turn out to be. I’m put in mind of Noel Coward’s comment that “Work is more fun than fun.”

The award is for a new play for young audiences which has been professionally produced in the last year. I don’t know how many entries there were in all, but one of the scripts on my desk is numbered 52 so this is clearly quite a competition.

My job is to read and assess a shortlist of six:

• Scarecrow by Chris Cooper, produced by Theatre Powys
• The Day The Waters Came by Lisa Evans, produced by Theatre Centre
• Pondlife by Rob Evans, produced by Catherine Wheels
• Mish Gorecki Goes Missing by Skye Loneragan, produced by Tron Theatre
• Plum (and me, Will!) by Louise Osborn, produced by Sherman Cymru
• Ghost Boy by Keith Saha, produced by 20 Stories High

What a range. As a Theatre Centre spokesperson out it: “This year’s shortlist celebrates a truly diverse array of plays for younger years and teens as well as playwrights and production companies from England, Wales and Scotland.”

I have just finished the first read of all six - with great pleasure - and made copious notes. Now I begin my second read in the hope of whittling down my choices - although it’s going to be very difficult because every one of them is a fine play. And they are all very different. How do you say whether an apple is better than a banana or an orange better than either of them? Each is delicious in its own way.

The winner will be chosen by a panel of six judges: Chris Taylor (Director of New Writing South), Laurence Wilson (winner of TC Brian Way Award 2010), Rachel De-Lahay (writer and winner of Alfred Fagon Award 2010), Tony Clark (writer/director) and me. The judges’ meeting is on 11 April and the results are to be announced on Thursday 14 April 2011 at the Shoreditch Town Hall where the winner will be presented with a cheque for £6000. The ceremony will also include TC Adrienne Benham Award 2011, a prize celebrating new writing talent for Young Audiences.

I’m really pleased to be part of something which promotes and celebrates high quality theatre for teenagers and children.

On Friday I had the pleasure of seeing Musical Theatre Academy’s revue, Something Old Something New, at the Drill Hall. And ‘pleasure’ really is the operative word. The standard achieved by these students is nothing short of extraordinary and I speak as someone who sees an awful lot of student shows and showcases - many of them by famous and long-established drama schools.

The show was designed to showcase the second year students who graduate this summer at the end of an intensive, accelerated eight-term course with very little time off. It also introduced the first year students who are just 19 weeks into their training - and it was good to see (and hear) in the audience some of the students who have places to start in September.

I’ve been reading the programme for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival which runs from May 6-21. They have some really good educative/developmental stuff planned for children as well as plenty of high quality theatre, dance, music and film.

Graeae, for example, are there with their version of Ted Hughes’s The Iron Man. So is Professor Bumm’s Story Machine which I have seen in action and warmly recommend for intelligent silliness - and entertaining theatre. Theatre Tineola is at Norwich Puppet Theatre with Round the World in a Tea Kettle and Scottish Opera is offering BabyO, a thirty minute show for audiences aged 6-18 months (and their carers, of course).

But what really caught my eye was something rather different: The Children’s Choice Awards. This is a show, as it were, produced by Mammalian Diving Reflex (MDR), a “research-art atelier” founded in 1993. Last year it was at NNF with its Haircuts by Children project.

When you hear and write about as many training institutions, old and new, as I do you quickly realise that the vast majority - for obvious reasons - are in London or city centres. How refreshing, therefore to find a new one opening this September in the heart of the Peak District at Belper in Derbyshire.

Vanessa Millar School of Dancing has existed for 50 years but has only recently moved into very professional new premises in Belper. Now it is planning to expand from part-time to full-time by launching a new three-year vocational performing arts course.

Derek Hartley has been recruited to take on the task of building “a place of excellence” at Peak Performing Arts College and he has agreed to become the college’s patron as well as its principal teacher. Hartley’s 30 years’ experience in the performing arts extends to every area of the business, as a choreographer, director, producer and teacher of long-standing. He has worked in all of the UK’s major dance colleges as well as in Europe and America and has performed alongside some of the biggest names in dance.

All teachers are hand-picked by Hartley and student applicants are promised that not only will teachers be well qualified, but will also be “still active in the industry as performers.”

The three-year, 31 week course runs from September to July and is timetabled 5 days a week in terms of approximately 10 weeks. At least five classes a day are offered.

As well as in depth training in dance, singing and acting, Peak Performing Arts College will teach health and safety and contextual studies to ensure that its students know how to make themselves employable and to run their lives in a business-like way.

If you are 16-25 looking for full-time training, but not wanting to spend your learning years in a big city, this could be worth checking out. Audition days are 27 March, 10 April and 01 May. Phone 01773 823309 for more information.

Remember, though, that you won’t have the access to the wide range of theatre and other performance venues which is one of the advantages most valued by big-city trainees. Bear in mind, too, that enrolling with a new college is always an act of faith because it has no track record or former students for you to refer to. On the other hand it’s an exciting prospect to be in on the beginning of something which may turn out to be good.

Interesting and imaginative things are going on at Central School of Speech and Drama. Two outreach initiatives strike me as particularly thoughtful. Both are designed to help meet the special needs of minority groups.

First, Central has been awarded funding to teach young offenders communication and presentation skills. For this group, getting work is the single greatest factor likely to reduce reoffending rates according to the National Strategy for the Management of Offenders. Central, therefore, aims to use its expertise in speech and actor training techniques to empower these youths to secure employment.

In exactly the same way that Lenny Henry’s pigmentation means that he can overtly make fun of, for example, black workmen and the late great Dave Allen could be scurrilous about Roman Catholics because he was an insider, so I am allowed to be rude - or at least truthful - about teachers. I am (or was) one of them.

Teachers, especially if they work in primary schools (although it applies to secondary colleagues too) tend to be very insular. Many of them get locked into their enclosed primary school world and are not good at raising their eyes to the horizon. And that damages education because it limits it. In short, the children and their learning would probably benefit if more of their teachers got out more often.

So let’s hope this forthcoming opportunity for teachers to learn more about the education and learning on offer from London theatres and productions attracts the full complement of primary and secondary teachers - it’s after school from 5.00-7.00 so getting leave from the classroom and ‘cover’ having to be paid for is not an issue.

When Sam Wanamaker embarked on his famous Globe project on Bankside he had an office in a weary old warehouse he had purchased in Park Street. Visionary as he was, I doubt that he foresaw that one day - in 2011, in fact - that same building and the one next door, into which Wanamaker built an illegal connecting door, would one day open as the shiny, state-of-the-art studios for education projects and rehearsal.

The Sackler Studios, on which Shakespeare’s Globe has been able to buy the freehold thanks to generous support from the Dr Mortimer and Thereas Sackler Foundation, is just round the corner from the Globe itself. Beautifully finished in honey coloured wood it still smelled of paint when I saw it last week.

I’m sitting in a Croydon pub with an animated group who all work in schools. Some are, or have been, teachers. Others have a technical background. What they all have in common is that they are involved with the theatre - whether it’s purpose built or a traditional school hall with a few add-ons - in their schools.

This is the lunch break at the School Theatres Support Group AGM and annual conference and we shall shortly be returning to nearby Trinity School for the afternoon session.

STSG was founded in 2005 by Paul Durose, senior theatre technician at Leys School Cambridge, and others because many theatre technicians and managers work almost alone in a range of jobs and there was a feeling that they needed a shared forum.

“Our main purpose is to discuss ways in which we can better serve the students we work with,” said Durose. STSG, which costs only £5 to belong to, has a website and publishes two newsletters a year. It also runs training courses for its members.

At present there are 99 members - which is not all that many considering there are several hundred independent schools and 4,000 or so maintained sector secondaries. Many independent schools have theatres and an increasing number of state secondaries - especially newly built academies - also do.

‘We’d very much like more people to join us,’ said committee member Hannah Grace, who manages the theatre at Felsted School in Essex.

After the STSG AGM discussion focused on how members might develop a STSG “reward scheme” for students, to credit and encourage work backstage. Paul Haynes, who works at Sir James Smith’s Community School in Cornwall, introduced the principle of the scheme and asked various members to present existing schemes which currently operate in their schools.

Haynes showed us a formal qualification scheme from the National Council for Further Education. After discussion, it was generally agreed that this was an ideal route for those with the appropriate ability and support to go down, but less useful at an extra‐ curricular level for staff with less formal contact time with the students.