July 2011 Archives

Interesting and innovative training work continues to go on at Almeida Theatre, although it’s a pity the Arts Council didn’t recognise it when it announced those cutting (literally in many cases) funding decisions in March.

Take, for example, Encourage the Others. Written by John Donnelly and directed by Lu Kemp, this 40-minute piece premieres this weekend (July 29-30) at the Almeida as part of the Young Friends Festival, a spin-off of the Almeida Festival.

When I was at East 15 for Oh What A Lovely War! a couple of weeks back I ran into Tony Graham, outgoing artistic director of Unicorn Theatre, and Rosamunde Hutt who has directed many shows there. I’ve been going regularly - usually with great pleasure - to shows at Unicorn Children’s Theatre and writing about them since it opened in its brand new Tooley Street venue in 2005.

But I was bit saddened to be profusely thanked for this support by Graham and Hutt, who informed me ruefully that few critics and journalists bother to go. And it’s true. I once saw Libby Purves of The Times there and, once on a different occasion, eminent freelance Michael Coveney. On yet another occasion I sat with Henry Hitchings of the Evening Standard at a small-scale event for a disabled audience, but the majority of major critics are conspicuous by their absence most of the time.

The honourable exception is Lyn Gardner, who writes for The Guardian and champions children’s theatre with enthusiasm — which means attending it, of course. Otherwise you might be forgiven for thinking that drama critics think work for children is beneath their notice. A reprehensible attitude in my view.

Interesting things are going on at the Lyric Hammersmith where education and training is likely to demonstrate a whole new way of working when the £13.5m building project (next door in King Street) is open and the new training theatre for young people is underway.

Meanwhile, for the first time, the youth company at the Lyric Hammersmith is collaborating with a local independent school, St Paul’s School (boys), to produce the musical Fame! next month. That is particularly good to see - and I hope it starts a new trend - because although independent schools, often mistakenly perceived as bastions of ‘right wing’ privilege, frequently do fine performing arts work, they tend to be somewhat cut off from other work for young people.

In the same way, few producing theatres and companies - often with politics of their own - have much to do with local fee-paying schools apart from taking their money when they want to come to the theatre.

This collaboration is, therefore, rather refreshing.

Wherever I go - from local part-time schools teaching tinies to teens to high vocational level training institutions - people are lamenting the shortage of boys and men who sign up for performing arts training in comparison with girls and women. Of course there are trend-buckers such as Spotlites in Chatham which is recruiting more boys than girls. But, Billy Elliot notwithstanding, the general trend is that interest is almost always female-weighted.

Could this, I wonder, be down to role modelling at the beginning? Most teachers of performing arts to children are women so there’s a tendency for boys to see the whole thing as ‘girly’.

The experience of Razzamataz Theatre Schools seems to prove my point. Although this franchise is highly successful, with more than 40 schools across the country, it has only just appointed its first male principal.

I’m at Blackheath Halls for the last performance of Eugene Onegin. It’s the annual community opera there (last year they did Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love). It was favourably reviewed for The Stage by my colleague, Graham Rogers, last week.

My interest - as well as enjoying a rousing performance - is in the enormous education benefit which this project packs in. The backbone is six professional soloists but Olga is sung (and extraordinarily well acted) by Katie Slater, who is still a student at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Simon Marsh, David Williams-Matthews and Panos Ntourntoufis, who all have solo roles, are Trinity Laban vocal students too. Then there’s the opera’s traditional ballet “interlude” performed by the Laban Youth Dance Company.

There are also the local primary and special schools involved in the project: Brooklands Primary School, Charlton School, Greenvale School and John Bull Primary School. At Sunday afternoon’s performance I saw the children were from John Bull and Greenvale. They work on “stage” - actually the body of the large hall with audience seated around the edge and the orchestra at one end - with the Blackheath Halls Opera Chorus.

Rehearsals for this year’s opera began on Monday 23 May when all the children from the four schools met and found out about the story, staging and who does what in mounting a production. They also listened to some of the music. Each school hosted further rehearsals before two rehearsals and a dress rehearsal at the Halls.

In parallel with all this Trinity Laban - of which Blackheath Halls is an “integral part” and “benefits greatly from its close association” according to General Manager, Keith Murray - ran its “Raising the Roof” project. That involved Year 8 pupils composing works inspired by Eugene Onegin and a lot of art and other work which is displayed around the foyers and other areas at Blackheath Halls.

What an experience for those youngsters, some of whom have learning difficulties. They are working on-stage alongside talented professional singers and dozens of “ordinary” adults who are role modelling the notion that opera and theatre making are fun and worthwhile - for everyone. They are also learning their way, from the inside, round one of the (underrated?) masterpieces of the artistic repertoire that’s much less well known to the general public than the great works of, say, Mozart or Verdi. Yet, Tchaikovsky was such a dramatic melodist - and not just in the ballets.

The children are not required in Act 3. To see them sitting - the Year 5 children on the floor and the special needs teenagers on chairs - totally engrossed moves me deeply. These are 9 and 10 year olds and they’re having a life changing experience. Who says opera is “too difficult” or “irrelevant” if you attend an inner city primary school or if you have special educational needs? Don’t EVER patronise or underestimate children.

I’m standing on a piece of Essex wasteland where, in the distance, the Last Post is being played by a lone brass player at dusk. It is almost unbearably poignant. Most of my fellow watchers/listeners shift instinctively and quietly to attention or something close to it. The 150 or so young men and women in front of us are dressed for 1917 or thereabouts — passion, loss, respect, grief, pain etched on every still face.

This is the very moving end of a three dimensional, highly immersive, open-air promenade performance of East 15 Acting School’s Oh, What a Lovely War! - its end of term show.

For nearly two hours we have been led round the campus by a suffragette and a foot soldier, both firmly in role throughout. We have taken part in a recruitment show, watched Haig in the war room ruthlessly sending millions to their deaths, been witness to two disturbing hospital scenes, been reduced to tears by the famous no man’s land partying at Christmas 1914, visited a French brothel, enjoyed a cabaret with undertones and stood behind a long sandbagged trench (dug by the students) in a field as dozens of men run ‘over the top’ to their deaths complete with hideous flashes and bangs. As we move from place to place we pass women hanging out washing, soldiers in training and others working hard to reconstruct events and life in 1914-18 as realistically as possible.

I left thinking, of course, about the sheer bloody (a literal adjective here) pointlessness of a war which cost so many lives and caused so much suffering - as the piece means you to do. I also found myself reflecting on theatre and realism and wondering just how far a director has to go to make the work convincing because this was certainly the most immersive theatrical experience I have had.

It seems to be the time of year when I get invited, end-of-termishly, to all sorts of different training-related performances and events - and I even manage to get to some of them. I have failed, however, to contrive any kind of artistic or journalistic link between the two things I want to tell you about here today. The only connection is that I happened to experience them on the same day.

On Wednesday, having blogged about its general principles a couple of weeks ago, I saw Katie Mitchell’s installation Five Truths at the V&A and it really does have to be seen and heard to be believed (or understood).

You stand in a black box shape surrounded by ten screens upon which Michelle Terry simultaneously performs Ophelia’s mad scene in five different styles: Stanislavski, Artaud, Brook, Brecht and Grotowski. It’s immersive and almost overpowering. Katie Mitchell has directed Terry with her characteristic attention to detail (see my interview with her in this week’s The Stage) to present how each of these directors would present the scene.

Quite an achievement, of course, because in her own work Mitchell is more deeply influenced by Stanislavsky than by anyone else. It must have been a considerable intellectual challenge to get deep into the mindset of a range of directors. V&A curator, Kate Bailey, tells me that all five films were shot in three intensive days which makes it all the more remarkable.

Last Sunday I had the enormous pleasure of attending a party at Sylvia Young Theatre School. After years in the cramped (but endearing in some ways) confines of an old school building in Rossmore Road, Young and her colleagues moved her highly successful eponymous school to its grand new home in Nutford Place last autumn. Sunday’s event was the official opening with a big crowd and ribbon cutting by Councillor Robert Davis, deputy leader of Westminster City Council.

Although I’d seen the new premises before (and have written about them here and elsewhere, as well as hosting a Stage Podcast from the new building) it was uplifting to see the place so busy, so vibrant and so full of bonhomie and supportive goodwill. There was a choir of SYTS younger children in the foyer to sing us in and, a bit later, we were entertained by a sparky mini-show based on medleys from musicals and performed by older children. Such energy, such commitment and such a high standard. No wonder there are SYTS kids in just about every London show which has children in the cast.

Training for the performing arts industries is a costly business - as you might just possibly have noticed. So I’m always glad when I spot any chance for students to get help.

Dorset School of Acting, whose one year full time course is a new venture starting this autumn, is offering one full and two half scholarships. The former is worth £6960 and the latter £3480 each. Everyone who applies will be considered for a scholarship based on his or her performance in the audition. And the school is still auditioning for next term’s intake.

The course, which promises high level, triple threat teaching, including plenty of exposure to current professionals, can lead to the Trinity College London Diploma in Speech and Drama at Associate level. At NQF Level 4 it is equivalent to the first year of a degree.

DSA’s founders are husband and wife team James Bowden and Laura Roxburgh who have a long string of stage and TV credits between them. Bowden teaches drama at Poole Grammar School and he and Roxburgh have been running youth theatre projects and part-time classes for children under the DSA banner for some years. It is the full-time course which is new.

The new course will be based at The Lighthouse arts centre in Poole which is being, Roxburgh tells me, “warmly supportive” of DSA.

Dorset is a beautiful county and a great deal cheaper to live in than London - yet, there’s plenty going on there. Bearing in mind that of the 9,000 people who apply to established drama schools every year only 1,000 get offers, DSA could be worth looking at if you’re keen to get a foot on the ladder. And there’s always a chance - if you’re talented enough - that you’ll be offered one of those scholarships.

For more information, contact the Dorset School of Acting on 01202 922675 or at www.dorsetschoolofacting.co.uk

Now here’s a useful new resource which could be just the ticket if you are studying or working on anything which needs access to, or information about, films and TV programmes of the past.

The British Film Institute has around 3,500 titles in its archives and collection. It has now produced a resource, The Performing Arts Catalogue, which documents the histories of dance, acting, theatre, music, performance art and oratory (from politics to poetry) using the BFI archive as its point of reference.

I must say it’s pretty impressive and - best news of all - free to download (as a 7MB PDF file). The Performing Arts on Film & Television Catalogue, to give it its full name, was commissioned by MI:LL (Moving Image: Legacy and Learning), an Arts Council England initiative to support projects and develop strategies that promote engagement with the arts through the moving image. They had programmers, curators, researchers, students, performers, practitioners, artists and film-makers in mind when they created it and, the spokesman tells me, it has already proved extremely useful to people working across the Arts. “So we are very keen to continue promoting it as widely as possible,” he said.

The eclectic archives include titles from the very beginnings of cinema (1895) through to recent film - so the resource is usefully comprehensive. Yet another example of the indispensability of technology to 21st century education.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting Birmingham School of Acting and I make no apologies for mentioning it here again.

While I was there I spoke briefly to Hannah Phillips, course director for BSA’s BA (Hons) in Community and Applied Theatre. I was especially interested in her work because, at the time, I was deep in researching the Community Theatre supplement for The Stage, which will publish next week (July 14).

At one point, when I was being shown round the building, I saw the students from this course, all costumed up and jokey in pink gauze and tinsel for final rehearsals and run-through of their 35-minute A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Well, the week-long community tour of that show happened last week and Phillips has sent me some of the feedback. And no wonder she’s proud of it.

Katie Mitchell, whom I interviewed last week for a forthcoming edition of The Stage, has directed her first video installation. You can see Five Truths in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Theatre and Performance Galleries from 12 July, if you missed it at Theatre de la Vie in Paris last month.

Mitchell, whose work is deeply influenced by late Stanislavski and other practitioners she studied in Eastern Europe in 1989, has directed actress Michelle Terry as Ophelia in the mad scene in the style of five practitioners: Stanislavski, Artaud, Brecht, Grotowski and Peter Brook. The idea is to explore how different practitioners represent truth through performance and it is, in part, intended to show students how the work of these famous names might look, sound and feel.

“It was a terrific way of harnessing creative energy,” Kate Bailey - V&A Curator, whose idea this project was - tells me. “It had such momentum and I suppose that’s how it is with theatre but it isn’t always easy to capture it in an exhibition.” She adds “It is, by definition, difficult to show the dynamic nature of performance even in theatre and performance galleries. That’s why I’m actually amazed that no one has done this before!”

On Tuesday I attended the press night for The Beggar’s Opera at Open Air Theatre Regents Park. Before the show started, the thing most on everyone’s mind was the weather, because London had been deluged by thunderstorms and hailstones all afternoon. However by some miracle — as so often at this venue — the rain held off throughout the performance, although it remained damp and chilly.

It’s odd really that such a famous piece isn’t, well, better known. Perhaps more people know of it and about it than know it. I was struck, for several reasons, with the thought that it would be a really good show for older children and young teenagers too.

First, John Gay’s 1728 masterpiece is a satire on fiddly, lengthy Italian opera, mostly with classical plots, which had just become fashionable. As Gilbert and Sullivan’s work 150 years later shows, getting familiar with approachable, enjoyable satire can be a neat way into studying the works which are being satirised.