Archives: Theatre

Just before the end of the year, I headed up to Stafford to see one of my oldest friends in Panto. I have a real soft-spot for Panto; it’s silly, it’s fun and it’s the kind of show that can get a whole family cheering, booing and singing along with the broadest grins on their faces. And, as an ex-theatre man, anything that puts bums on seats is great by me.

For my overseas readers, Panto (or Pantomime, to give it its full title), is a peculiarly English tradition of theatre where the lead boy is usually played by a girl, the main comic character is a man in drag and the plot is usually taken from a fairy story, historical events or classic children’s tale. And yes, it’s for kids.

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I don’t want to pour more scorn on the much-derided Spider-man: The Musical, enough of that has been done by commentators and citizen reviewers across New York, the US and, increasingly, the world. I make no comment on its artistic merit; I’ve not seen it and therefore am in no position to judge.

I did, however, see a lesson for all artists and creatives in the development and re-development of the show following this piece in the New York Post this week. The key phrase for me:

[Phil] McKinley’s going to turn the show into a shorter, special-effects-driven family spectacle more suited to the world of Steve Wynn than Steve Sondheim.

Michael Riedel, nypost.com

For me, if you’re creating a musical from a comic book, the tone and the feel of the show needs to reflect that of the book itself. The same holds true for making movies and TV shows of comic books, too.  What I don’t understand about Spidey is why have a short, special-effects-driven family show is a change of direction – that’s exactly the sort of show it should have been in the first place.

As any social media and marketing expert will tell you, knowing your audience is key. And the audience for Spider-man: The Musical surely wants to see something breath-takingly spectacular with a simple, familiar storyline that they don’t have to concentrate on too much.  From the reports abounding on the ‘net, that’s not what they’ve got.

Knowing your audience and knowing exactly what it is you’re making is crucial to the artistic and commercial success of any artistic project. Even for little indies who don’t want to think about “commerce” and “business”1, it’s vital to understand who is going to consume your eventual product, even if they’re not paying for it.

What else would you want from a Broadway/West End show based on a comic book? I can’t think of anything other than good fun and spectacle. It’s the old K.I.S.S. message: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

1. as misguided as that is [↩]

The one upside of Willows going into rehearsals this week of all weeks (LIPA reading week, that is) is that I was still around to witness this year’s first Masterclass with the legendary Jonathan Pryce of Evita, Pirates of the Caribbean and Miss Saigon fame.

Once again revealing quite how aged I am in relation to the rest of the students at LIPA (or at least the majority), I first saw Jonathan Pryce when he played Fagin in Sam Mendes’ revival of Oliver! in the West End way back in 1994 when most of my classmates were learning to walk.

Thanks to the Pirates series, he’s now famous throughout the student body at LIPA and, since he’s literally just up the road (about 500 yards from LIPA) doing The Caretaker at the Everyman at the moment, he stopped in to talk to us all today.

He may have been nervous or just unsure at the start, as he was somewhat bland and struggling to relate to the audience to begin with, but as time went on he warmed up and became more and more ebullient and amusing with all of his anecdotes. Among my favourites:

• He turned down the opportunity of taking over from Michael Crawford in the title role of the original production of Phantom of the Opera
• He gave first jobs to both Julie Walters and Bill Nighy, recalling of Nighy’s audition that he thought we was either an absolute genius or absolute rubbish. He maintains (jokingly) it’s the latter.
• When he and Nighy were reunited on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Nighy performed in a lycra body suit with motion-capture markers all over his body and face. The sight made it impossible to get through an emotional scene without laughing, prompting the writer to approach Pryce and ask if everything was OK with the scene.
• He never actually read the entire script for Pirates and frequently only knew what was going on by asking Jack Davenport while the shots were being set up.
• When performing in the ill-fated National Theatre production of My Fair Lady, he remarked to one audience “This is you first Eliza, but it’s my second today and third in two days. If anyone would like to apply to play Eliza in this production, please contact Stage Door after the show.”

It’s amazing to be studying what I love in a place I can’t get enough of and to have the added bonus of people like this coming in to talk to us. After almost 2 hours at it, I think the entire audience of actors, dancers, technicians and managers left the room utterly inspired and energised.

Who’s next?

I say it begins, but for most of the backstage staff, it already has – weeks and weeks ago. But all too often in theatre the start of a production is marked by the start of the rehearsal process.

Like the dutiful techies we all are, foregoing our reading week to be here for the show, we trudged our way to the 4th floor of the main LIPA building and into the room which will house rehearsals for Wind in the Willows for the next 4 weeks before we hit the Paul McCartney Auditorium for a week of technical and dress rehearsals to realise the show everyone’s had in their heads since the first week of term.

Today was also the first time I’d had to see the model box, the small, scale model of what will eventually be realised on stage. I know this is a big show, but seeing the model box today really rammed home just how HUGE the whole thing is. The monstrous set takes up the entire PMA stage and a little bit more besides and there is an incredible amount of work for us lowly ASMs to do in keeping the show running with all the appropriate scene changes as the show goes on.

It’s both extraordinarily exciting and not a little bit daunting. I’ve never been an ASM before – I’ve stage managed, I’ve production managed, but so much of the success of the performance itself rests on the ASMs getting their cues right. Because an ASM missing a cue in the middle of a show is likely to cause one of the most obvious slip ups in the theatre. It’s possible to miss lighting and sound cues without people really being aware, but if the setting and props aren’t in the right place when they’re needed, the actors can look like a right bunch of muppets.

Am looking forward to it, though. I think it’s going to be a great show and a fun show to work on. So here’s to four weeks of running around Liverpool like a loony getting everything sorted and a final week of running around LIPA like a loony getting everything sorteder.

Deep breath!

Sorry for the delay in posting about the awesome Save Jess-tival on Friday night, but it’s been a hectic and exhausting last few days.

Friday was amazing. A stellar line up including headline turns from Natalie Imbruglia and Ed Byrne as well as the fabulous Yeah Yous and Laughter for Life favourite Glenn Wool who unfortunately suffered from some sound issues meaning his set didn’t go down as well as it might have.

The revelation of the day for me, though, was the two singer/songwriters I’d not heard perform before. Susanna Cork is undoubtedly on the verge of great things – she has an amazing voice that’s beyond anything I expected and is a supreme talent. I can’t wait to pick up her album when it comes out and believe me, I’ll be plugging it like mad on here as soon as it streets.

The other half of the amazement came at first-timer Mr Robin K. Already on his Twitter feed he’s been hailed as the next Tim Minchin and on this performance you can clearly see why. Witty, emotional and often hilarious songs coupled with a little stand up in between made for a truly surprise package. Considering this is his first gig and he’s only been writing since the summer, this guy is undoubtedly going just as far as Susanna, albeit in a slightly different direction. You can check him out here.

The day itself was utterly exhausting. I was up at 8.30am to be at the venue for 10am and I worked through with various members of my team to 1am without a break. The crew who came in with their lighting rig and sound systems were brilliant, working far beyond their working time regs should have allowed them and never complaining or kicking up a fuss, just quietly getting things together to make it all happen.

Most importantly of all, our Jess was there throughout and thoroughly enjoyed it by all accounts, even allowing for the minor hiccup in the cab on the way home.

It was great to be working on something like this again, though, as something along the lines of a production/stage manager. It’s been a lot of work over the last 2 weeks, but really worth it for the buzz of pulling off such a massive gig with such big names.

Now it’s onwards and upwards, although downwards on the stage management ladder to ASM Wind in the Willows, which goes into rehearsals next Monday and promises to be challenging on lots of different levels. Can’t wait.

Right, first off I should offer my apologies for my mini (or maxi) rant in my last post. I really was annoyed though. For the record – if anyone from the STUDENT LOANS COMPANY or SLC happens to be reading this – I still don’t have the stuff I need to be able to square away my loans and actually get some money. Thanks to to lovely Bank of Mum & Dad, however, I’ve been able to settle myself with a computer in my room to allow me to actually, you know, work. That loan’s being called in as soon as the real one comes through.

But let’s move on as that’s not what you want to read/hear about anyway, is it? You want to hear about LIPA and – specifically – how awesome it is. And boy is it.

I’ve now been living in Liverpool for 16 days, which already feels like months. I know Liverpool pretty well now, although I’m still finding decent little short-cuts and cut-throughs to get me places even quicker. I’ve got my walk to uni down to a steady 15 minutes at a sensible pace and I can find just about every shop I want to or need to in town now, too. I’ve also learned that I’m never going to have a problem finding a Tesco. There’s at least 5 within a 15 minute walk of me, either at LIPA or my apartment.

The course is brilliant – a great mix of general knowledge technical and design stuff and more detailed, specific tasks. It is hard work though. All our days begin at 9.30am – because that’s the time professional theatre workers come in, usually – and if we have all day lectures, as I now do on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, we are timetabled to be there until between 4.30 (usually) and 7pm (on occasion).

In addition to the timetabled stuff I already have 5 assignments from my 6 modules, the first of which is due in just three weeks and happens to be the very, very hardest of them all. It’s called the Slice of LIPA project and it’s part of our design and construction course. We all have to choose a part of LIPA to accurately recreate in a 1:25 scale model.

I’ve chosen this area, the entrance to the Institute’s studio theatre venue in the atrium:

The Sennheiser Studio Theatre at LIPA

I have to say I thought it was a good compromise between tricky detailing and large sections of block colour, but as I began to measure for and – on Tuesday – to make the model, I discovered I was wrong. Apart from anything else I spent nearly 2 hours on Tuesday morning measuring out, cutting and carving all 12 individual paving slabs, after my initial plan to make it work, well, didn’t.

Across the other modules I’ve also been on a tour of the whole theatre, including the grid – the part of a theatre where all the wires holding up the flying scenery are gathered and other technical stuff happens that I either don’t know or is too complicated to get into here (mostly the former, granted). From the grid you can also get to the roof, which is where this photo is from:

The sunset over Liverpool from the LIPA roof

Not bad for a view, eh?

I have also started a stage management module, a lighting and electrics module, a context and professional development combined module and a fundamental skills module. These include climbing ladders, health & safety, soldering, reading scripts, breaking scripts down, knowing what DMX means and a variety of other things.

And on top of all this academicness (which may or may not be a real word), I’ve also been assigned my first show as an ASM (Assistant Stage Manager – get used to the abbreviation because I’m not clarifying it every time I write it on here!). I’m going to be working on the first big show of the year in the Paul McCartney Auditorium, which is to be Wind in the Willows. And when I say big, I mean big with a capital “B”. And, from the model box I saw yesterday, with a capital “I” and “G” too, I suspect.

In fact, I must excuse myself from this missive to go and wade my way through the script again and then tackle the 18 page (yes, EIGHTEEN page) props list. Wish me luck.

After the whirlwind Thursday last week where everything fell into place for my next 3 years of life in a matter of hours, the repercussions hit hard over the weekend.

First off, I wanted to make sure I’d spoken to all the people that matter before plastering the news all over my Facebook and Twitter pages, so I spent a couple of days chasing down all the people who would be directly affected by the decision, including TJ, my wonderful boss at the Grove who helped me enormously by giving me my first job post-transplant with the Youth Theatre there. I also spoke to PC, the YT leader at the Grove, and to a couple of my friends, including a very close friend whose wedding I will now miss as it falls in the middle of my first week at LIPA.

I think what shocked me the most was that not one person sounded let down, disappointed or upset by it at all. The response was uniformly and heart-warmingly brilliant – everyone was so excited that I’ve finally got this chance. As soon as I’d announced it on Facebook I was inundated with messages of support and congratulations and people wishing me well.

Right now I’m more excited than a child on the first Christmas Eve they fully understand the implications of the following day – I’m absolutely loopy about it all. I do, however, have an awful lot to do.

In our wisdom, K and I decided at the start of summer that we needed a really special holiday away to celebrate our new freedom, so we booked ourselves 2 weeks in Hawaii – a truly dream holiday to spend time together, chilling out and relaxing.

Neither of us can wait, but we leave on the 1st September and return on the afternoon of the 13th. I then have to be at LIPA for 9am on the 14th, which is to say the least a bit of a rush. My first day is now no doubt going to pass in a haze of jet-lag and exhaustion, I just hope I can manage to hold some form of conversation with the people I meet.

What it also means is that I have to have everything sorted for uni by the time we leave for Hawaii giving me precisely 12 days from the day I was accepted to square everything from accommodation to finance away. That’s now just 8 days. When we went on holiday to the Caribbean when I was younger, we used to be told numerous times how they consider that “rushing is what mats are made from”. This week I’ve discovered and will no doubt have drummed into me that the same rule does not apply to the UK – and especially not to country-fleeing uni students.

Things keep getting better and better at the moment – I love my life!

Today I was back in the director’s chair for the first time in…well…a long time. And I’ve got to tell you – it’s a fantastic feeling.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently wondering if I really am following the path I want to follow – I’ve been out of the loop so long and become so distant from the dreams I used to have that I find myself wondering if I’ve changed since my transplant and if I’m chasing the dreams of the old me.

I can say with absolute certainty today that I am 100% on the road I want to be on. As I stood in the rehearsal room running through the Snippets scene for the MKT writers’ group showcase on Monday night, working, re-working, talking to the actors, polishing and finessing the piece I was in my element. All of the feelings that rumbled away within me about what I like doing, where my strengths lie, how I approach things came flooding back to me in the briefest of two-hour rehearsals.

I want more than ever to follow my dreams and to chase them down until I catch them at a run. I promised myself before my transplant when I was sitting at home on my sofa day-in, day-out that I would never let myself have just “a job” and that I’d always do something I love and am passionate about. I feel more strongly about that now than ever. Watch out world – here I come!

I was up middlingly-early this morning to drop K at the station to go in for an exam – she’s all done with lectures for the year now, just exams and assignments left – then home to go through the minor email backlog that I’ve built up over the last two days.

That cleared, I jump in the car and head to Toddington to the house of one of the writers whose pieces I’m directing for the MKT Snippets showcase. We’d planned a read-through so we can all meet – KH (the writer), myself and the cast – and go through the script to polish it up. I was a little concerned about some of the dialogue but actually most of it read fine and the bits that didn’t KH was really open to changing and adapting into the right language for the characters as the actors felt it.

Lots of valuable work on one script done, I came home to try to collar the cast for the second piece, to discover that one of them had pulled out and the other we STILL hadn’t heard from. The last remaining cast member has been absolutely awesome in trying to find us replacements, but it’s not easy at such short notice. Here’s hoping.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spending tidying up the application and cracking on with the rewrites. I finished the major load of script work by the early evening, had a break for dinner and chill time, then went back in to redrafting one of my shorts and polishing another pair of scripts.

It was another late night/early morning finish, but I’m really happy with where I’ve got the scripts to. The short – the ambitious project I was talking about having written a couple of weeks ago – will need a further tweak for dialogue and authenticity, but I’m really excited by the whole thing now. I’ve got lost of projects which are really getting my creative juices flowing at the moment and it feels fantastic – I suddenly feel like I know what I’m doing and precisely where I want to go rather than sitting feeling open to all possibilities. I still want to work in multiple mediums, but I know what I want to do within them now, rather than having aspirations all over the place.

Now I just need to apply myself and push forward to get myself where I want to go. To borrow from a friend, “Onwards and upwards!”

Crazy-busy day today. After the late finish last night, I was up at 7am this morning with just about enough wakefulness to throw myself in the shower, down some breakfast and jump in the car to get to the Royal for 8.30.

Once there I ran through the video cues with the DSM and made sure they all worked, inserting a few extra elements as we came across things that didn’t quite follow. Then the cast arrived and we set to work on a full technical run through, where I found myself doing my usual tech work of running around like a madman sorting all the extra little bits and bobs to make things work nicely and seamlessly.

Come 1pm we broke for lunch and I left the Theatre, heading back home with enough time to grab a sarnie before jumping back in the car and heading to the Grove for the first Youth Theatre session of the new term.

With the two Grove workshops dispatched and a couple of minor incidents dealt with, I was back at the wheel and headed North as quickly as legally possible (and possibly a little quicker) to get back to the Royal for the 8pm curtain-up on the first performance of Vikings and Darwin.

It went fantastically well, especially considering I’d not been there for the dress and the immediate audience reaction was brilliant, as was the feedback from the party of suits from the National. They came to see the show a few weeks ago in a scratch performance to judge whether it could go to play the festival at the National (sadly deciding “no” the following week), but commented on just how far the show had come.

I escaped the Royal around 9.30pm and was back home within the hour, with about enough time to chill out with K for a while in front of Hell’s Kitchen, to which she’s become addicted and I’ve found myself being drawn into as well. After that, it was an early(ish) bed for another early start in the morning.