Kate Foy – Page 27

24 May, 2008

A weary little groundling

The Groundling has been engaged on another blog with a 31-Day Challenge thingy. Groundlings should know better. Anyhow this has all been about being a better commenter on other people’s as well as your own blog. It’s been distracting me from the business of this blog for a lot of the time, but there have been benefits. I’ve met up with some new bloggers in my other blog‘s niche (e-learning), but more particularly, have discovered some good new theatre blogs to hang out in … and comment on.

I manage to travel overseas once a year and get to see some top theatre in London and at other times New York … wherever I find myself in fact. So I’m starting to nose out what’s playing in London, my destination in a month or so. I subscribe to the National Theatre’s e-newsletter and have all too frighteningly easily grabbed a couple of seats online already. I like the swish of turning up at the Box Office, rattling off a number, and picking up tix. Heck I just like hanging out at the NT watching the world go by from the security of a foyer seat and an overpriced glass of wine … well I do come from the lucky country when it comes to wine.

Anyhow, where I’m going with this post … I’ve stumbled over Phil and Andrew, a couple of lively lads who write West End Whingers, a very witty and irreverent review blog on current offerings in the West End. They act as a salutary antidote to some of the more serious takes in the Guardian on Theatre a subset of their Culture pages. The Guardian is one of my favourite mainstream sites for entertaining, well-written and diverse critical writing. The Guardian also maintains a meta-blog page here where you can fan out to theatre writing on other blogs.

This morning doing a hot-link shuffle from the Guardian’s page, I found Natasha Tripney’s Between Interval Drinks: London theatre both West End and Fringe, because a girl cannot live on gin alone. Aha! This sounded like me. As the name suggests, the blog features reviews of big-house as well as fringe productions currently on show in London, and all told with a very personal voice; her mother’s opinions on a show also appear from time to time. Now this I understand; mothers like 2-year olds have an uncanny way of asking the right sort of hard questions from time to time. I left a comment and will be back.

8 May, 2008

Back from a big dark room

That’s where I’ve been for a week or more … in the theatre sitting out front at the director’s desk. The Groundling apologises to readers for the long time between drinks; theatre has a habit of taking over your life when you’re in a production. Thus, an excuse for neglecting my scribbles here.

I’ve been working on a student production of The Rimers of Eldritch, Lanford Wilson‘s 1967 take on societal decay in a small American town. It’s about lots of other things too of course, and a fine vehicle for the actors and technical production students in the professional training course.

I took random pictures throughout the process of workshops, rehearsals, and then at a dress rehearsal. We open tonight and welcome the missing ingredient, the audience.

Here’s just a taste of what it looks like. Heigh ho, on to the show!

23 April, 200818 April, 2011

Happy 444th Will

Image via Wikipedia

The Groundling couldn’t let today go by without wishing William Shakespeare a happy 444th. There are celebrations this weekend in Stratford-on-Avon and at the Folger Library in Washington DC and elsewhere, when there will undoubtedly be a rush of tourists eager to engage in further bardolatry. In my own modest way I intend raising a glass of fine Australian wine in his memory this evening; something I suspect he would have approved. Maybe I’ll even recite a quick sonnet … number 14 perhaps?

To me, fair Friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters’ cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! Yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and my eye may be deceiv’d.
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred, –
Ere you were born, was beauty’s summer dead

OK, so it’s been longer, much longer than 3 years since I first laid eyes on Will’s works, but they seem as fresh and green now as ever.

I reckon my first experience was in Grade 9; back then you actually got to study Shakespeare … lots of Shakespeare … at quite a tender age. Indeed I think I recall reading snippets in my primary school readers, but perhaps I am mistaken. I fell in love at the age of 13 with his works … that year it was Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar, and in my senior high school years King Henry IV (I) and The Merchant of Venice. We got to read the plays out loud in class; it was the best time in the week for me. The love affair continues unabated.

I’ve acted in half a dozen or so of the plays, directed as many again, seen most of them, and many several times; travelled to Shakespeare Festivals world-wide … there are plenty more to see … and even started one in my home-town. I’ve been to Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, visited his burial place in the Stratford on Avon Church and noted the warning not to disturb his bones … OK. When I get to London, I love to walk round Southwark and visit Shakespeare’s Globe … yes, like Stratford-on-Avon it’s madly touristy but hey, seated on those bum-numbing oak benches at the Globe, squint through your eyes at the stage on dusk on a summer evening and it doesn’t take much imagination or effort to feel the power!

Am I bardophilic? … perhaps … but there’s nothing quite like even the most average Shakespeare play (or movie) and a few lines of a sonnet to get the actorly pulse racing or the audience fired up. A Shakespeare role challenges and rewards like no other.

I’m sure something he wrote in another sonnet about his work living on into time was a quite conscious bit of strutting on his own behalf, nicely couched of course in romantic praise of the one to whom the sonnets were penned … no don’t get started!

So long as men can breathe and eyes can see
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Happy Birthday Will!

20 April, 20085 May, 2014

Auf wiedersehen Cabaret …

Theatre is a cruel mistress sometimes, and never more so than when she breaks up a tight-knit ensemble at the final curtain. Many (like me) deal with this psychic termination, the ending of a beautiful relationship by treating fond farewells as lightly as possible … ‘No goodbyes … see you around.’ It’s easier that way. And so it was this evening as the last performance of Cabaret at the Empire Theatre finished the season.

It’s been a quite wonderful time for me personally, and I’d wager for the entire company. We gathered post-show to formally farewell the ensemble in the studio, the site of rehearsals and warmups and that first meet and greet 10 weeks ago. There is no doubt that this production was a success artistically; it was a fine production shaped by the chief creatives: director Lewis Jones, designer Greg Clarke, musical director Lorraine Fuller, and choreographer Alison Valette. As important as financial and artistic success however, was the opportunity the production gave to nurture and further the talents and aspirations of the young men and women who worked backstage, onstage and in the orchestra pit. This is where organisations like the Empire Theatre are worth their weight in gold; they are helping to build the city’s and the country’s cultural capital, and readying the next generation for leadership in the arts community.

The final performance was a matinee, and it was a joyous occasion on several levels. For us, it had the edge of our wanting to make it the best it could be for us and for our audience. Some audience members returned to experience the show for the final time, and were joined by many first timers, but as always, they bonded to became that unique living organism known as the audience. Ask any theatre actor and they’ll confirm that no two audiences are alike. Today’s were warm, responsive, and not afraid to let us know it. I felt a thrill when I heard a ‘wow’ at the end of my final song. An audience feels a good show in unison and the actors feel it in return. Our audience this afternoon sent us out in style. The rest of the formal disbanding is happening as I write … an after-party which I fore-went. I like to keep my memories … of the faces, the experience within the confines of the theatre space. But we’re scattered now.

So it’s time to pack up the program and clippings, the cards, to swap images on Flickr, to bask in the memories, maybe plan for next time but just get on with the other things we do in life.

Auf wiedersehen, a bientot, goodbye …

19 April, 200827 February, 2010

The Voice Warmup

This is the most popular post on Groundling. I continue to add to it with hotlinks and further comment on one of the more important skills for the actor – the voice warmup.

Scribbles to Myself (April 2008)

So the voice is on my mind right now, not only because of my own recent scare in the run up to performance, but also because I am currently working with a group of students on a production; I’m co-directing Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers of Eldritch with a group of actors in the second year of their professional training program. One of my briefs is also to teach them how to rehearse, to gear themselves up for the tasks of exploration in the rehearsal room, and then to take this work to performance before a live audience.

I found myself at yesterday’s rehearsal urging them to prep the head as well as the body for work. When energy is distracted e.g., stretching whilst chatting about last night’s party, the body is not being brought to the mind or the mind to the body. This is a phrase I really like from An Acrobat of the Heart by Stephen Wangh. Urging a focussed attention on self as part of the warmup forms part of my instruction on this most important part of the actor’s process. Getting from where you are to where you need to be is what the warmup is all about.

And the voice warmup? As a voice coach myself, I know how really vital this is, and my students tend to approach a warmup from this angle. The voice workout (a different beast altogether) and the warmup are taught as part of the actor training in our program, so they know what it is and why they do it, but customising the warmup for rehearsal and then performance has to be learned. Indeed, integrating a body, voice, mind warmup is the goal.

This is what I wrote some time back during another production.

The voice warmup
There can’t be too many actors who’ve trained during the past 30 or so years, who aren’t familiar with the warmup. It’s part of contemporary thinking about the nature of the actor as an ‘athlete of the heart’ with all the connotations of preparing to challenge the body, mind, and heart for the act of performance. For many actors, it would be impossible to imagine performing without going through a ritual that takes you ‘from where you are to where you need to be’ to work.

Watch a group of actors doing a warmup, and you’ll see a range of styles, from the energetic to the focussed and intense. There are some actors who love to warmup with the others in the company; other actors can’t abide being distracted from their own personal process. Horses for courses. What is common to all is the recognition that a different energy is needed to perform. There is a commitment to getting the body-mind out of the daily and into the extra-daily state of being, and ready to go.

What many actors in training don’t do however, is to prepare for a rehearsal or a class. And many don’t have a process to help deal with the particular task. A rehearsal on a scene is very different from a performance; a class is another beast altogether. A warmup for a rehearsal or a class should take no more than 10-15 minutes of focussed preparation. This is what you should do:

A quick diagnostic humming up and down the range and then on full breath to check for missing notes.

Stretching, check alignment and spinal rolls. Spinal rolls during the diagnostic are good.

Focus on the task to come and leave what’s outside, outside.

Free the lips, tongue, soft palate and yawn. Open up the channel.

Finish with some text based on the class or rehearsal.

Don’t warm up lying down.

Don’t chat with others warming up. This is work.