I followed with interest the blogging of Jane Fonda earlier this year. She was rehearsing and appearing in 33 Variations on Broadway at the time. She wrote a post To Read or Not to Read – the reviews, that is – and it emerged that she was advised be her friend, fellow actor Christine Lahti not to read them, at least until after the season was over. The post and the comments make for good reading – as does the whole blog of the process. She wrote
This will be hard for me. My curiousity may get the better of me. Yet I can imagine that if a reviewer really likes or really hates something I do, it has the potential to change my performance a little. Something to think about between now and a week from now. I’ll let you know what I decide…maybe.
She turned out to be as good as her word, and read them when the show closed.
I thought it was time to see what the general consensus is, so here’s a poll which we’ll keep open for a couple of weeks. Have your say!
September has been a terrific month for theatre in Queensland. The biggest story was the Brisbane Festival with a wide array of local, national and international acts in town. Then there was the Under the Radar Festival of fringe theatre – both put a spring in the step of Queensland in the south-east. Closer to home, we launched Greenroom here on 1 September, and since then we’ve been thrilled at the welcoming response. It proves to us the interest in and the need for a niche spot to focus on the work being done by professional and independent companies in Queensland. We pull in reviews, interviews and commentary in the one spot. Suddenly though … it’s October.
Image @BrisbaneGirl
Wikipedia says October is actually the eighth month of the year in the old Roman calendar. It’s also breast-cancer awareness month – who could miss Brisbane’s Story Bridge lit up pretty in pink? Thanks to @BrisbaneGirl who was en route to the theatre when she snapped this image from a CityCat on the Brisbane River – great way to get there, and no parking worries!
October is also young adolescents’ month; popcorn popping month (really); orange month in Sweden (look it up yourself), Black Cat month (Halloween I suppose), and Women’s Small Business Workplace Politics Awareness Month (you didn’t know about that now, did you?).
In the Australian theatre world, October sits in the middle of a 3-month launch season for the coming year. From late September through early November you can log on to websites and see what will be coming to theatres near you in 2010. Smart brochures begin plopping into mailboxes around the place, and casual subscription sales staff swell the ranks of the employed around the country.
Apart from launches, October is still a pretty busy time on the theatre calendar. Queensland Theatre Company celebrated the start of its 40th anniversary year on 1st October, the date of its first production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun with a reception hosted by the Governor of Queensland. Both the Under the Radar Festival and the Brisbane Festival finish on October 3, while former Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company Robyn Nevin continues her fine, fine performance in Cate Blanchett‘s production of The Year of Magical Thinking for the Company at QPAC until 17th. Don’t miss this one.
There are more season openings throughout the month: The Crucible (Queensland Theatre Company); Lazarus Won’t Get Out of Bed (AS Theatre); Cats (Empire Theatres); Les Liaisons Dangereuses (THAT Production Company); As You Like It (QSE) … to name a few. Check the season dates and times by mousing over the calendar on Greenroom. You can also subscribe to add what’s on and coming up to your desktop calendar or phone.
Applications for La Boite Theatre‘s innovative Indie 010 project will open on Monday October 5, the same day that Queensland Theatre Company launches its 2010 season. La Boite will launch its season early in November, and there are lots of people keen to hear what AD David Berthold has in store for the new-look La Boite.
Epilogue:
Don’t forget, if your group wants to send in details of an upcoming production, an audition, or a launch, please contact us and we’ll do our best to assist. And if you would like coverage of a production or would like to talk to us about your company, we’d love to hear from you. This site is about helping the professional and independent theatre community, and enhancing the work being done throughout the state. The image on this page is a screen-grab of our ‘poster wall’ on Greenroom right now. It features companies and organisations with links to their home pages. If you’d like to be added, send us your group’s logo and we’ll add it to the wall.
Do you have a Twitter account? You should! If you do, don’t forget to following us @greenroomQ for wider coverage of your work. Remember Twitter gets the word out beyond the closed walls of Facebook – great as FB is!
National tour of ‘The Kursk’ by Sasha Janowicz Dir: Michael Futcher. Matrix Theatre and Critical Stages at La Boite Theatre Brisbane, September 1-12, 2009.
612 ABC Brisbane: Nigel Munro-Wallis “…a strong, riveting story – the type of drama that will have you thinking long after you have left the theatre. Director Michael Futcher has again proved himself to be a talent of national significance in his re-designing of the piece. It loses none of its suffocating impact in the larger venue – probably due to the physical closeness of the audience on three sides of the action. If you missed it last time then make sure you catch it during its current season at the Roundhouse. You’ll be glad you did. Five Stars.”
Time Off: “The Kursk is as much the story of loved ones watching and waiting with the rest of the world. Adding to the mounting tension, thanks to brilliant sound and lighting design, there are some truly heart stopping moments.”
Curtain Up: Brisbane Theatre Reviews: ” … an excellent script which translates to a compelling theatre piece in the docudrama style.”
Other Reviews and Interviews (interstate and international)
Sydney Morning Herald: ” A shipshape staging, but this drama about the doomed Russian submarine takes water.”
Time Out Sydney: ” … strong stagecraft in a production very much worth catching at Darlinghurst Theatre before its short run is up.”
Canberra Times: ” intensely moving and riveting production … a powerful theatrical experience that reminds us that we all share a common humanity and a duty to act. Janowicz’s poetic homage to the dead and prophetic plea to the living closes with Chekhov’s ‘We should bury the dead and mend the living.’ This outstanding production of Janowicz’s finely acted work reminds us that there is much to mend before yet another lesson in history remains unlearnt.”
RT Moscow: Submarine Tragedy Remembered Across the World
The Moscow News: Australian playwright Sasha Janowicz told the wire service that it took him seven years and two trips to Russia to carefully study the tragic events and write the play.
Suddenly it’s apparent how much performing arts touring is being done throughout Australia. Not that we haven’t always had small and large companies on the road most of the time since white settlement – well, maybe a little after white settlement – but it’s really, really visible right now. Continue reading “A Commonwealth of Theatres”
UPDATE – this is an out of the archive post reworked a year or so on. If you’re a regular here or to my other blog Groundling, from which this is taken, you may have already read my rehearsal and performance posts for the Empire Theatre’s 2008 production of Cabaret directed by Lewis Jones. I played the role of Fraulein Schneider. You can find these posts elsewhere on the site. Just type ‘Cabaret’ in the search pane, and stand back. I’m revisiting some of my posts on actors’ process, which I hope you may find useful. This one looks at text analysis. As always, I would love your commentary.
Sunday’s rehearsals swung into a first shuffle-through of the play scene by scene. This was table talk about character, backstory, and relationships followed by a work through of a couple of scenes in which my character first appears.
First appearances are critical for character revelation. For a start, an audience starts to make up its mind about how it relates to a character. First appearances are also where a play’s obligatory exposition is revealed. A good play will give out the information on who, what, were, why and so on via character interaction and dialogue that hopefully doesn’t beat you over the head, as well as through other subtle clues in the script. These are things the actor needs to pick up and feed the character.
Text analysis for the actor is a bit like the forensic analysis of a crime scene. However, there is something you also need to bear in mind, and that is to balance what the character knows with what the actor knows … or as it’s often expressed, don’t play what’s on the ‘next page.’ I got a bit carried away myself today wondering how significant the first mention of Jewishness in the play would be to my character. Of course the audience is going to prick its collective ears at this point … ‘Uh oh, we’ve got an issue here that is going to come back later!!’ but the characters themselves are at this stage, blissfully ignorant of the fate in store.
This is what I like about these early turning over the text rehearsals … playing with possibilities and making choices, and seeing where they lead. It’s good to have a director like Lewis who allowed me to stumble my way around the set, getting its geography and furniture layout into my head, getting the feel of ownership that the character would have; it’s my house after all – it was once a large home and where I was born and where I grew up. Alas, nowadays it’s been converted into a boarding house. Yes, this was one of the creative choices I’ve made, along with what has brought Schneider to where she is right now … New Year’s Eve 1929.
I’m really going to enjoy the next phase of rehearsals, and it’s going to include something I’m not all that familiar with … making the transition in and out of a musical number. I’m sure it’s going to be all about finding the right energy level and bridging from speech to song, though handily all of my songs tend to do this with quite a bit of ‘spoken in rhythm’ appearing on the score. Although we are not singing within scenes yet, this finding the right heightened energy was something the director worked on quite a bit during the final run-throughs of the scenes this afternoon.
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