Shakespeare Festival

Last night we went to the - wait for it - Otago Regional Festival of the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival. Yeah, I know, quite a mouthful.

Basically it's the regional part of the finals that will take place in Wellington at the National Festival later this year. 48 of the young actors chosen to represent NZ then go on to work together for a week in the National Shakespeare Schools Production. I wrote about this last year, when the NSSP week was held in Dunedin. And then 24 of those actors are invited to go to the Globe in London for a two and a half week intensive course with actors, directors and back stage staff. They finish up doing a performance there.

I hadn't been to the regional festival before, and of course the standard varies quite a bit compared to the productions that are presented in the NSSP. The performances are either five minutes or fifteen minutes (roughly). The five minutes, I think (I missed out on getting a programme), are generally directed by the students themselves. The fifteen minute ones are directed by drama teachers in the schools.

As I say, I didn't have a programme, so I can't name names, but I wanted to make a few comments. Overall the standard was high, and there were some wonderful moments of pure theatre, and some laugh-out-loud moments. Shakespeare still cuts the mustard.

There were also scenes in which actors, having learned their lines, spoke them at such speed that not an actual word could be heard, or ranted them in such a way that the sense was lost. Part of the learning curve, I guess. Shakespeare just needs to be spoken; he does all the work for you. Speak it clearly and we'll all hear it and (mostly) understand it.

And some actors were on the move the whole time - I'm not going to focus on any particular performances in this regard, because too much movement is something the directors need to deal with. Actors can be just as intense standing still as moving. On the other hand, standing still in a line saying a couple of pages of dialogue is the other extreme, as happened in one piece.

But there were many wonderful things: the four boys doing the scene from Love's Labour's Lost, in the equivalent of a messy student flat. Hugely energetic (one lad leaping straight up into the air and into a large box; quite a gymnastic feat), and very entertaining. The French/English lesson from Henry V was done absolutely wonderfully, with the French being spoken as fluently by the two actresses as was the broken and battered English. And the young man playing Henry did a great job too. The background actors in this piece were also wonderfully on the mark, and the costumes and props were excellent.

The incredible fight scene from Romeo and Juliet, with Tybalt and Mercutio throwing each other off the stage onto the floor of the theatre, narrowly missing a chair that had already been tossed down there, and leaping up and down onto the stage again in the course of it.

A very much over the top performance of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream; it was almost too over the top but managed to maintain the balance. A good strong performance of the Brutus/Cassius scene from Julius Caesar. Quite a difficult piece to do without the context of the rest of the play.

An intriguing performance of a scene from The Tempest in which a very athletic-looking Prospero berated Ariel (continually bowing down and slithering around the stage; one time in which all the movement was justified). Prospero's make-up was crazy, and yet it worked.

These are the stand-out performances that come to mind immediately. I may remember more as the day goes on, in which case I'll add them into the post.

You can see some photos from last night's performances on the ODT website. 

Updating the list of plays

This is now being updated here. 

14th Feb 2015: This is yet another update to this list. It's easier to keep it in one place rather than blogging all over again...I've also included the authors of the plays, something that for some reason I failed to do previously. 

Back in October 2011 I listed out the plays I'd performed in this century. The ones I acted in before that were in the 60s, so I've pretty much forgotten the details, though I did have a couple of small roles in a curious comedy called Lady Precious Stream, which we performed at the Globe Theatre in Dunedin. I also had some roles in one act plays that we performed the British Drama League competitions.)  

Early 2012 was taken up with working on Grimhilda!, as a repetiteur (rehearsal pianist), occasional assistant conductor, general factotum. No acting, but plenty of associated work. After that a bit of a hiatus until Easter this year, when our church put on a play in celebration of Rosalie Macgeorge, the first Baptist missionary to leave New Zealand. She went to what is now Bangladesh, and only survived the climate and the diseases for four short years.

The following is a complete list of productions I've been involved in this century:

1.      Mr Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, [second production by Narnia Productions], 2004 (Teachers’ College auditorium) - Director (and scriptwriter): Erina Caradus

2.      Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Sept 2005 (Teachers’ College auditorium) - Director (and scriptwriter): Erina Caradus

3.      Mr Dussel in The Diary of Anne Frank (Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett), 2006 (The Playhouse) - Director: Liz Nisbet

4.      The Father in And Then They Came for Me (James Still), May 2008 (Globe  Theatre) [also co-directed with Carol Krueger]

5.      Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Sept 2008, (Mayfair Theatre) - Director (and scriptwriter): Erina Caradus

6.      Ormonroyd in When We Are Married (J B Priestley), May 2009, (Playhouse Theatre) - Director: Natalie Ellis

7.      Jacob Marley and Mr Fizziwigg in The Christmas Carol (adapted from Charles Dickens' story; dramatist unknown), Nov 2009 (Mayfair Theatre) - Director: Liz Nisbet

8.      Pianist/Composer for Love – or Nearest Offer (Hugh O'Brien), Apr 2010 (Playhouse Theatre) - Director: Natalie Ellis

9.      Rev Harry Harrington in Shadowlands (William Nicholson), May 2011, (Playhouse Theatre) - Director: Natalie Ellis

10.   Paravicini in The Mousetrap (Agatha Christie), October 2011 (Mayfair Theatre) - Director: Bert Nisbet

11.  Grimhilda! - general all-round dogsbody [Mike Crowl & Cherianne Parks/music by Mike Crowl] April-May 2012 (Mayfair Theatre) - Director: Bert Nisbet

12   Reverend Hinton - Harvest Field: the ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge (Greg Brook)- March 2013 (Otago Boys High School Auditorium) - Director: Greg Brook

13   Al Lewis in The Sunshine Boys (Neil Simon). The Playhouse, June 2013 - Director: Natalie Ellis

14.  Padre in Hamp (John Wilson) The Playhouse, August 2014 - Director: Bert Nisbet
15. Sir William Rollander in Verdict (Agatha Christie), The Playhouse, March 2015 - Director: Natalie Ellis

Sign and prophecy and Occupy

Protest is a form of prophecy, even when the protesters may have no religious or spiritual leanings.  It's a speaking to the society about some aspect of the community that is offensive.    
 

In the light of the Occupy protestings/prophecyings around the globe, and particularly in regard to the local one in Dunedin which for some reason has survived the trespass order set by the Mayor and Council (because the police, for some reason, have not enforced it) I found the following paragraph of interest.  

A sit-in or march is not instrumental but it is significant.  Even when no immediate change in the social order can be measured, even when persons and organizations have not yet been moved to take a different position, the efficacy of the deed is first of all its efficacy as sign.  Since we are not the lord of history there will be times when the only thing we can do is to speak and the only word we can speak is the word clothed in a deed, a word which can command attention from no one and which can coerce no one.  But even in this situation the word must be spoken in the deed in confidence that it is the Lord of history and His Holy Spirit, not our eloquence or artistic creativity, which will make of our sign a message.

John Howard Yoder
The Original Revolution

The Great Unspoken

What's the great unmentionable in human society? Sex, nah. Death, nah. These are both talked about everywhere. We just pretend they're not.
The great unmentionable is defecation, and its companion, urination. Okay, the second of those two occasionally gets a mention in public life, but the first is mostly viewed as something no one actually does.
Why am talking about this then? Because I've just seen a review of a book called The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. It's written by Rose George, and was published by Metropolitan Books, back in October this year.
More than 6 billion people have to deal with this (an anagram of shit, did you realise?) day in and day out, and in many parts of the world there just isn't the provision for it, which is why there's a great deal of disease, and so many deaths from diarrhea (I'm using the US spelling because I can never remember the English one.) According to the review (which is based on the book's stats), diarrhea kills a child every 15 seconds. Can this really be true? Perhaps it can, but it's certainly hard to comprehend.
The review, by Bill McKibben, on the Books & Culture site, is well worth reading (only a couple of pages.) It makes a book on a not-so-enticing subject enticing!

And Then They Came For Me - up and running!

I’ve been too busy to write in here for the last week, because the play we’ve been working on is now finally on, and there’s been the usual lead-up of extra rehearsals.

Last Saturday we had a really muddly rehearsal: people not available, or not turning up for nearly an hour or having to go early. The only thing achieved was a bit of tidying up of scenes with the people who did actually make it. So it was worthwhile, but not as good as it could have been. We went home earlier than intended as it was freezing cold, and one of the windows in the school assembly hall where we’ve been rehearsing wouldn’t shut.

Sunday I treated the Friends of the Opera Company to four of my piano pieces, including the world premiere of one: Arnold Schoenberg plays with his grandchildren. (Had to check beforehand that he might actually have had any grandchildren; seems likely!) The pieces were intermingled with a bunch of songs presented by my old friend, Arnold Bachop; Erin Pickering, one of the stalwarts of Opera Alive when it was functioning, and now a superbly accomplished singer, with great diction and tremendous tone. She lives and teaches in Invercargill these days, which is kind of a pity. (For Dunedinites, that is.) There were two other singers, Nicola Steel and a young lady whose first name is Sarah, but whose surname has decided to go AWOL on me. It was an excellent concert, in fact, which even the high-powered wind outside couldn’t undermine. (The winds over the weekend were hectic.)

Monday we finally got into the theatre – the Globe, famous for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is its dilapidated state, something I remember from when I first had contact with it in the 1960s! It was probably better in those days, but it’s always been a place where you know an amateur carpenter was seriously at work. The theatre itself has steps up beside the seats, but none of them seem regular, and they’re likely to send an unwitting customer flying. The place needs a good overhaul, but it’s probably not going to happen, even though there’s a good committee that’s turned it around from a dead duck to a thriving little theatre.

We’re not using any scenery, so the black drapes are all exposed to view: with their various little holes and tears.

Anyway, the drapes and other oddities were the least of our problems on Monday. We’ve been rehearsing with the video behind us since we first began using it, and this has been fine. However, when we got to the theatre we found that the video projector was set up at the front of the stage (people sitting in the front seats in the Globe have their feet on the stage) and that meant that no one could pass in front of the screen while anything was being played on it. We tried to show the picture from the reverse but the screen wasn’t suitable for this. In the end we did two run-throughs of the play (it’s only 70 minutes long); the first was a major struggle as we worked out how to play around the video instead of getting in its way, and the second, while better, was still unsatisfactory – although we could have coped.

We all went home despondent. And I had a horrible time about four in the morning when I woke up stressed and feeling quite ill with it.

However, the father of two of the girls in the show (he’s also the husband of the woman who directs the Narnia plays – the next one of which has a read-through this Sunday !) came to the rescue, and by the time we arrived on Tuesday, for our second lot of run-throughs, the screen had been replaced with a back-projection job, had been set further back (giving us more room –the stage at the Globe isn’t large at the best of times) and was functioning wonderfully. Oh, yes, that’s right – on the Monday we’d had no amplified sound either! No wonder stress came rushing in!

So our Tuesday night rehearsals were as good dress rehearsals should be: everything in place, and only minor things to sort out. I stopped trying to direct, and concentrated on just being in the play itself, and everyone else pulled out all the stops and got on with their parts and did extremely well.

Wednesday was our first performance, and it went like a dream. Everything flowed: the interleaving video was always in the right place, and the cast upped the ante considerably. Comments from the audience were all very positive. We’d got to the point where we didn’t have any sense of whether it was working or not – a not uncommon feature of theatre productions, I’ve found – and to hear that people were in tears at the end, and that it came across as a very emotional piece was music to our rather knocked-around souls. (It’s been a bit of a trial, this production!)

When we got to the end, where we each place a candle on the floor of the stage, in silence, while the music in the background is heartrending, you couldn’t hear a peep from the audience. Great stuff! The scene with the candles was something again that didn’t seem to have the stuff of great drama in it, yet it works. Thanks, Mr Still, we should never have doubted your play!

Two more performances this morning, for mostly school audiences, and four more over the next couple of days. I can’t say this has been my favourite play of all time, but I’m very glad to see that it’s proving its worth.

Incidentally, our producer (she who was the director before I got the job!) had contacted Eva Schloss, one of the two people who narrate throughout the play, on video. She emailed back to say she was pleased to hear about the play being produced in NZ. It’s the NZ premiere of the play, in fact.

The photo at the top is of Arnold Schoenberg, not Arnold Bachop, in case there's any confusion!