A nifty line

Every so often, when you're writing, a line appears that comes so wonderfully formed, you think someone cleverer than you wrote it. In the first chapter of my next book, due to be published in November, there's this line:

He put a stopper in the top, and popped it in his upper pocket. 

It's a bit like a line from a poem, except that this is an ordinary prose story. I love the way the letter p appears all over the sentence, along with the letter t, and the rhythm of the words in the sentence.

Did I say what the name of the book is? Nope? It's The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret - a sequel of sorts. It's a sequel in the sense that it happens about a week after the first book in this series, Grimhilda!, but there are only two characters from the first book who make an appearance in the second. A couple of others are mentioned, but that's it. Almost an entirely new cast...!

Sitzprobe

Sitzprobe literally means a 'seated rehearsal' and it's a term used in opera and musical theatre to describe the time when the singers first get together with the orchestra, before a production is presented publicly.  The aim is for the two groups, the singers and the musicians, to put the music together. The equivalent Italian term is prova all'italiana, which sounds to me as though it should mean to test everything in Italian, but obviously doesn't. 


Tonight the cast and orchestra of Grimhilda! will hold their sitzprobe.  The use of the word has had most of the cast asking, What the heck is a sitzprobe? because I don't think it's a term usually used in amateur musical theatre circles.  Perhaps people doing amateur opera use it; I'm not sure. 


I'm familiar with it because in the days when I worked with opera singers, the term came up constantly, and the event itself was always interesting.  The singers would get all theatrical and start to show off, and the musicians would turn on their slightly superior looks and pretend that actors/singers and musicians should barely be allowed in the same room.  However, after the initial impact of having to sit down together and get the thing moving, they'd all become friendly and it would go swimmingly.  


Well, 'swimmingly' might be a bit optimistic: it would go fairly well, because the first meeting of the singers with the orchestra is always quite stressful for the singers.   They've been working for weeks with nothing but a piano, and suddenly all those sounds they've been used to have been transformed into sounds they aren't used to, and it's quite off-putting.   Nothing sounds right. 


Which is why we hold sitzprobes (I'm sure the German plural is something different, like sitzproben, or whatever, but I don't actually know).   Tonight is going to be interesting, to say the least!

mics and voices

One of the complications of putting on the musical, Grimhilda!, is how much use do we use mics?  Some of the cast will be fine without them, but we have two kids in the show each night, and sometimes they have to talk over music playing in the orchestra pit, and, of course, they'll be singing with the orchestra.   It seems logical to use mics for them.  But what about other members of the cast?  Mics are an expensive item in the budget and supplying them to everyone isn't going to be an option.  Which means that the man controlling the mics is going to have his work cut out balancing miked voices with unmiked ones.    It's going to be an interesting process.  

When you're rehearsing a show there always seem to be some members of the cast who are comfortable with using a stage voice even when in a smaller rehearsal room, and some people who find the size of the space inhibiting.  Once they're out in the theatre their voices bloom, and you can hear them easily wherever you are.  But in the rehearsal space you sometimes despair of hearing them at all anywhere else.

And it's easy for inexperienced cast members to forget that they're going to have to throw their voices further than a couple of metres once they go on stage.  I don't know why that should be, but it is the case.  I prefer to be using a stage voice (somewhat modified to the surroundings) from early on in the rehearsal process.  It makes the transition from rehearsal room to stage a much easier one.

Musicians for Grimhilda!

Now that we've mostly got our cast together - we're just waiting for two Bears to arrive (one is in the pipeline, hopefully) - we're beginning the search for musicians for our pit orchestra.

Please note, this isn't a paid gig.  Sorry, but our budget doesn't stretch to paying anyone....it's the way amateur theatre always used to be!   Performances dates: 27-29th April, and 3rd to 6th May.

We'll be looking for:

1 and 2 violins (minimum of two each)
viola(s)
cello
bass.

flute
clarinet
cor anglais (we may have this role filled, but it's not definite yet)

trumpet
horn
bass trombone (again, this position should already be filled)

two percussion players

piano (playing on a digital piano, as getting a piano into the Mayfair pit is a bit of a nightmare)
celesta (played on a digital keyboard) this is quite an important part in the score, so the percussion players won't be able to include it in their roles.


If you can fill any of these roles, or know someone who can, let me know.

Rehearsing The Mousetrap

Rehearsals for Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap continue apace...the two late additions to the cast (the young man who stepped in to take over the role of Sergeant Trotter - Sam Irwin - and myself - replacing an actor who fell ill) are making great strides at catching up with the rest of the actors, who've been rehearsing for five or six weeks. 

The cast have rehearsed in a variety of venues, and on Tuesday have their first night in the theatre for a technical rehearsal...the set is being built that day too, and painted, so it may be an interesting occasion for all concerned!

Today (Sunday) we had a photo shoot down at the Railway Station, using some of the ready-made 'sets', and wandered around in our costumes, which entertained - and bewildered - some of the tourists.  

Five more days to opening.   Phew!

A role in The Mousetrap

Well, the last couple of days have had added to them the need to learn lines for The Mousetrap, which opens around the 24th of this month (or 24th inst, as a character in the play would put it).   For those who haven't caught up with what's happened, a person had to drop out of the cast due to illness, just last weekend, and so I've taken over his (thankfully fairly small) role.   The character is Paravicini, who may or may not be a fraud, and who - as he hints more than once - isn't quite what he appears. 

To my amazement you can get a 52-page study guide to The Mousetrap.   Crikey...the script is only 69 pages long as it is!  Let's hope they don't give away the denouement - it's traditional to ask the audience before the play starts not to do so.   The study guide has things like Historical context, critical essays and overview, and much more.   Two interesting points from the historical context: Food is in such short supply in England that 53,000 horses were consumed for food in the previous year to feed a population that now exceeds fifty million people. And in London, a four-day smog kills more than four thousand people.

Makes you glad to be living in 2011, doesn't it?   The characters mention ration books in the play, and there are several other lines that have had to be elucidated for younger members of the cast - and such a discussion has reminded those who lived in the UK in the fifties of some of the privations they and their families went through. 

The other interesting thing about reading the script for the first time, is the way Christie's wit shines through it: the rather dour photo that appears of many of her book covers doesn't indicate just how much fun she can be as a writer (I've found one that shows her warmer side better).   Some of her books are more humorous than not, and certainly The Mousetrap has some very funny lines. 

History made: First read-through

Last night eight of us gathered together to do the first 'public' read-through of the musical my collaborator and I have been working on during this year. At this stage it was sans music, though there is some music actually written - in fact it was a bit odd for me going back to reading stuff as lines that will eventually be sung as lyrics.

I'd divvied up the parts between the eight of us, and some of the actors had a ball getting 'into character' - and gave the rest of us a laugh as well at this unexpected dimension to the reading. I was really chuffed at the way they all took it to heart and came out with unexpected nuances - and occasional misreadings that added to the humour. It's quite an achievement swapping from character to character (there are getting on for thirty speaking parts in the script, some big, some tiny - and of course many of them will be doubled up in the production, that is, two or three parts will be played by the same actor) but the cast did wonderfully, and seldom missed a beat.

I keep calling them the 'cast' - more than one of them enthused about getting on and rehearsing in the near future. Unfortunately, that's not quite going to happen: the music has to be completed yet, along with the instrumental scoring (worse, in a way: I've decided to change the instrumentation, which will mean further revising of the score - but it's necessary). We're looking at a possible production date in the first half of 2012.

Which seems a long way away. But one more step has been taken on the trip, and what's more, we now have several other enthusiasts involved, which is what the show will need if it's to really get off the ground.

One of these days it'll get a name, too!

Goodbye to Mr Still's play; hullo to Narnia again

The play is finished; one of the cast lost her voice because of a heavy cold early in the season and struggled to make herself heard during the rest of the performances; two more of us have succumbed to a similar bug, and apart from a nasty moment when the video froze at the Saturday matinee, things in general went fine.

I can’t say it’s my favourite play of all time – I think James Still doesn’t quite give the actors enough to work on in some scenes because of their brevity (the scenes, not the actors) – but it obviously works for the audiences. Every night there’d be snuffles and sobs, particularly in the scene at the end where all the cast light candles as a kind of memorial to the dead, and the unrelenting seriousness of the work plainly gets the message across.

As always we said goodbye to some people we’d got to know reasonably well during the last couple of months, and that’s one of the sad parts about doing plays with an ad hoc group. On the other hand, we had a read-through of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader today, and at least four of us from And Then They Came for Me are appearing in that as well. Some of us just don’t when to stop.

Another interesting aspect of the play we’ve just finished was that most of us are Christians, so every performance was preceded by a prayer in one of the dressing rooms. Another good way to knit people together!

The Cast

I’ve now found the programme for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and this is the cast.
Aaron Kelly – Egeus and Peter Quince.
Marcus Cooper – Demetrius and Starveling.
Katherine Bower – Helena and Snug and Cobweb.
Miranda Heath – Hippolyta and Titania
Dan Styles – Theseus and Oberon
Jamie Brown – Lysander and Flute and Mustardseed
Alice Brockway – Hermia and Snout and Peaseblossom
Daniel Creasey – Bottom
Zack Polanski – Philostrate and Puck.

Just thought I'd record them here, since their names don't appear on the website for Chapterhouse.