A Little bit of Honesty

I have been having some singing lessons. They are long overdue and my first step towards getting Daniella and her mojo back together.

I have written in the past about how important it is to keep honing your skills when you are a performer; singing lessons, dance class and theatre trips. In my silly world, I haven’t lived up to my own advice. I’d let my passion and drive dwindle so no wonder I’ve been a rudderless, miserable shadow of myself.

Well, I’ve had a good telling off/rude awakening whatever cliché you want to use here and I’m on the path to finding my own Act 2.

When you’ve been teaching for a while yourself, it’s really strange to be the student again. It’s like starting from scratch, realising that old habits were wrong and perhaps that’s why I hit a wall professionally. But how liberating to start again and learn new ways to do the thing that I love best. 

Yes, it’s hard but I have a great teacher and it feels invigorating to have a goal. Only today I saw an article in The Stage about actors needing to constantly re-train and re-hone theirskills. Becoming stagnant is the danger, not only as an actor but in life to. My wise old Dad says life is about always working towards a goal, if he was on that Jeremy Vine Radio 2 segment “What makes us human,” I suspect that this would be Dad’s definition. It seems a good one to live by.

Who knows if it will lead to auditions and being a working actress again, but I do know it is a step towards being the best that I can be again.

Why am I telling you all this? Is this over-sharing with the inter-web world? Well, yes, it is very personal to me but I feel like it might be relevant. A lovely tweeter contacted me this week saying that she enjoyed the honesty of my blogs – so what’s the point of only writing about the good stuff? That doesn’t always help and is the blog equivalent of all of those “nom nom my gorgeous meal, look at me and my perfect relationship and baby scan picture” facebook folk. Life is a yin and yang of good and bad and if this little bit of honesty can help someone, then great. There may be actors out there who are losing their confidence like I did, people who are unsure what to do and it may help to know that we all feel a bit crap from time to time. Just don’t let it go too far, don’t lose your mojo entirely – trust me, it’s scary. So go and try to do something positive, something small. Just re-address the balance of creativity in your life in whatever form that may take for you. What’s that phrase? Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves? Little steps folks, little steps!

I wish you all a happy day.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare - audiences and their theatre etiquette

“I spent most of my summer down at the beach,” said Sandy in Grease, but as for me? I went to the theatre.

I have ticked some theatrical greats off my ‘people that I love and want to see live’ bucket list. Antony Sher, Harriet Walter and Imelda Staunton have all stunned me, moved me to tears and demonstrated the utter brilliance of their craft.  It’s an incredible feeling to witness the power of human communication looking so effortless and yet being aware of the toil and skill involved. Money well spent, I say, and for a fraction of the cost for a ticket to Elf at The Dominion!

But something else struck me whilst I soaked up some summer culture – audiences have changed.

There doesn’t seem to be that same reverence or hushed respect from behind the fourth wall. The proscenium arch seems to have been mistaken for a TV screen with the audiences in their own living room. I’m going to sound like an old crone “it wasn’t like this in my day” but I have a lot of respect for old crones and ‘my day’ was only a few years ago so here comes the rant!

v  When the lights go down – Sssshhhh! “Who’s that then?” “What she say?” are things you may hear whispered in an auditorium, even my Grandpa decided to exclaim loudly that “they wouldn’t have had kettles like that!” during a performance of a World War 1 play but when it comes to general chit chat .....Ssssssshhh. This summer I was surrounded by theatre-goers discussing texts on their phones (there’s a whole other section for that gripe) discussing their snacks and just having general chats whilst the play was going on. In my book it is a travesty to chat while Imelda Staunton is singing the balls off of ‘Rose’s Turn’ – if your focus is not entirely on her then you shouldn’t be allowed in a theatre, any theatre - ever.

Imelda - there are no words 

v  It’s not a panto – Pantomime is brilliant; a fantastic way to introduce children to the theatre, they can shout, scream and dance as much as they like. I even love the drunken hen do dancing in the aisles that a Mamma Mia megamix creates, but it has a place. The people next to me at a performance of ‘Oliver’ at The Watermill, after shouting up to their friends in the balcony, decided to help the characters with their lines. I’m pretty sure that this uber-talented cast (nearly all playing 3 or more instruments live) had rehearsed enough to know the script and even though it’s a very famous story, I do not need to hear you warble “Moooooooore” before Bumble does and I certainly don’t need you to remind him that the law is “AN ASS!!” Well done for seeing the film but if you want to be in the play – get an agent and audition! (ps. You should add Cameron Blakely onto your own bucket lists – he was Fagin in this production and is a truly enigmatic and magnetic actor.)

 

Cameron Blakely is awesome. In everything!

v  Phones – We can see you! You face is illuminated by a blue glare and it pisses actors off. Benedict was onto you this summer with his eloquent stage door plea.  You are not in Avatar – stop giving yourself a blue face, the world won’t stop if you turn off your phone for a bit. There might even be something more stimulating happening on the stage.....

v  An ice-cream in the interval – that’s all!

I love the very English tradition of eating a local, over-priced ice cream with a tiny shovel whilst staunchly minding our seats from potential chancers. A treat in-between acts whilst the actors have a fag /wig change so we can chill out and read their biogs in the programme. But since when is it ok to have a meal.....during the show? It’s been this way in the cinema for a while now; smelly nachos and phallic fake meat in a bun to stink out the room. My late Nannie had to endure the munching of popcorn and wafts of nachos whilst watching me in a stadium in Europe. I have even heard an audience member open ‘the noisiest bag of crisps available to man’ as we sat on the barricades watching Eponine die in Les Mis - the lack of awareness was comical. But I resent sitting next to a rustling picnic of homemade sandwiches and fizzing bottles of pop whilst watching a play.

Should I blame Simon Cowell and Andrew Lloyd Webber? Have they brought the TV watching audience into theatres via reality casting? Do we blame social media for forcing us to tweet our opinions before the finale? Or is our fault for no longer wearing an evening gown for a night in the West End and instead trailing in with our shopping bags and collapsing into our £70 seat like it’s an armchair?

But wait, old crone. Shouldn’t I move with the times? The Donmar’s 2014 play, Privacy, asked audiences to actually use their phones as part of the production. Selfies were used to prove a point about our digital footprints – we are in the digital age after all why shouldn’t art tackle it? We are asked to tweet our reactions to help with the marketing of a show, heck, most productions don’t even use the proscenium arch anymore. We explore promenade theatre, we go to site-specific productions where we may be in a shop, a field or a restaurant; we are taking exciting theatrical risks.

Bravo!

And shouldn’t I just be pleased that people are leaving their lounges and going to the theatre? Anybody and everybody should keep attending and gaining from all the marvellous things that a live performance offers. I don’t want us to go back to an elitist age where people think that the theatre’s too posh for them but maybe we do need to brush up on our theatre etiquette, if only to show our respect to the actors beyond the footlights who are slogging their guts out.