What's black and white and read all over?

Me! First reading organised on foreign territory: tick! Today's reading was one of the main events I've been tasked with here in London and (thanks to the support of my lovely colleagues) it went off without a hitch. Hurrah!

Over the course of yesterday and most of today, fourteen actors worked with the director and writer to bring the script to life. Watching this process has renewed my appreciation of the craft of acting. When I had read the script to myself, the version that played out in my head didn't have anywhere near the depth and range that these actors brought to the text. The ensemble of actors were extremely professional and focused and by this afternoon were able to practically perform the play for an audience of producers, directors and venue programmers.

There were drinks and nibbles afterwards and the cast seemed really pleased with the result. As one actress put it: they'd really made it 'sparkle'. I think a lot of credit for this should go to the casting director (another craft I have a new respect for!) who picked actors who could believably deliver the 'ye aulde English' dialogue but bring a freshness and, well, sexiness frankly. A bit of a Baz Luhrman meets R+J ... but without the screaming down the telephone (oh, did I slip that one in? hey it's my party and I'll blog if I want to).

I am conscious of my previous entry where I wondered at the usefulness of readings in giving useful feedback. And certainly for the financial investment these events require, you'd sure as eggs want feedback! After this afternoon's experience I think that at the very least it's possible to get a reading on the room (today's audience seemed engaged for the duration - might have had something to do with the handsome bugger reading the lead role though...). I'm sure that the senior staff at my company will get more detailed feedback in one-to-one chats over the next few days.

As I heard said many times since I've been here, if there were a magic formula for knowing what will work in theatre, we'd all be rich. Ultimately it just comes down to instinct. Hearing the script read was a very illuminating experience. I think I'll let it settle over the next couple of days and see what I make of it then... in case anyone is interested in my honest feedback!

Period Piece(s)

The Robbers: a show that gives more than it takes

After all my whinging, last night I had the best night in fringe theatre in two months sitting in one of the plush cinema seats at the New Diorama Theatre. This new adaptation of 18^th century German playwright The Robbers by Daniel Millar and Mark Leipacher was big, sexy and sophisticated (I honestly didn’t mean to make it sound like Sophia Loren – maybe their own adjectives are better: fierce fast and furious). I wish I knew more people in London so I could recommend they go see it as unfortunately the audience was a bit small last night. I wonder if it’s just an urban myth that audience numbers need to equal ‘the cast size plus one’ before a show can go ahead? My UK colleagues have never heard of such a rule so maybe I made it up…

The Glass Menagerie at the Young Vic was also excellent. Despite the auditorium being a strangely large cavernous space (imagine Belvoir with five times the ceiling height and a balcony), everyone in the room was completely involved in the action on stage. I’m guessing that if the performance was any less engaging, it would be very easy for a show to fall flat in that venue.

Anyhoo… I don’t intend to turn this blog into a theatre reviews site. There are enough people writing their own online already and frankly, apart from the company, who really wants to hear someone else’s opinion? Unless you get some sort of sick pleasure in seeing other people’s hard work getting picked to pieces, in which case you should subscribe to a site like The West End Whingers. Like I do.

Speaking of giving and taking away, I’ve recently learned that cuts to arts funding have meant that every organisation - from the National Theatre down – is required to apply for their funding as if for the first time. Basically everyone has until March 2011 to justify their existence and will know by September what their financial future will look like. I guess it never hurts for organisations – especially those that have been around for a while – to re-examine themselves and look for new directions to grow or collaborate. What's the expression? Adapt or die? This time next year the UK arts scene could look very different!

Two months, more than twenty shows - and counting!!

To celebrate surviving two months in London, I've put together a list of the performances I've seen since I arrived. Hurrah!


Here they are... more or less in order of appearance:


Lovesong – The Albany, Deptford
A Disappearing Number - The Novello Theatre
Beautiful Burnout - York Hall, Bethnal Green
Reclining Nude in Black Stockings – The Arcola Theatre
Lovers' Walk - Southwark Playhouse
Breed – 503
Krapp's Last Tape - Duchess Theatre
Estate Walls – Oval House Theatre
Avenue Q - Wyndhams Theatre
The Drowsy Chaperone – Upstairs at the Gatehouse
The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain – The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
Theatre Souk – ex-Uzbekistan Airlines offices
Rum and Coca Cola – Greenwich Theatre
Nerve – Baron’s Court Theatre
La Soiree – South Bank Big Top
Harriet! (reading) – Soho Theatre
Gypsy – Kings Theatre, Glasgow
Saturn Returns –Finborough Theatre
LAMDA Duologues – Leicester Square Theatre
Celebrity Autobiography – Leicester Square Theatre
The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain – York Theatre Royal
Bright Star – Tabbard Theatre
There Will Be More – The Cock Tavern
The Glass Menagerie – The Young Vic


Phew! It's a tough job but someone's got to do it.

A kick in the pants for actor/producers

It's been a rough week theatre-wise: three strikes and I'm staying out of the fringe for a while. I thought I'd just mention two of the low points here as there are lessons that I think we can all take away with us.

Number 1. If you are a producer, do not star in your own show. At the limit, a director can star in their own show (perhaps another discussion for another time), but never a producer. You may as well just call the thing "My Life Starring Me" and be done with it. Personally I believe that the role of the producer should be a role apart. Quite often, especially on the fringe, you see actors or directors taking on the role of producer because either they believe they can, or because there's no one else around qualified to do it. With all the many definitions floating around about what a producer is, perhaps it is easier to work from the outside in by starting with what the role is not: it's not the thing to do if you want to get famous. It is a behind-the-scenes role keeping all the elements of the show in balance. You are the glue and glue is supposed to be invisible - especially on 19th century xiao dynasty vases.

Number 2. Seating in fringe venues is really uncomfortable. Last night I spent two long hours in the second back row with my knees at an angle so as not to annoy the woman sitting in front of my while the man behind me kicked me square in the bottom once every ten minutes or so (to his credit, he did apologise and look very embarrassed when the lights came up at the end and he realised what he thought was part of my seat was actually a part of me).

Now I am more than aware of the circumstances that lead to fringe audiences being made to sit on uncomfortable seats and I know that I'm guilty of subjecting audiences to them as well. All of the independent shows I've produced have been witnessed from a hard wooden bench covered only with a thin piece of foam. And then there's the other problem of climate control inside these tiny venues lit by stage lights. One of my stoic friends declared after sitting through one of my shows: 'we were sweating and fanning ourselves like the Polynesian women's church choir up there in the back row!'.

I think the first priority for fringe venues should be making sure their audiences are comfortable. It's probably in everyone's interest that they can take a drink in with them too. As a back-up, I'm also seriously considering including a 'cushion' line in future show budgets, though I'm sure other items will creep up past it on the list once the twinges in my back fade away. As a producer (the ones who aren't also acting in the show) is the one to spend the most time up in the bleachers, it pays to have some extra padding, a fan, and a song book at the ready.

The fourth show I saw this week was very good and I was very comfortable watching it! The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain toured to York and I was lucky enough to go backstage and to meet the company after the show.

Behind the scenes at the York Theatre Royal:
The Musketeers practice their  jousting

Note the plush red seats... mmm comfortable

York Theatre Royal

fly poo '

So on Wednesday night I got outdone by an apostrophe!

After confidently buying my £5 ticket to a preview of Saturn's Return at the Finborough Theatre, I set off for the theatre around two hours early ready to face whatever diversions the tube strike could throw at me.

... two hours later (actually it wasn't really that bad, some of the lines were back up and running a light service by the evening) I arrived at the Finborough Theatre in Earl's Court. As I walked down the street towards the popular pub theatre that was actually undergoing a huge refurbishment and was almost entirely covered in scaffolding, I was given warm handshakes and knowing smiles by the resident Aussies as they welcomed me 'home'.

The Finborough Theatre prides itself in programming new international work and so I was excited to be taking the opportunity to see Australian playwright Tommy Murphy's play that was commissioned by STC recently. It wasn't until I negotiated the scaff and climbed the narrow stairs to reach the box office and I was offered a program for Saturn Returns  by Noah someone or other that I realised my mistake! I stared at the program for a while and the woman behind the counter got a bit nervous I think!

Anyhoo, once I'd adjusted to the fact that I was in for a completely different evening to the one I was expecting, I settled in as well as I could on the unsympathetic bench seating to watch Saturn in the act of Coming Back. The play wasn't that bad though it was always going to struggle to get the casting right: the play calls for an actor who appears to be in his late eighties. Finding a good actor that age who is actually still acting and willing to work in a fringe production for little or no money would have to be quite a challenge! The actor they did find was passable but not believable enough to give the play real gravity. The actor who played the same character as a young man however had me close to tears!

So I'm still yet to see The Comeback for Saturn but I have learned an important lessons about the possessive, the consequences of wearing an Aussie flag bandanna in Earl's Court, and casting older actors in fringe theatre.

The End.

Read it and weep

Hi 'everyone',

Sorry for my long absence. Blame it on Richard Branson who had one of his umpalumpas cut the phone/interweb/TV cable to our house. If anything significant has happened on the telly in the last week, please post it here so I can get myself up to date! Apparently Americain won.

Last week I was lucky to have been invited along to a reading of a new musical at a theatre in Soho. I'm also going along to another tonight and organising a third for the company I'm working with.

A reading is a funny thing. They're certainly not for everyone - as I discovered today when an artistic director whom I had invited to the one I'm organising replied that he is 'rubbish at readings' and could he just have a copy of the script to read to himself.

The idea behind a reading of course is to hear the words of the play spoken as they were intended to be heard and not read. They are often 'moved' readings meaning that the actors are mostly on their feet, wearing an approximation of the costume the character would wear and brandishing a few props.

The usual practice for a reading seems to be that the actors are in the rehearsal room for around two days (at £50 per day) with the reading held at the end of the second day. The musical I heard on Friday afternoon however was the result of three years of workshopping and development and of course the actors had all those songs to learn and even a bit of choreo.

The aim of the reading is to engage others in the production and attract funding, or a co-producer, or both. They are also useful for the director and writer to receive feedback from the industry about the production before they have gone down the path of getting it to the stage.

At the end of Friday's reading I did wonder at exactly how effective readings are for the latter purpose. In general, people are either very shy about giving honest feedback (especially when it's negative) but worse than that, artists are very bad at asking for it. While I wouldn't say that the show I saw was a write-off, I did have what I felt would be some constructive criticism for the director. We had an opportunity to speak to the director in the mingling afterwards but the director seemed to be less about discussing the work and more about defending it. Indeed after three years of development she would have been quite attached to it!

While I'm sure that the director would have had a few wines with her close industry friends to hear their views, she's hardly benefiting from her investment in the reading by getting as wide a range of opinions as her future audiences will inevitably represent.

I vote in favour of readings as not only are they a fantastic networking opportunity, they bring the words on the page to life and give an overall impression of the work. I give an extra vote for readings that ply you with chocolates and champagne at the end! There just aren't enough of those.

I will let you know how tonight goes and of course how the reading I am organising fares.

It's been too long since I've last written so a few shows have gone under the bridge. La Soiree - a reincarnation of the show I saw at the Speigeltent in Sydney a few years ago - was excellent. The bar service was stupidly slow though so despite their being a very high ratio of bar attendants to audience members, it took me all interval to get served and I missed the first performance of the second act! Don't worry, the Bar Manager heard my constructive criticism and to his credit was very receptive to it.

Ciao for now! xx