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