The Italia Conti School of Theatre Arts presented Men Should Weep by Ena Lemont Steward in the Chelsea Theatre this week. A dark, yet at times comical, play about poverty in Glasgow in the 1930s depression.  I wanted to quickly mention this play put on by my third years, because it is truly excellent. Especially the lead, Maggie, played by Sarah Languish Smith, was exceptional. She truly ‘lived’ in the play, natural and completely (at the risk of sounding actorish) in the moment, she kept the outside world at bay with her reality. This plays, although 3 hours long, whizzed by and was a joy to watch. I made me proud to be at Italia Conti.

Another poem that I liked that we are working on in Voice class.

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry.
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

More singing exercises:

On Italian vowels:
a = ah
i = ee
e = ay
o = oh (as in cold)
u = oo

Head Voice (Only up to E sharp)
123212321 888888888 7654321
/ on kiu / on lu

1 3 5 3 1 (melt onto the ah sound)
zzza o u o a
Chest Voice

5555 54321 (on gang that sounds like gong)

1 1 1 1 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1
vvvi vi vi vi vi o i o i o i o i <- try any of the vowels

I had my third singing lesson with my new tutor, Brenda, today. And, as usual, it was fab! I’m gonna post a review of the exercises and notes and stuff, mainly for my personal use because I keep misplacing my notes.

Warm up:
1 3 5 8 8 8 8 5 3 1  on Ga (dark ah as in father, not as in apple)

SungA/ HungA  on a single note (resonate in the post nasal cavity, lift soft palate. Think tennis ball in your mouth. Again dark ah, NO H’s, dive into the throat. Don’t stop the voice, stop the breath.) Start on a A flat (all chest voice)

12345432  x3 with pause _1

13243542  x3 with pause _1

15453525 x3 with pause _1

The purpose of the last three exercises are to keep your larynx level while jumping notes.

I got my first repertoire piece today. It’s an Italian piece by Alessandro Scarlatti called ‘O cessate di piagarmi‘ which roughly translates to O relent, no more torment me. In it I beg my tormentor to let me die. Lol, kinda moody but very beautiful.

We have two more weeks to bring together our Solo Story Project. For our Solo Story we each have to pick a story from our lives that caused a life changing moment and find a creative way to tell it in about 5 to 7 minutes. Here is my story:

“I was 16 the first time my parents let me roam around Amsterdam all by myself. It was a beautiful crisp spring day, sunny, blue skies spotted with a few fluffy clouds. I was making my way through De Dam, Amsterdam’s central plaza. There was a cheerful atmosphere as a few people wandered in and about the shops, cafes, and the large monument that dominated the plaza. I was walking towards one of the side streets and I noticed a yellow cab parked in front of a diamond shop.
A man in a long tweed coat and brown fedora stepped out of the back seat. Wisps of graying hair stuck out from under his hat, and his rugged face was covered by a graying beard. He was a tall man, with a confidence that only comes from power. Out from the other side of the cab stepped a stunning woman, obviously at least 20 years his junior. She had a head full of dark curls and was dressed fashionably in a fur lined jacket, suede skirt and heels.
Then time slowed as I saw the man freeze. The metallic glint of a silencer gleamed as it pressed against the powerful man’s forehead. The shinny tube was attached to the black matte of a Glock, which was firmly clasped in the hands of a killer.
Dressed in the cliche black trench coat and cap, he didn’t waver or flinch as he pulled the trigger. With a soft pop the back of the mans head exploded, spattering the ground with skull and gray matter. Lifeless, he fell over like timber.
As an after thought the killer aimed the gun at the woman, let loose another shot and ran as she crumpled to the ground.
Time stopped completely as the woman looked up, blue eyes wide with shock, face half red with the blood from where the bullet had grazed her skull, and she saw her dead companion. She reached for him.
I will forever remember this picture, from the dust filtering through the sunlight to the strangled sound that escaped her throat.
I remember that, at that moment, I wanted the killer, the threat, to die. Because of this, I know I would kill to survive. I still get flashes of fear if I walk through a plaza with a large monument in it.
The powerful man was a druglord visiting from Bulgaria. What if the killer isn’t so different from me? “

I think that the creative storytelling part with come with some props. I’m going to try and see if I can use the gun from the props closet, and throroughout the story slowly turn into the killer by putting on a black trench coat, cap and then bust out the gun at the end.

For our scene study project this term we are working through scenes from After Miss Julie by Patrick Mauber (author of Closer and Dealer’s Choice). A rewrite of Strinberg’s Miss Julie,  and relocated from 1888 to 1945, Mauber’s After Miss Julie, like the original is about sexual power struggle played out between Miss Jullie, daughter to the Master of the house, and the chauffer/valet, John. Set on the night after the British Labor Party had their landslide victory, this piece touches on sex, class, politics and more.

I was a little dissapointed to find out that in the scenes I got I was playing Christine, John’s long term, sort-of fiance. A cook in Miss Julie’s household, Christine is the moral touchstone of the story. Compared to the wild Miss Julie, I thought Christine would be a piece of cake, but the more work I put in, the more of a person Christine becomes and I can see that it’s no small task. It really brought home for me that I should not dismiss a part because I do not find it particularly exciting. It is up to me to make it so.

One of the big projects this term is a cut down version, about an hour and forty minutes, of Anton Chekovs The Cherry Orchard.

Synopsis: After five years abroad Madame Luyba Ravneskaya returns to her family estate, only to find that it is up for auction due to her large amount of debt. There she reunites with her daughters, Anya and Varya, her brother, Gayev, and family friend Lopakhin. Lopakhin, the son of a peasant of the estate, worked his way to riches. He continuously tries to rescue her throughout the play and gives her a way to make money and preserve some of her land. However it means cutting down the cherry orchard and her old home, in which the play is set. Frozen by her emotional connection to the only place where she has actually ever been happy, the death of her son, and by her own sins, she does nothing. Auction day comes and Lopakhin outbids the competition and buys the Ravneskaya estate. The ending scene is the family and servants saying good bye to their home as they get ready to leave for the train. They do so to the sound of the orchard being cut down.

Debated to be both a tragedy and a comedy, this show is often said to be one where ‘nothing’ happens. The focus of the play is in the subtext, which is rich and full of emotional depth. This is a brilliant play on which one should practice any scripting tecniques, because the moment you look past the words there is a mine full of gold nuggets to plunder and one quickly becomes engrossed in the absolute humanity of the relations. Also there is a very intersting parallel between the characters and the socio-political scene of the turn of the 20th century Russia, where the status of the aristocracy and the now ex-serfs were changing drastically.

I am playing Luyba Ravneskaya. Described by wikipedia as

“Ranyevskaya is the linchpin around which the characters revolve. A commanding and popular figure, she represents the pride of the old aristocracy, now fallen on hard times. Her confused feelings of love for her old home, and sorrow at the scene of her son’s death, give her an emotional depth that keeps her from devolving into a mere aristocratic grotesque. Most of her humor comes from her inability to understand financial or business matters.”