Stage Whispers July/August/September 2020 edition

In this issue

8

The 7 Stages Of Lockdown ........................................................................ 4 How theatres have engaged us during the pandemic Hamilton Leads Screen Bonanza .............................................................. 14 Will streamed theatre boost live audiences?

Ghosts Of Theatres Past .......................................................................... 17 The stories behind theatre superstitions Can Clean Theatres Save The Entertainment Industry? ............................. 20 How theatres will need to adapt to be safe and viable

10

14

Love In Lockdown ................................................................................... 22 Script excerpt from the iso TV rom-com starring Eddie Perfect & Lucy Durack Love At First Seat .................................................................................... 24 How musical theatre hooked two young performers for life Stephen Sewell’s Furies ........................................................................... 26 Celebrating the career of Australian playwright Stephen Sewell Performing Arts Course Guide 2021 ........................................................ 35 A survey of upcoming performing arts courses and training

44

21

52

66

63

2 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Courses Adapt In Horror Year.................................................................. 36 How performing arts training has adapted to an online environment

Regular Features Stage On Page

30

Stage On Disc

32

Theatre In Isolation

34

Choosing A Show

60

Reviews

63

Musical Spice

68

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Editorial Dear theatre-goers and theatre-doers, After the pandemic closed all our theatres, I was delighted by the often moving, sometimes funny, virtual cast re-union renditions of well-loved musical theatre hits in isolation. As the Zoom videos popped up daily on my Facebook feed, I shared them with my friends and Stage Whispers’ Facebook followers - poignant reminders of what we were all missing.

Maybe, though, I eventually got a bit Zoomed-out.

Meanwhile, generous theatre companies and organisations around the world have opened up their archives to provide free streaming of musicals and plays, of which I’ve enjoyed many. Sometimes, though, I’m all too aware of what I’m missing - that live interaction between the audience and the performers in a shared, darkened room.

Some of the online treats, though, have been unique beauties. The concert in isolation where a host of stars celebrated Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday was very special Michael Falzon. (it’s even better in the edited version, which is still streaming).

Photo: Kurt Sneddon.

Meanwhile, for fans of the Broadway-inspired TV series Smash (like me), the first TV screening of the cast re-union concert of Just as Stage Whispers was going to press the show’s fictional Marilyn Monroe musical Bombshell is a came the sad news of the death of Michael must-see (still available also).

Falzon, the music theatre star and producer.

Having missed the camaraderie of community theatre We mourn his passing at the age of 48 and rehearsals and performances, I’ve enjoyed myself as the send out love to his family and friends. We community reinvented itself on social media, connecting with share this tribute from his colleague James fellow performers and creatives well beyond the constraints of Millar who described Michael as a “sheer the Sydney Community Theatre scene. electric powerhouse delight. He was A particular Facebook haunt of mine has been ‘a group magnificent as a supporter; magnificent as a where we all pretend to be rehearsing for the same truth-teller; magnificent with advice; performance’ (facebook.com/groups/608602786419529). magnificent in song and on stage; and as a leader in crisis and in celebration.”

In less than a month the group has attracted a Vale Michael Falzon membership of around 20,000. With copious in-jokes, both true and fictitious, it’s often deliciously theatrically bitchy.

I was chuffed when over 350 people responded to my suggestion - “With the choreographer's resignation, we've decided to improvise the remaining dance routines.” Over 300 people came up with suggestions when I posted - “The organisers of the big annual community theatre awards night are considering introducing some new categories. Any suggestions?”

Things did start getting a bit contentious, though, when some were determined that the group should be more socially conscious, while others just wanted to have fun.

Of course, pretending will never match the joy of actually getting together creatively and rehearsing or performing. So, let’s hope we can find safe solutions soon.

Yours in Theatre,

Neil Litchfield Editor

CONNECT

Cover image: Threshold’s Mountain Goat Mountain - an audio-led theatre experience for families to do in their home together - is just one of the many ways audiences are being kept engaged during isolation. Read Beth Keehn’s comprehensive coverage on page 4. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 3

The 7 Stages Of Lockdown As this edition of Stage Whispers goes to press, we have experienced around 12 weeks of lockdown. ‘Pivot’ has become the new watchword. Beth Keehn looks at how theatres engaged us, step-by-step, to survive ‘7 stages of lockdown’. Audience members have their say, and artistic directors wonder if audience engagement will look different in a post-lockdown world.

4 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Stage 1: First Response

Kelton Pell and Amy Mathews in Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll.

Photo: Philip Gostelow.

Cover Story

When the lockdown was announced, the first actions were practical - change social plans, cancel tickets. Many chose to support the arts by refusing refunds and making donations. One subscriber, Lisa, gave Sydney Theatre Company (STC) top marks: After donating her tickets, she received a phone call from a cast member to say thanks.

Companies empathised with audiences too - offering tickets for free or ‘pay what you can’. Technology suddenly became the ticket to sneaking back in the backstage door.

Stage 2: Connect & Consume The team at Queensland Theatre (QT) summed it up best when they decreed: “We believe theatre should be open, even when it's closed.”

Well-resourced companies released taped shows from previous seasons. Opera Australia blasted into the digital sphere, releasing blockbuster broadcasts of three of its operas on Sydney Harbour, as well as treasures from past eras - featuring Dame Joan Sutherland. The Australian Ballet launched At Home with Ballet TV. The company is drip feeding the release of its productions, with Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake available for viewing until July 9. The Sydney Opera House has a weekly menu of music, cabaret and children’s theatre.

Audiences found a mini treasure trove at Australian Theatre Live, with a small number of filmed performances online for a fee (or free for a limited time). I’m surprised that more companies did not adopt this model and ‘sell tickets’ for their content on demand.

Some companies were able to make new content. For instance, Queensland Theatre introduced Quality Time with QT.

The company started monthly Play Club live-streamed play readings, showcasing Australian playwrights - ‘virtual campfires’ as Lee Lewis put it as she introduced The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table by Wesley Enoch, featuring Guy Simon, Ursula Yovich, Roxanne McDonald and Isaac Drandic. I tuned in for the full-length reading.

When I ‘virtually’ asked the cast if they missed the audience reaction - the response was a resounding ‘YES!’.

Online extras!

Kelton Pell reads from Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll. Scan or visit facebook.com/watch/?v=1483876615118395 The theatre-going ritual is a buzz. Some online events encouraged viewers to get dressed up and send a selfie.

Belvoir Street Theatre hosted Belvoir in Concert, their first-ever online performance over one weekend (May 22 24). It featured a ‘best of Belvoir’ playlist by cast members from Fangirls and Barbara and the Camp Dogs. But, true to a live gig, it was not taped for posterity.

Under the STC Virtual banner, the company presented a live reading of Dario Fo’s No Pay? No Way! with actors performing from their homes. Running longer than 2 hours, this was a bit of an endurance test, but featured delightful intermission songs from Charles Wu. Black Swan Theatre Company created Black Swan Home Theatre. To celebrate Ray Lawler’s 99th birthday on (Continued on page 6)

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 5

Cover Story Belvoir’s Barbara And The Camp Dogs.

Photo: Brett Boardman.

Online extras!

Watch selected video clips from Belvoir In Concert. Scan the QR code or visit belvoir.com.au/events/belvoir-in-concert Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) introduced MTC Now, chock full of online quizzes, with topics including May 23, they presented a one-night-only broadcast of Stage Adaptations, Australian Plays, Name the Director their 2018 production of the writer’s iconic Summer of and Songs on Stage. This welcome distraction was also a the Seventeenth Doll. The company is also creating timely reminder of our wealth of talent.

Unsung Heroes, stories by WA playwrights, presented free Looking for a fun way to stay in shape? Contemporary online as a series of pre-filmed monologues. circus C!RCA produced Don’t Don’t Try This At Home videos with simple acrobatic tricks - including juggling with apples, and the popular ‘back to bed’ flip. And Queensland Ballet put free dance classes online.

Fancy treading the boards? Courtesy of Zoom background downloads from Queensland Theatre you could be stage star for a day.

One of the best online family activities I saw was One friend singled out independent Red Line Mountain Goat Mountain, presented by Arts Centre Productions for their play readings of Orphans by Lyle Kessler and Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph Melbourne and Threshold. Their audio story used simple household props to create an adventure space ‘home on two nights in April and May. Unfortunately the live theatre experience’. Half an hour was the perfect length. events were not archived for future viewing.

My friend Teri agreed.

(Continued from page 5)

Attracting nearly 11,000 viewers, both in Australia and worldwide, Adelaide’s Windmill At Home - The Show As the reality of the lockdown landed, I wanted light Must Go On(line)! contains story reading, resources and relief. As one friend said: “There’s stuff I just can’t watch clips, including a free streaming of the film Girl Asleep. at the moment.” Friends with children were Zooming and “We’re working on some really exciting projects with looking for home activities. our artists, but we all belong in the theatre.” - Rosemary Myers, Artistic Director, Windmill Theatre Co.

Stage 3: Who’s Zooming Who?

6 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Naomi Price, producer of The Little Red Company’s The IsoLate Late Show.

Mountain Goat Mountain.

Online extras!

Discover Mountain Goat Mountain, an at-home theatre experience. https://youtu.be/fbaRyh3xkRg David Hare.

Photo: Connor Tomas O'Brien.

Perth’s Barking Gecko Theatre instigated Isolate>Create>Connect in partnership with Indian youth arts company ThinkArts to deliver a 10-week program of creative tasks for kids at home, documenting the global similarities and differences of the experience of COVID-19.

Online extras!

Stage 4: New Purpose-Built Variety

It takes more than a global pandemic to stop some performers - from week one, artists were busy creating new, digital-friendly entertainment.

Just 48 hours after lockdown, The Little Red Company produced their first IsoLate Late Show. Producer Naomi Price and her colleagues went on to create ten 90-minute episodes, spotlighting world-class local talent.

The Arts Centre Melbourne’s Big Night In with John Foreman has showcased some great Australian musical, cabaret and comedy talent alongside the 60-piece Aussie Pops Orchestra. It is an impressive night of traditional variety style entertainment which harks back to the Golden era of Australian television.

Curveball Creative formed during the lockdown. Their quest? To present Australia’s first online streamed musical that was broadcast 24-28 June - Who's Your Baghdaddy or How I Started the Iraq War by Marshall Paillet and AD Penedo.

(Continued on page 8)

Listen to MTC’s conversation with renowned UK playwright David Hare. https://bit.ly/2V2xW2v

Photo: Queensland Ballet.

Online extras!

Take a Queensland Ballet masterclass with Tonia Looker and Vito Bernasconi. https://youtu.be/pfuUuSKFauE www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 7

Cover Story Rodger Corser and Catherine Alcorn at The Reservoir Room.

Photo: Phil Erbacher.

Online extras!

Catch the best of Australian cabaret and live music every weekend. reservoirroom.com started a new podcast, Producing Heroes, which aired from June 10, featuring interviews with international In Sydney, Riverside Theatres has set up an impressive special guests. new live from the stage broadcast facility for its series Canberra’s The Street Theatre presented Conor Riverside Theatres Digital. It is presenting a pay per view McPherson’s St Nicholas online on June 5 - 7. The cabaret, comedy and song series, streamed to your home, monologue, with Craig Alexander as a jaded theatre critic, via a YouTube link on Sundays at 5pm. They have the was cinematic, with an edgy live soundtrack - a great edge of feeling “live” - because they are. example of what can be achieved in the digital space. It Across town an entirely new digital space has been could work equally well as an audio play. created inside the Paddington Town Hall. A 95 square Audio was the go for Minola Theatre, who repurposed metre green screen television studio has been converted their show Begotten as a radio play. The Queensland into a live performance studio called The Reservoir Room. Shakespeare Ensemble is following suit with an audio The first broadcast commenced with a drone aerial view version of Macbeth in the Dark scheduled for early of the Town Hall that spun around to the Sydney Harbour September.

Bridge. This is seriously good infrastructure that will create income for artists for years to come.

As restrictions eased, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) presented True North - streamed free from the Concert Hall (June 6), hosted by Amy Lehpamer, with performances by the state’s home-grown talent. It was Stage 5: Meet The Artists lovely to be back ‘inside’ a proper venue, without the New online avenues have helped us meet artists and distraction of people’s home decorations! welcome them into our homes. Opera Australia’s principal soprano Jane Ede got closer, performing in person for 20 residents (socially distanced on their balconies) at a retirement village in NSW in May. (Continued from page 7)

Adelaide Repertory Theatre’s dedicated volunteers are presenting virtual plays every month, premiering in June with Rattling the Keys by Adelaide playwright Zoe Muller, and ending in December with The Rivals by Richard Brindley Sheridan.

During isolation, C!RCA began developing five new shows. CEO and Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz also 8 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

STC Virtual engaged around 200,000 people with their online videos of artists performing their favourite scene or poem. While the audio quality was sometimes patchy, it was great to see talents like Shari Sebbens, Glace Chase and Mia Wasikowska. And, if you were feeling frustrated

Left: STCSA’s A View From The Bridge (2019).

Elena Carapetis narrates a scene from the production as part of Stay In With State.

Photo: Kate Pardey.

Right: Tim Minchin performing Hamlet for Sydney Theatre Company Virtual.

by unfulfilled ambitions, it was reassuring to find Hugo Weaving and Tim Minchin both lamenting that they ‘shall never play the Dane!’

Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre created its own TV studio for Ensemble Conversations with Artistic Director Mark Kilmurry. The series reached around 30,000 viewers, with interviews including Georgie Parker, Todd McKenney, Joanna Murray-Smith and Sydney Festival Artistic Director Wesley Enoch, who feels COVID-19 has forced us to focus on what is important - for him that means more local stories.

The STCSA’s Stay in with State program introduced Making A Scene blogs, and an all-too-brief Isolation Q&A where artists revealed how they were staying creative at home. Howie’s Album of the Week - a feature from the Head of Audio - was great, but how about an accompanying Spotify playlist?

Queensland Ballet launched 60 Dancers, 60 Stories: new works based on the theme of ‘Love’, releasing two videos every day during June.

(Continued on page 10)

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 9

Mashed Monologues.

Cover Story

Online extras!

Join Mark Kilmurry’s conversation with Georgie Parker. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/DOL4ZeSBrBU

Ensemble Theatre’s Artistic Director Mark Kilmurry.

Photo: Prudence Upton.

Closed doors didn’t stop Griffin Theatre Company’s Artistic Director, Declan Greene, from continuing to To support friends in the arts community, some premiere new Australian plays. With Google Creative Lab, groups swiftly mounted fundraisers. Audiences responded he created Griffin Lock-In - five nights of new theatre (2too. The IsoLate Late Show raised nearly $100,000.

25 April). Writers had one week to create work tailored to Mashed Theatre’s 24-hour streamed MONOLOGUElivestreaming. I caught Roshelle Fong’s Thirsty, a ‘techno ATHON featured 56 actors from more than 10 countries noir detective thriller’. While not perfect, the performance wrangling Shakespeare. More than 9,000 viewers tuned had interesting interactive moments, such as live audience in, raising nearly $6,000. Alas, as Prospero would say, responses determining script direction.

“These our actors...were all spirits, and are melted into State Theatre South Australia is planning a new online air...” However, you can still donate to your local Actors’ collaboration with ActNow Theatre - Decameron 2.0, a Benevolent Fund. version of the medieval plague-themed Decameron - 100 new monologues, broadcast as 30-minute videos over 10 weeks starting in July.

Stage 6: Reality Bites Once I worked through my initial shock and denial, I Stage 7: Business As (New Normal) Usual wanted to engage with the reality of this moment in our history. Fortunately, fleet-footed companies were creating The lockdown has been a time to reset and reflect new material. but also for new ideas to flourish. As we go to press, Malthouse Theatre in Victoria launched Lockdown restrictions are being lifted and we all hope the curtains Monologues - live online performances written by three will rise again soon. Will surviving this time take us into a Melbourne playwrights, based on their interviews with brighter and more connected future? ordinary Australians who had life-changing frontline contact with COVID-19. The first series of three monologues, directed by Bridget Balodis, ran for a bitesized 10 minutes each - perfect for beginning to confront the issues.

(Continued from page 9)

10 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Engaging Audiences During Lockdown Queensland Queensland Theatre

New South Wales Australian Theatre Live

Play Club bit.ly/3fQFWLH

Performance recording rentals antlive.com.au

Zoom Backgrounds queenslandtheatre.com.au/Zoom-Backgrounds

Free streaming for a limited time facebook.com/AusTheatreLive

Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC)

Australian Theatre for Young People

QPAC At Home qpac.com.au/the-creatory/qpac-at-home True North qpac.com.au/past-events/true-north

C!RCA

Producing Heroes: A podcast with Yaron Lifschitz circa.org.au/producing-heroes Don’t Don’t Try This At Home bit.ly/2VdBFdp Circa’s Carnival of the Animals: 2015 performance bit.ly/3eyAgWN

Camerata - Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra 5@5 With Camerata camerata.net.au/5at5

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Orchestra Over The Fence (and archive videos) youtube.com/QSOrchestra

Queensland Ballet

Online ballet classes queenslandballet.com.au/classes/dance-classes 60 Dancers 60 Stories queenslandballet.com.au/60-dancers-60-stories

Bangarra Aboriginal Dance

bangarra.com.au/performances/digital-streaming

The Little Red Company

The IsoLate Late Show thelittleredcompany.com/project/tils

Minola Theatre

Begotten: Radio Play minolatheatre.com.au/begotten

Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble

ATYP On Demand atypondemand.com.au

A-List Entertainment

Rent or buy live comedy performances alist.com.au

Ensemble Theatre

Ensemble Conversations ensemble.com.au/discover/ensemble-conversations

Sydney Theatre Company

STC Virtual sydneytheatre.com.au/stc-virtual

Sydney Opera House

Digital Season sydneyoperahouse.com/digital/season.html

Opera Australia

OA TV: Opera Australia on Demand tv.opera.org.au

Griffin Theatre Company

Griffin Lock-In griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/griffin-lock-in Roshelle Fong's Thirsty! youtu.be/c6yBevTwPGA

Red Line Productions

Red Line Presents... redlineproductions.com.au

Accessible Arts

Top 10 Tips for running accessible online events aarts.net.au/news/top-10-tips-for-running-accessible-online-events Arts, Disability and Technology - 17 June - Zoom aarts.net.au/whats-on/arts-disability-technology-atag-online-17-june

Riverside Theatres

Macbeth In The Dark qldshakespeare.org/macbeth-in-the-dark

Riverside Theatres Digital riversideparramatta.com.au/category/whats-on/riversidedigital

Australian Capital Territory Canberra Theatre Centre

Northern Territory Darwin Symphony Orchestra

A curated list of streaming options for theatre lovers bit.ly/2YqRTlL

Portraits III live-streamed concert youtu.be/C0F1oJ90y28

(Continued on page 12) www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 11

Cover Story

Online extras!

Get a 3-day rental of The Wharf Revue from Australian Theatre Live. vimeo.com/ondemand/thewharfrevue (Continued from page 11)

Sydney Theatre Company’s The Wharf Revue (2015).

Photo: Brett Boardman.

Yarra Valley Writers Festival

www.yarravalleywritersfestival.com/digital-program

South Australia State Theatre of South Australia

Malthouse Theatre

Stay In With State statetheatrecompany.com.au/stay-in-with-state

The Lockdown Monologues bit.ly/310MEuB

Decameron 2.0 statetheatrecompany.com.au/decameron-2-0

Time Out Melbourne

Adelaide Cabaret Festival

adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au

Windmill Theatre Company

Windmill At Home - The Show Must Go On(line)! windmill.org.au/at-home/welcome-to-windmill-at-home

Victoria Melbourne Theatre Company

MTC Now mtc.com.au/discover-more/mtc-now

Arts Centre Melbourne Together With You bit.ly/3hWdjPp

Big Night In with John Foreman bit.ly/2YjuqCO Mountain Goat Mountain bit.ly/2BseXHG

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra MSO Live on YouTube bit.ly/37Rvq4o

Wheeler Centre

We Are Nemeses: Talking Experimental Comedy bit.ly/312gI90 12 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Time In Awards timeout.com/melbourne/things-to-do/time-in-awards-the-winners

Western Australia Black Swan State Theatre Company Unsung Heroes bsstc.com.au/plays/unsung-heroes

Barking Gecko Theatre

Isolate > Create > Connect barkinggecko.com.au/isolate-create-connect

WA Youth Theatre Co

Loungeroom Project waytco.com/whats-on/loungeroom-project

West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) Inside Isolation - sounds and stories waso.com.au/sounds-stories/inside-isolation

WASO - Ensemble Editions - digital concert series bit.ly/3fM1FV6

New Zealand Auckland Theatre Company Chekov’s The Seagull bit.ly/3enywiT

Circa Theatre

It’s Behind You - Live-stream recording circa.co.nz/package/its-behind-you

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Hamilton Leads Screen Bonanza

There has never been more live theatre available on our screens. From July the world’s biggest musical Hamilton will stream on Disney+. Will the smorgasbord of live theatre available during the pandemic whet the appetite of theatregoers to return to live venues or encourage them to stay home? David Spicer investigates.

Disney originally slated October 2021 for the release but brought it forward due to the pandemic. This means Australian audiences will be able to see the whole musical, staged with the original Tony Award winning cast, eight months before its scheduled opening at the Sydney Lyric in March 2021, which is unprecedented.

This is a big test for the industry. Will it help generate a wider audience for the live presentation or cannibalize its source? Why pay $150 for a ticket when the whole family I went to extreme lengths to get a ticket to see the can watch it for a month’s Disney+ subscription at $6.99? original cast of Hamilton on stage. On a 2016 trip to New The scenario reminds me of the lyrics to the song York, my alarm went off at 3:45am and I walked the three “Video Killed the Radio Star” - ‘We can’t rewind, we’ve blocks from my hotel to the theatre. gone too far. Pictures came and broke your heart.’

Arriving at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in the middle of In general terms, having popular movie adaptations of winter at 4:10 am, I was sure that I would be first in line to musicals usually adds to their wide appeal and encourages claim a return ticket to the Wednesday matinee producers - large and small - to stage them. Think of performance. However, there were already two people Grease, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. However, lining up in front of me. these are movie adaptations of a musical, rather than live Eight hours later came my reward - into the foyer I broadcasts of a performance. arrived, snap frozen, for a front row seat to see the original Grant Dodwell, the founder of Australian Theatre Live, cast of the world’s most sought after musical. I was so believes that broadcasts boost ticket sales. close to the action that the spittle from the cast could “Some people may watch Hamilton on TV and say they almost shower me. have seen it. I suspect discerning members of the public The excitement when Lin-Manuel Miranda came out as would say, ‘I would not mind seeing it live. I got a great the lead character, Alexander Hamilton, was crackling. reaction watching it on my TV.’” Would I have woken up in the middle of the night to line The pioneer of broadcast drama is Britain’s National up to see a musical for $160US if I had known that if I Theatre. During the pandemic, its rich library of past waited four years I could watch the same production on broadcasts has been released every week for free. This has the couch? Likewise, will Australian audiences pay high entertained the world and greatly expanded global prices to see it live if they have already seen it on TV? That awareness of their brand. remains to be seen.

NT Live films are best viewed in a cinema, where audiences experience the grand scale of the productions.

14 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Top Live Musical Theatre Broadcasts

Peter Pinne runs through his favourite recent live musical theatre performance broadcasts.

NEWSIES - One of the best because the excitement of seeing the show is captured magnificently. It is a danceheavy show and the routines are exhilarating. It has everything a good musical needs - a strong story (based on fact), strong performances and strong vocals.

KINKY BOOTS - This is the London production. It’s a great cast and the excitement of the show burns up the screen.

The leads are wonderful and their emotion feels genuine. It’s a different show entirely to the version seen in Australia. The drag queens are all slim, svelte and terrific looking.

CATS - Filmed on stage in 1997 and the best version of the musical, with some original cast performances.

Although it was edited to keep the show running under two hours, the result is excellent. It’s well shot and the close-ups of the performers’ faces, even in “cat” make-up, give them enormous humanity. Elaine Paige was an emotionally rewarding Grizabella.

LOVE NEVER DIES - Better on video than in the theatre. Simon Phillips’ direction of the Australian production was clunky, especially the last scene on the bridge/wharf where he had performers squeezing past each other whilst trying to sing and emote, plus all those stage waits until Gabriela Tylesova’s sets trundled into position. The video version tightens the whole show up.

BANDSTAND - Also not a great musical, but Andy Blankenbuehler’s fluid direction and choreography made it more than it was. He choreographed the cast moving props and some of the sets, as well as the routines, which kept the whole show moving. It was worth seeing for the choreography alone.

FUNNY GIRL - Sheridan Smith starred in this recent London production, giving a performance that was more lowerclass than Streisand. It was a little more honest. Most enjoyable, while a male lead who could sing and dance was a plus.

BOMBSHELL IN CONCERT - This filmed concert of the cast from the TV series Smash, performing the show’s fictional musical Bombshell, was also enjoyable but it could have done with more camera coverage and more closeups. It was most probably a budget issue.

MEMPHIS - The Broadway cast doing their thing well.

Great performances which capture the beginnings of early rock ‘n’ roll. Terrific performance from Chad Kimball as Huey Calhoun.

Likewise, the New York Metropolitan Opera has sweeping broadcasts of its operas, that often film backstage and feature interviews with stars and creative.

The Met has also dived into its back catalogue, releasing a rich and fruity variety of classics and new works that are being streamed nightly.

A study in 2011 by the NESTA “innovation foundation” examined the impact of cinema releases of productions by the National Theatre. It concluded that National Theatre Live “is not a tool for attracting entirely new audiences to theatre. Ninety-one percent of the cinema audience had been to a play that year, and only 4 percent said they had little or no knowledge of theatre.”

It is safe to assume that more newcomers to theatre might sample Hamilton on Disney+ than those who purchase tickets at art house cinemas to Australian Theatre Live.

Grant Dodwell is adamant that people who have good experiences seeing filmed productions are more likely to buy tickets.

“This is irrefutable. I have had producers says to me, I don’t care if you are in the cinema next to a live (Continued on page 16) www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 15

experience a show up-close. We need to see the perspiration on the dancers, and need to see the emotion production. It just means it is popular - you can choose this from the performers. ticket price or that ticket price.”

“If they’re supposed to cry we need to see it. If they What is critical according to Dodwell is that the quality don’t, then the performer is only going through the paces. of the filming is of the highest standard.

TV versions of some shows can even enhance them.

Australian Theatre Live enjoyed a resurgence of interest “It’s a different medium and needs to be treated as during COVID-19, with ABC iView picking up the rights to such. It needs to capture the excitement of the show.” their broadcasts of productions including Away and The One way to recapture the excitement of a live event is Wharf Revue. to make it live. In recent years US television networks NBC and Fox have released popular live broadcasts of musicals, Dodwell’s company outlays between 80 to 100 thousand dollars on every filmed production, with up to regularly being seen by more than ten million viewers, with nine cameras filming just one performance - like it is a live The Sound of Music Live being the most popular.

“They can be tricky. The live atmosphere is captured but broadcast of a footy match.

“People react well to a high-quality surround sound sometimes mistakes do happen, and the camera cuts are mix, good picture quality and excellent editing. People say, not perfect. Still, it is the nearest thing to seeing a live I really felt I was in the theatre. Sometimes they stand in performance in a theatre,” said Peter Pinne. the cinema and give standing ovations.”

Near enough might have to be good enough for the Dodwell is critical of the release of some live theatre time being. which he says was never meant to be released Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr in the original Broadway commercially. “It was as a guide or archive.” production of Hamilton.

The filmed live production of Hamilton was shot in Photo: Joan Marcus.

2016 over three nights, just two weeks before the original cast left the Broadway run. But no matter how high the production standards are, can a filmed production ever match the excitement of being there?

When I spoke to Producer John Frost earlier this year, he told me he quickly gets bored of broadcasts and he hungers for the atmosphere of a live performance, which you feel as soon as you hear the orchestra warming up.

However, former Reg Grundy Television executive and musical writer Peter Pinne believes that broadcasts can enhance the experience of seeing a production live.

“The first thing to remember is that television is an intimate medium, so there must be lots of close-ups. Also, if it’s a dance show then we need to see their feet,” he said.

“Most people, when they go to the theatre, will not be sitting front row centre so a TV version is their only chance to (Continued from page 15)

Online extras!

Catch the trailer for Hamilton before it is released on July 3. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/DSCKfXpAGHc 16 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Ghosts Of Theatre Past

Coral Drouyn looks at myths and traditions that are part of our love of theatre.

Do you believe in ghosts? Even a little bit? Chances are if you have ever stepped upon a stage in a theatre more than 100 years old, you have been watched from the wings by one.

Spooky, literally. Melbourne’s Princess Theatre has its own benign ghost Federici - so popular they named a restaurant after him and keep a seat for him on every opening night. More on Fred later.

The theatre is loaded with superstitions and traditions and we take them for granted now. But where did they start? When you consider that centuries ago actors (or mummers) were gypsies, who were highly superstitious people, it’s not surprising that so many have become theatrical history. There is probably a simple explanation behind them, or maybe not! In this two-part series we’ll look at some of the most famous superstitions in theatre and discover how they travelled from mythology to tradition.

The Ghost Light

past performers, or does the light attract them to the stages where they once performed? Some say it is a mark of respect to the ghosts themselves. Others say more practically that a total blackout is dangerous and anyone crossing the stage when the theatre is empty could be injured. In fact, that’s exactly what happened in a famous urban legend when a burglar fell into the orchestra pit, broke both legs, and successfully sued the theatre for not providing a safe environment. But it’s just as likely that Actors’ Equity was responsible for the safety measure, so that cast members leaving the theatre late at night would not trip over the set and be injured.

Personally, I prefer the idea that it is for the ghosts themselves, so they don’t feel abandoned in the dark, or even so that they can come out onstage and perform for each other though I suspect applauding is difficult without solid hands. It’s the most romantic explanation. Whatever the case, the ghost light also symbolises that the theatre is never “dark”, and in these times it’s a great reassurance to all of us theatretragics.

There are many stories about ghost lights - that single bulb left burning, usually on a pole upstage centre while there is no-one in the theatre. If you’ve ever walked a stage Whistling Backstage when the theatre is empty, you can feel the ghosts of past actors and It has meant bad luck in the actresses around you. Are they just an theatre for more than 200 years now. imprint on the building itself, There are tales of mysterious deaths absorbed personality from dozens of and accidents to the whistlers (and

I’m grateful I have never been able to whistle), but can whistling actually bring about your death? Well, in fact, YES, if you look at the origins of the myth. In the 1700s, before theatres had full fly towers operated by flymen, where the stage cloths/ scenery could be raised and lowered already unfurled, stage cloths had to be unfurled from the top, 3 metres and more above the stage, and then rolled back up again for every change of scenery. The “riggers” employed to unfurl them were ex-sailors from sailing ships, who were used to climbing masts and unfurling sails by hand. Since they were high in the air on the open sea, the signal they listened for was a whistle. Of course, the method carried over into theatres was the same - when you wanted a cloth lowered you whistled for it. The cloths, heavily weighted along the bottom with a thick wooden batten, would then be freed from above and quite often descend quickly with a loud thud.

So, if anyone was whistling backstage, the whistle could be mistaken for the signal to unfurl and anyone innocently crossing the stage could get their skull cracked open. So yes, whistling means bad luck - but there’s a perfectly logical explanation behind it.

(Continued on page 18) www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 17

(Continued from page 17)

Blue and Green, Seldom Seen

For a long time both colours were considered bad luck on stage - which would have made Wicked impossible to produce. But these two superstitions (my grandmother would never allow blue or green in her dressing room) are based in practicalities.

Blue was the most expensive colour to dye costumes. It’s why you rarely see Old Masters paint with it (Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’ was a sign of the great wealth of the family, and boys wore pink right up until Victorian times), and you hardly ever saw it on stage, producers saving money by perpetuating the myths. In fact, there was another reason.

Theatre lights, specifically spotlights, were originally limelights, powered by burning lime. The limelight on the beautiful rich blue made it look more like a muddy khaki, not justifying the money spent. On green, the limelight washed out the colour altogether in the costumes and often only the heads and hands of the actors could be seen - or perhaps the legs of the dancers along with smiling faces.

The sight of disembodied heads and legs certainly did not put bums on seats, so both colours came to be considered bad luck, at least until limelight was obsolete and entire actors who didn’t look like ghosts could be seen from the auditorium.

And speaking of ghosts….

Competition

Thanks to Coral Drouyn for another fantastic competition.

Tell a story using ONLY song titles from musicals (at least 10). They can only be joined together by coordinating conjunctions - For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So (FANBOYS - how appropriate) For Example: I feel pretty AND I enjoy being a girl, BUT there’s gotta be something better than this, the other side of the tracks OR somewhere over the rainbow, if I were a rich man. I am what I am BUT soon it’s gonna rain, SO who can I turn to? Let me entertain you, tomorrow.

That’s 11.

The fewer conjunctions you use, the more points, but you must use the CORRECT titles. Enter on our Facebook page before July 20. Coral will select the winner.

facebook.com/stagewhispers The Theatre Ghost

Actors’ superstitions may have something to do with an obsession with death. After all, if the audience is unresponsive, we talk about “dying” on stage - or “corpsing” with laughter when we lose control. Every theatre over 100 years old, no matter where in the world it is, claims a theatre ghost, and there is always a story to back up such tales - it’s up to us whether we believe them or not.

Having spent most of my life in theatres, I must admit I’d rather be a friend to a ghost than an enemy.

Most ghosts seem to be benign they just don’t want to leave the theatre (I sympathise) and sometimes

they find empathetic performers to show themselves to. Some of them, comedians in this world, are still looking for laughs in their ethereal state - some performers just never know when to get off.

The most haunted theatre in the world is said to be London’s Drury Lane. Two of its most famous ghosts are the clown Grimaldi and the great Music Hall comedian Dan Leno.

Though Grimaldi died in 1837, and Leno in 1904, aged 43, the two make frequent return trips to the theatre and have been witnessed by hundreds of people - performers, stage crew, cleaners and audiences alike.

Joseph Grimaldi.

18 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Princess Theatre, Melbourne.

Grimaldi, the first of the great world-famous clowns, had made the strange request that his head be severed from his body before burial, and there have been many reports of a smiling white faced head floating around backstage and even on stage or perhaps he was just wearing green in the limelight!

Dan Leno’s ghost is most often recognised by the smell. Leno suffered from incontinence and hid the smell with use of an excessive amount of lavender water. It’s not unusual to be on the stage of the Royal and smell a combination of lavender and urine right beside you.

But not all ghosts are performers.

Drury Lane’s most frightening ghost is The Man in Grey - a young man with a limp, in a white ruffled shirt and powdered wig, with a grey riding cloak and a tri-corn hat. He is frequently seen crossing from one side of the upper circle to the other and disappearing through the opposite wall. And it’s not at nighttime, when such apparitions might be more excusable. It’s always in daylight hours. He has been seen by members of both casts and audiences at matinees, by firemen and theatre managers and crew. In 1939 more than half the cast of The Dancing Years, on stage for a photo call, watched open mouthed as the ghost went about his usual routine.

In the late 1870s, builders uncovered a hidden room behind the wall where the ghost disappeared.

There they discovered the skeleton of a young man with a dagger protruding from his ribcage with remnants of grey cloth around the

Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide.

bones. Was the mystery solved - or did it just lead to a greater mystery?

Australia is not to be outdone in the history of theatre ghosts.

Adelaide’s Tivoli Theatre (rebranded in 1962 as Her Majesty’s) has a resident ghost in a fly engineer who fell to his death on the opening night of the theatre in 1913. He is said to reappear on opening nights. Ballarat’s splendid Her Majesty’s Theatre boasts several ghosts and even Castlemaine’s theatre has a resident spook.

The Theatre Royal Hobart was actually saved by its resident ghost, an actor who died during a performance in the 1800s, named Fred (a fine name for ghosts). When the theatre caught fire last century, the fire curtain mysteriously fell (for no mechanical reason) preventing Australia’s oldest continuing theatre from being burned to the ground.

But it’s another Fred who rightly claims the honour of being Australia’s most famous theatre ghost, and he can still be found in Melbourne’s Princess Theatre.

Frederick Baker used the stage name Federici. An Italian/British singer, he’d had considerable success in comic opera in Britain and was brought out by JC Williamson in 1887, appearing successfully in a string of comic operas.

Cast to play Mephistopheles in the opera Faust, opposite Nellie Stewart as Marguerite, on opening night March 3rd 1888, just as Mephistopheles is descending into hell with Faust, Federici suffered a massive heart attack and died within minutes. Although the cast swear that he was in the line-up for the curtain

call, as if he returned from the dead to enjoy the applause.

The Press wrote: The tragic and appalling occurrence ... must command universal sympathy and regret. Mr Federici achieved considerable success both in England and America in comic opera, but he was also an excellent musician and the composer of several songs of more than average merit … It seems an act almost of irreverence to criticise the performance of an actor who has only just been carried to his grave.

Nevertheless, it is only his due and his proper tribute to say that he both sang and acted on Saturday night in a truly artistic manner and that he has never been seen to greater advantage than he was on that occasion. ... The theatre was closed on Monday evening out of respect to the memory of the deceased artist.

Federici had left his mark on theatre history. It was his third show at the Princess, a theatre he loved so much that he refused to leave. He appears to give his blessings to each production there and the theatre always keeps an opening night seat in the third row of the dress circle. He's a benign presence, and stars like Lisa McCune, Bert Newton, Marina Prior and many ensemble and crew members have had the pleasure of encountering him. That’s an amazing legacy.

In Part Two in our next edition we explore more superstitions and the long history of “The Scottish Play”.

Thanks to Dru Bartlett of the Victorian Drama League for inspiring this series. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 19

Australia’s Live Entertainment industry is working on a new hygiene code to make the public comfortable returning to theatres without a vaccine for COVID-19. This comes as social distancing regulations continue to make major performing arts events unviable. David Spicer reports.

Last year I attended a theatre in the retirement belt of Florida. I recently received an email from the venue describing their new hygiene regime. Despite rates of COVID-19 increasing in the US state, the Wick Theatre was encouraging elderly patrons to bring their zimmer frames along, to enjoy cabaret and a meal.

At the entrance to the theatre, someone in a mask and gloves opens car doors. Patrons enter the venue by using different entrances, depending on their surnames, after receiving a temperature check.

Inside, waiters wear gloves to serve meals and drinks which are all individually sealed. In every bathroom there is an attendant who cleans taps after everyone uses them. It looks more like a visit to a contagious hospital ward than a fun night out, but apparently it’s working.

South Korean producers are using similar measures to keep a touring production of The Phantom of the Opera, starring Australian performer Claire Lyon, on stage in Seoul.

The musical closed when the virus became a threat, reopened, and then closed down when a cast member contracted COVID-19. Since re-opening again, thermal imaging cameras are used to measure temperatures and there are self-cleaning antibacterial door handle covers. All audience members wear face masks and use hand sanitiser.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is trialling a similar system at the London Palladium during July.

“The key thing that they have is incredibly good hygiene - both backstage for the cast, the crew and the orchestra but also for people in the front of house,” Lloyd Webber told BBC radio.

At the stage door, cast and crew pass an infrared camera where their temperature is taken remotely. LW Theatres’ Chief Executive Rebecca Kane Burton said, “as you walk in a great big dashboard flashes up [to indicate] 20 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

whether you can come in the building or not. As soon as it does, the airlock releases, the door opens and you go in.”

In Australia, work is underway to develop our own hygiene code.

Graeme Kearns, the General Manager of Sydney’s Capitol and Sydney Lyric theatres, told Stage Whispers, “we are working with the Live Performance Australia and others in the industry to develop a set of health and hygiene protocols for our audiences and production teams.

“Ideally the protocols will be uniform across theatres.

Our goal is to ensure that theatregoers feel that we have taken every reasonable hygiene measure and feel comfortable that a visit to the theatre is safe.”

But what would a new hygiene code look like? Well, as a minimum we can expect that venues will regularly clean touch points in all theatres. The days of a quick vacuum and picking up ice-cream wrappers are over.

Venues will manage the density of their entrances and exits. This means crowded foyers and last-minute dashes into the theatre may be over for the time being. Instead, patrons may be asked to come earlier to a show and leave a little later. Expect also to see lots of hand sanitiser.

Under national guidelines applying from July, the 100person limit on indoor venues was replaced with a one person for every four square metres rule. Some states are better off than others, depending on their transmission rates (Victoria reverted to a 20-person limit).

Despite the easing of restrictions, most producers are still not able to put on a show.

Mark Kilmurry, Artistic Director of the 216-seat Ensemble Theatre, told the Sydney Morning Herald that, “If we did [one person per four square metres], we'd have something like 42 people in the auditorium and 31 in the foyer.”

Jonathan Roxmouth and Claire Lyon in the Korean production of The Phantom Of The Opera.

Some small productions are opening around Australia in July and these are typically cabaret in restaurants with the tables spaced well apart.

In Melbourne, the Arts Centre was scheduled to commence hosting Saturday night live variety in late June but was forced to postpone when Victoria suffered a surge in community transmissions. Under their plans, audience members were urged to arrive 30 minutes before the performance to complete a pre-show health and safety check. The venue also planned no-contact ticketing.

But anything larger than a small cast cabaret is off until the next round of restrictions are eased.

Major producers of musicals say they cannot re-open if there are onerous restrictions on the numbers of seats they can sell.

Graeme Kearns said, “there is not much room for a checkerboard (theatre with space between patrons). The concept is fanciful for commercial operations.

“We can’t open with anything less than a full capacity, as the complex shows we host can cost $800,000 to a $1,000,000 a week to run.”

A similar principle applies for state-based theatre companies, which also require several months of certainty to build their sets and promote ticket sales.

Medium to large community theatres are in a similar position. One of Australia’s largest community theatres, Melbourne’s CLOC postponed its production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert until the first half of 2021 “dependant on an easing of the social distancing requirements”.

This makes it easy to understand why producers are keen to have all restrictions lifted.

When might that be? Graeme Kearns is quietly confident that the industry will get back on its feet by the end of 2020. Disney’s Frozen is scheduled to open at the Capitol Theatre in December.

He says “positive changes are happening” with the easing of restrictions of one person per four square metres tipped to be reduced to one person per two square metres in the UK. “The Government has a good handle on the situation.

I have a high degree confidence that Frozen will open in December as planned, unless there is a new outbreak and widespread community transmission. That could push things back a few months.”

The timing of when theatres are confident of returning varies across Australia. In states where there have been low or zero transmissions, there is emerging confidence of salvaging some of the 2020 season.

The Queensland Theatre Company is hopeful of a ‘mini -season’ from October, picking up from its interrupted season of Triple X. Black Swan Theatre Company in Perth is proceeding with its November season of Oklahoma!, whilst the State Theatre Company of South Australia is still selling tickets for its September season of Gaslight.

In Sydney, the Hayes Theatre Company is aiming for an October return with Young Frankenstein, though plans for a September return for Harry Potter in Melbourne might have been set back by an increase in transmissions in Victoria in late June.

News is better in New Zealand with the ‘eradication’ of the virus, save for the occasional errant tourist.

Community theatre is back on the boards as early as August. Abbey Musical Theatre in Palmerston North is ‘rushing’ back its interrupted season of Sister Act. The Auckland Theatre Company is not quite ready to welcome back its patrons yet. The Artistic Director Collin McColl said, “theatre projects of scale take months of planning before they reach the stage. When lockdown began we had to postpone and cancel many of the productions in our 2020 season. Unfortunately, we cannot reverse that decision.”

The company is pulling together a back on the boards festival for September and will be back to normal with a musical in November.

But even in coronavirus-free New Zealand, the new normal will look different “when we re-open strict hygiene will be in place”.

Temperature screening at The Wick theatre.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 21

Script Extract

Stage Whispers is excited to publish script excerpts from the romantic comedy Love in Lockdown. Written, filmed, edited and released entirely from isolation, it’s about an unlikely couple falling in love when forced to take online ukulele lessons during COVID-19. Starring Lucy Durack (Wicked, The Letdown) and Eddie Perfect (Offspring, Beetlejuice and Shane Warne the Musical), the comedy is produced by Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope (Upper Middle Bogan, Little Lunch).

It’s the second half of March.

Lucy is starring in Shrek The Musical and Eddie arrives back in Australia to begin rehearsals in Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5. The day after Eddie lands, 9 to 5 is postponed. Shrek The Musical shuts down. Lucy, Eddie, their cast mates, dancers, musicians, ushers, bar staff - like thousands of others - are out of a job.

After four weeks of restrictions, Lucy comes to Robyn with an idea for a romantic comedy. Robyn and Lucy begin work that day over Zoom. Five days later, the scripts are finished. Eddie agrees to take part between home schooling his

kids and other commitments.

Wayne is frantically sourcing lights and microphones from Dandenong and New Zealand. The longest part of the entire process is trying to get a courier to pick up the equipment to take to Eddie in Sydney.

When it finally arrives, Wayne talks everyone through how to set up their mini camera and sound department; Lucy and Eddie send camera tests through, and the shoot begins. And ends. A crazy few days of editing follow and, seventeen days after Lucy told Robyn about her idea, the series is completed.

You can find the entire six part series at gristmill.com.au/shows/love-in-lockdown 22 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

LESSON 2: NED’S LOUNGE ROOM / GEORGIE’S STUDY [Georgie settles back into her chair and picks up the ukulele.]

NED: That was actually impressive.

GEORGIE: Ha ha.

NED: No, I could see what you were doing - trying to do.

[Georgie glares.]

NED: You just need to - chill.

GEORGIE: What do you mean?

NED: Show me C Major.

[Georgie grips the chord hard.]

NED: Right, so firstly it’s an instrument, not a murder weapon.

[Georgie doesn’t follow.]

NED: You’re about to play music, not hit an intruder loosen your grip.

[Georgie looks at her grasp on the neck of the ukulele.]

NED: See I don’t think your knuckles should be white.

[Georgie relaxes her grip.]

NED: Yes - good - and your fingers shouldn’t curl up like that - that’s it, you want to press firmly - uhuh - without cutting off your circulation.

[She adjusts.]

NED: Perfect. Now your shoulders.

[Georgie looks up startled.]

GEORGIE: What’s wrong with my shoulders?

NED: Nothing, they’re lovely [Georgie swallows.]

NED: But they should be under your neck, not next to your ears. Drop them.

[Georgie tries but nothing happens.]

NED: Like this.

[He demonstrates a couple of times. She copies.]

NED: Yes! Now your neck.

Loosen it up [He demonstrates. She copies.]

NED: And your jaw GEORGIE: I don’t see what my jaw has [He interrupts with a sound he makes as he wobbles his jaw.]

GEORGIE: I’m not doing that.

[He continues. She has no choice but to join in. They stop.

Georgie looks comfortable.]

GEORGIE: I feel weird.

NED: It’s called being relaxed.

LESSON 4: GEORGIE’S STUDY / NED’S LOUNGE ROOM NED: There’s nothing wrong with finding this hard. I told you - I’ve been anxious.

[She looks at him.]

GEORGIE: How’s that going?

NED: This week’s been better.

Maybe because I said it out loud to you.

GEORGIE: That’s good.

NED: Isn’t being lonely what makes us human?

[Georgie tries not to cry.]

GEORGIE: I really miss going to work. Catching the train. I miss grabbing lunch with my sister. Do you?

NED: I don’t know your sister.

[Georgie laughs.]

GEORGIE: It must be nice to have a flatmate.

NED: Oh it’s spectacular. I’m nearly forty and I live in a rental with a guy I met on Facebook. Nothing like five weeks of being housebound to make you realise how pathetic that is. Or that you’ve spent the last ten years working in a cafe GEORGIE: But you don’t any more. You’re a music teacher.

[Ned is grateful for her affirmation.] www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 23

Love At First Seat

See or act in a musical as a child and you’re hooked for life. That is the belief and experience of Coral Drouyn. She speaks to grown up child stars Tony Sheldon and Michael Dalton and explores the mystique that Musical Theatre holds for young and old.

Most of the best things in life are highly addictive, and musical theatre is high on the list. If you don’t believe me, look around you. In these frightening times when theatres are dark, and all the musicals we were looking forward to this year have been postponed or had their runs interrupted, we are being offered endless productions on YouTube and we should be excited. But somehow, they just disappoint. We crave, as Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse called it, The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd. Nothing beats live theatre in any form, and musical theatre is at the top of the list.

It’s not surprising when you look closely at the make-up of musicals.

You get more for your money - music, singing, dancing, drama, romance, comedy. You name it, musicals have got it, often with some fantasy and special effects at no extra cost.

It’s the complete theatre experience, and anyone who sees a live musical before the age of ten is certain to be hooked for life.

Personalities are made or broken by our experiences with live theatre, and the sense of connection an audience feels sitting in the dark but identifying totally with what is onstage. That’s why it’s so important that theatre continues to shape our lives, and why it’s worth fighting for.

My own epiphany came at the age of eight, when my parents took me to Her Majesty’s Theatre in London (yes, the same theatre that has housed Phantom of The Opera for the past 34 years) to see Paint your Wagon. The year was 1953 and I remember the magic of the red velvet curtains and seats; the heavy gilt moulding; the deep orchestra pit where the music seemed to swirl like some subterranean melodic cloud. I thought it must cost hundreds of pounds to be allowed in such a place, but the truth is that my parents were friends with 24 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

the stars, Bobby Howes and daughter Sally Ann Howes (Miss Truly Scrumptious), so they probably got comps! In any case, even the best seats back then cost mere shillings rather than pounds and these days we sometimes pay over a hundred dollars for a ticket to a mainstage musical.

When the curtain went up I audibly gasped, and when the star moved across the cyc for the “Wandering Star” number, I had a very damp accident. But I didn’t even notice. I was hooked.

If we really do carry our inner child with us for our entire lives, then perhaps musicals become the substitute for childhood pantomimes.

That might explain the colossal change in subject matter over the last 50 years or so. True, there’s generally a boy-meets-girl angle, and obstacles to their romance - that’s a formula older than Shakespeare and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

But look at the content of some of the biggest musicals going back to the 1960’s. Oliver!, The King and I, Annie, Billy Elliot, Matilda, The Secret Garden, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Frozen, Peter Pan, 13 and Shrek, whose run was so rudely interrupted in March, just after its Melbourne opening. They all have childhood themes, or they are expanded childhood stories, and our inner child devours them like chocolate. Next to Normal is a brilliant adult concept show, but it can’t compete with even a revival of Oliver! for audience appeal. And not only do the shows we crave have childhood themes, they feature children on stage - children performing in a way most of us only dream about. Some shows, like Gypsy, even have children performing a show -within-a-show about a troupe of child performers.

In the days of Vaudeville and Music Hall there were hundreds of acts like

Eight Lancashire Lads .

Baby June and her boys. My own grandfather was part of an act called the Eight Lancashire Lads around about 1890. Expert Lancashire clog dancers, the boys “toured the Halls” with the troupe changing as the boys got too big. Charlie Chaplin was part of that act for three years, but my granddad’s best friend amongst the boys was Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame. My own parents started in theatre at age 11, but Variety, or Music Hall, was very different to the status of musical theatre. It took a show called Oliver! to “legitimise” children in leading roles on stage, and for many of them it was the beginning of a lifelong career.

Maybe we all have a dream in childhood of being on the stage, and we unwillingly put it away when we become adults. After all, for every role for a child in a musical, it takes a parent to take that child to an audition for the show. Living your dreams vicariously is better than not living them at all.

Michael Dalton, better known as performer Dolly Diamond, recalls his mother taking him to audition for a revival of Oliver! in the West End when he was only 9 years old. “I’d done some singing in the school choir, and mum thought I might have a chance for a role as one of the kids in Fagin’s gang. About three weeks went past and we just thought, ‘Oh well, that was an interesting day out.’ Then

chorus to ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’.

Coming from a show business dynasty, by the age of seven he was appearing with Graham Kennedy on In Melbourne Tonight, the top rating TV show, with a one-off appearance becoming a regular gig.

“The funny thing is, I didn’t think I was very good, even at that young age,” Tony says nearly sixty years later.

“I’d watched my mum and dad sing

It was so immediate - so totally different to television. And it was so much fun,” he explains. “Kids in shows these days, even though there are more of them, don’t have the fun I remember. Now they have chaperones, and performance limits so they share roles, and they must be escorted to and from the side of the stage. Not in my day. As kids we mingled with all the adult performers, asked questions, listened to stories. I can remember running from the dressing room to the wings to watch the show, especially my mum’s big number. I was part of a story completely wrapped up in it.”

Even though tragedy struck the family with his father’s death, and Tony spent the next six years in school, he didn’t wait to finish.

“I was never going to have a great voice, or be a great dancer, but I thought I might make a passable actor, and I couldn’t wait to get back on a stage and feel that magic again.”

and dance, not just at rehearsals but around the house - and there was my Auntie Helen (Reddy) and my grandparents all performing and I just thought that the talent gene had missed me somehow.”

But then came Oliver! - with mum Toni Lamond playing Nancy.

“Suddenly I knew what it was to stare out beyond the foots into the dark, conscious that you were connecting with people you could barely see and would never know. I understood the magic. I was hooked.

Of course musical theatre was inevitable, and his first professional role was in The Fantasticks, aged just 16 - and only one week after he left school. The rest is history.

The theatres will re-open; the musicals will return; adults will sit in the dark feeding their inner child Maltesers and 11 O’clock numbers; and children will don make-up and costumes and step tentatively onstage into the spotlight, just as they have for the past 60 years or so.

We’re here. We’re waiting.

Above and top centre: Tony Sheldon.

Bottom centre and right: Michael Dalton.

mum got a phone call and the producer said, ‘We want Michael for Oliver’ and mum said ‘that’s nice what part - and the producer said Oliver.’ Well, the second I set foot on that stage I knew it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

You might think that being born into Show Business is a sure-fire way of getting onto a stage, but it isn’t always true. While non-theatricals might push their children towards the “glamour” of musical theatre, performing parents, who know how hard the road is, are more likely to want their children in nice safe jobs with a regular income.

Some things, though, are inevitable. One of our greatest ‘stars’ (he hates the term) is Tony Sheldon, whose pedigree is deeply rooted in musicals. Tony was barely a toddler when his parents, Toni Lamond and Frank Sheldon, were starring in The Pajama Game, but some of his first words were the

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 25

Stephen Sewell’s Furies

Australia’s celebrated, most political, surely most impassioned playwright Stephen Sewell shares his life’s anger and achievements with Martin Portus. He decries our mainstage theatres as dominated by “exclusive gangs” bereft of artistic directors able to develop new work.

Stephen Sewell returned six years ago to live in the gritty western Sydney suburb of his childhood. With his young family, he’s back to the same Granville house, even sleeping in his old bedroom.

“Back to the roots,” he says.

“When I was a boy Granville was full of Italians and Maltese; they’ve made their money and moved on, and now it’s Arabs, Asians and Africans - all incredibly nice, hard-working people but I joke that whenever there’s a shooting in Sydney, it’s one of my neighbours. So, a good place for a dramatist.”

Here lived the former Catholic altar boy whose teenage conversion to communism still inflames his belief in individual moral responsibility and a theatre of shared confrontation and catharsis. In that bedroom he read his first book - Orwell’s 1984 - which at 13 inspired him to write.

From this local hood and his older relatives - “ignorant, wild and larrikin Australians” - Sewell saw early the disappointment and suspicions, the oppression and violence that he says permeates Australia’s working class.

He drew on this world for his plays, so applauded in the 1980’s, and notably

26 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

to unravel the evil forces which drove those who raped and murdered the western Sydney beauty queen Anita Cobby. His screenplay for The Boys in 1998 was much celebrated.

To really penetrate this explosive masculine violence, Sewell actually ignored the Cobby case. Instead he “looked inwards to myself as a man, finding this violence and hatred of women within myself, to try to understand it and replicate it into film.” It’s a remarkable insight from a writer long distinguished by his great roles for women. And his increasing exploration of female concerns, as in his MTC premiere last year of Arbus & West, about how the famed feminist photographer met the indefinable icon Mae West.

Now from Granville, Sewell, aged 65, travels to NIDA at the University of NSW where he’s been Head of Writing for Performance since 2013. He’s also working through a kaleidoscope of different projects across his desk multiple play scripts, films, physical theatre shows, multi-media performances, even a musical based on Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul. And he’s just completed The Lives of Eve, a play inspired by Jacques Lacan, about

a female psychotherapist treating a female client unable to orgasm (he wants to direct it himself; but he’s told it will only get up if he gives it to a female director).

This irrepressible storytelling channelled into such a diversity of outlets models what is Sewell’s first lesson to his eight students every year.

“It is to go through a story, how do you tell it and how can you do so in different forms,” he says.

And, importantly, give up all hope your work will be developed or staged in Australia’s major theatres.

“The things these writers talk about are the catastrophe of global climate change, the environmental collapse; they are very political - issues of gender, women’s liberation, social justice issues. And they write very well about these concerns of people in their 20s and 30s, from direct personal experience and in a contemporary vernacular. But they leave NIDA and find their plays are rejected by the mainstage theatres, by people for whom none of these things matter.”

Instead, Sewell bitterly argues, these companies claim the occasional cutting-edge credit by restaging contemporary but well-tested plays from foreign writers. Few artistic directors here have the interest or ability to create programs to develop new work. Every year he takes his writers to the Edinburgh Festival and to London, where theatre directors, in contrast, welcome them profusely and

MTC’s Arbus & West.

Photo: Jeff Busby.

Online extras!

Diana Glenn and Sarah Goodes discuss MTC’s production of Arbus & West. https://youtu.be/zg90uWA63pg show them extensive writing programs.

And don’t get Sewell going on the Sydney Theatre Company! Across his 40 year career, it’s staged just one of his plays, a two hander.

Not that there was much support anywhere when he started. Once young Sewell had rejected the fate of being a science teacher - and “went to Plan B which was to become a famous writer” - he remembers the horror of facing his ignorance of how to write plays.

“For the first ten years I felt suicidal every day. At NIDA I try to save my writers from that experience. Being in that state of utter despair didn’t teach me anything.”

But Sewell did thrive under the generosity of key directors and theatres, as everyone then, equally ignorant, muddled along finding ways to stage what in the 1980’s was an astonishing range of Australian plays many of them ambitious, philosophical big cast epics. Sewell’s certainly were.

His first, The Father We loved On A Beach By The Sea, at Brisbane’s La

Boite, borrowed from Orwell and projected a future military dictatorship in Australia. Next, Traitors was about the intense battle in 1920s Leninist Russia for the direction of communism; while his thriller Welcome The Bright World, set in West Germany, was crammed with political and scientific debate.

Dreams in an Empty City, about nothing less than the collapse of capitalism, with a crucifixion to end it all, premiered at the 1986 Adelaide Festival. Sewell wanted machines set up in the foyer for audiences rushing to withdraw their money. The State Bank of SA, a sponsor, complained about the play. Soon after the bank collapsed in ruins, its CEO was imprisoned, and the world faced the 1987 financial crash. Maybe Sewell was right.

“No one took their money out in time,” Sewell says with his hearty laugh. “The idea that you can seriously engage with the issues of a play, and that that can have some impact on (Continued on page 28) www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 27

With its crackling political dialogue and rich Australian characters, this your behaviour, is not part of our was a landmark for Sewell. He and culture.” friend, fellow writer Louis Nowra, both Adelaide’s State Theatre also set early plays in foreign settings. They premiered Sewell’s most celebrated were dubbed the Internationalists, but the young writers were also play, The Blind Giant is Dancing, in 1983. It was directed by Neil Armfield, postponing how to express ideas and who restaged it at Belvoir the next passion in their own country, in the decade, where it was restaged yet understated Australia vernacular. again in 2016 by director Eamon Somehow the lingo seemed Flack. inadequate…

Mirroring his own family, not for “I’m still involved in trying to get the first time, Blind Giant centres on under the skin, to understand the truth of this place. How can I do it three sons, one a party apparatchik, and their conservative working-class when Sandy Stone (Barry Humphries’ father - a cloth cap Tory - against the suburban pensioner) is one of the paradigms of who we are?” moral and political compromises of the Labor Party.

(Continued from page 27)

Nicholas Eadie in Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America (2003).

Photo: Jeff Busby / Currency Press.

28 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

“Unlike Louis, I don’t believe a play is ever really finished; it’s not a time capsule. As an artist you are always biting off more than you can chew so there are always going to be faults in any play. And decades on, I now feel I’m capable of getting these things right, so I did another draft of Welcome Bright World. And I rewrote Blind Giant for all three productions … but Eamon stayed with the original for that last one; he liked the rawness.”

Despite the success of Blind Giant, Sewell collapsed months later, depressed by what he saw as the futility of being a political writer. Like his central character, he was now without faith in communism, politics and human beings. He decided to kill himself.

But soon he took a different path, abandoning this “rational conclusion” of suicide and instead opening himself to the unconscious, and a new fascination in psychoanalysis, in fantasy and a theatre of the poetic.

This has taken him to some very dark places when career opportunities shrunk in the 1990’s and his plays explored extremes of sexual and violent behaviour. One good thing, following the end of his second marriage, and during Anger’s Love, premiered by a performing arts school in Adelaide in 1996, was meeting his current partner, designer Karla Urizer.

“The pits around this time was when I was yelling down the phone to the poor receptionist at Belvoir Street, and saying, don’t you know who I am?”

“And she didn’t!” (huge laugh) He was increasingly writing for film. Theatre though was still delivering him moderate hits like The Sickroom (Playbox, 1999) about a corrupt stockbroker and his dying daughter, and earlier The Garden of Granddaughters, about a dying Jewish conductor returning to his three warring daughters. Death was around every corner.

Miranda, about two strangers, one a war journalist, in a one-night stand of sex and drugs, Sewell describes as “a roller coaster ride on razor-blades”.

He later reworked the play into the first film he directed himself, Embedded, in 2016.

Sewell’s push to the poetic and unconscious has this century produced rich theatre around visual artists. The Secret Death of Salvador Dali begins with the surrealist’s deathbed catching fire and little redemption for the old foul-mouthed fascist. Surprisingly, Sewell says he ended up in love with Dali and his infantile perspective.

In Three Furies Sewell then relished the savagery and sadness of Francis Bacon and the extremities of emotion and homosexuality he shared with his muse and partner George Dyer. Simon Burke played Bacon in its premiere for Sydney Festival 2005. Director Jim Sharman describes it as hallucinogenic theatre, a theatre to transform people.

“The realistic, naturalistic part of the world is actually quite insignificant in any experience,” says Sewell.

“That’s what I want on stage - the full complexity, the fantasies, the emotion, the imaginative, the dreams of the world. I don’t want it reduced to a matchbox. It’s a very theatrical idea but then you’re struggling with the stagecraft of how to do it. But Sharman completely understands that moving in and out of fantasy.”

The two then took their hallucinations to film and together made Andy X, about Andy Warhol, but Sewell didn’t share Sharman’s love for this far cooler customer.

Abstraction aside, Sewell’s plays this century have demonstrated a powerful immediacy to the urgent debates and headlines of our time like American racism, global warming, Olympic drugs and corruption, Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, and how we answer terrorism.

This prolific wave started with his popular thriller, Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America (2003), about the end of liberal tolerance and the rise of an Orwellian surveillance in America after 9/11. The epic title came to him in a dream; he took just 12 days to write it.

The US of Nothing (2006), also directed by Sewell, haunts us now in 2020 with its dark comedy about a white family surrounded by 20,000 angry blacks, trapped in the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina.

Like so many playwrights, Sewell has long sought a family - a director, a theatrical home to share the long collaborative process of bringing stories to the stage.

“Theatres here,” he says, “are increasingly dominated by exclusive gangs without any doors open to the outside, just the winner takes all. Then they eventually change but the next gang running the institution is just as exclusive.”

For Stephen Sewell though, NIDA has become that next best thing to a professional home. Final year productions have premiered many recent plays and allowed him big cast, big picture epics - just like the old days.

And still he keeps writing. He has high hopes for a new play, A Portrait of You, about Lucien Freud painting David Hockney. His mate Bruce Beresford wants to direct it. And Barry Humphries wants to play Freud.

“I’m also about to begin a big play called Time. It concerns a futures trader making the bet of his life while his philosopher father is dying in the other room. Time. I feel it’s running out, and there’s so much to write.”

Stephen Sewell spoke to Martin Portus for a State Library of NSW oral history project on leaders in the performing arts; the full interview now available on the Library’s website.

Gillian Jones, Robert Grub, Melita Jurasic and Geoffrey Rush in The Blind Giant Is Dancing (1983).

Photo: David Wilson / Currency Press.

The original Playbox production of The Garden Of Granddaughters (1993).

Photo: Jeff Busby.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 29

Stage on Page

By Peter Pinne

Adelaide Festival 60 Years 19602020 (Catherine McKinnon/Sheree Tirrell/Colin Koch) (Wakefield Press $70.00).

For sixty years the Adelaide Festival has never been short of controversy, debate and divided opinion, and this book, with over sixty essays from arts administrators, actors, singers, choreographers, artistic directors and more, is a sweeping overview of the period.

The early festivals were very British focused, which is not surprising as the co-founders, Professor John Bishop and Sir Lloyd Dumas, were determined to make the festival the “Edinburgh of the South”. Opera and music dominated the programs: The Australian premiere of Strauss’s Salome (1960) in which Joan Hammond performed the “Dance of the Seven Veils”, Marie Collier in Walton’s Troilus and Cressida (1964) and the London Symphony Orchestra with conductors Sir Malcolm Sargent and John Pritchard (1966).

Robert Helpmann’s 1970 festival was star-heavy, with the South Australian Symphony Orchestra and the English Opera Group performing three Benjamin Britten operas, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Helpmann directing Rudolf Nureyev Mem Fox.

Unetsu - Eggs Standing out of Curiosity (1988), and for Edwards it was the Black Theatre of Prague (1966).

Distinguished director Peter Brook and Josephine Jason in his own came twice and staged two Hamlet for the Australian Ballet, and remarkable theatrical events in the the Royal Shakespeare Company led Anstey Hill Quarry: his adaptation of

by Judi Dench and Donald Sinden in the Persian poem The Conference of Twelfth Night and The Winter’s Tale. the Birds (1980) and the marathon Dance was not represented in the eight hours dusk-to-dawn staging of first festival, but that anomaly was the sacred Indian Sanskrit text The soon rectified with the Australian Mahabharata (1988). The venue was Ballet and Helpmann’s astonishing used thirty years later for the Sydney and popular The Display (1964). Later Theatre Company production of festivals saw Merce Cunningham and Andrew Bovell’s The Secret River his company with Squaregame (2017).

(1976), Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater The parochial attitudes of the city Wuppertal, from the industrial town have never been more vividly of Wuppertal, Germany (1982) (the expressed than in David Marr’s most influential dance company to recounting of the Patrick White visit Australia since the Ballet Russes scandal. Geoffrey Dutton convinced in the 1930s) and Jiri Kylian’s the literary panel of the festival that Nederlands Dance Theatre with three Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral programs - Sinfonietta, Field Mass should have its world premiere at the and Stamping Ground, a piece 1962 festival. It was programmed devised by Kylian after spending time and then the governors got wind of with several Aboriginal tribes on the subject, abortion and a foetus Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of found in a rubbish bin, and Carpenteria. demanded to see the script. They Experiencing cutting-edge theatre were horrified. “They did not want at the festival provided watershed this play. They were not going to moments in the career trajectories of allow filth of this kind to be composer Alan John and directors presented at the festival.” And they Benedict Andrews and Gale Edwards. didn’t. But White finally got his For John it was seeing Jim Sharman’s festival outing twenty years later production of Britten’s Death In when Jim Sharman programmed Venice (1980), for Andrews it was the Signal Driver, directed by Neil butoh company Sanjai Juku with Armfield.

Stage Whispers Books Visit our on-line book shop for back issues and stage craft books www.stagewhispers.com.au/books

30 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Anthony Steel, the Artistic Director of five festivals, also supplied an accurate assessment of Adelaide’s parochial attitudes in his essay when he juxtaposed an international critical quote alongside one from the Adelaide reviewers. Commenting on Merce Cunningham’s radical masterpiece Winterbranch, the New York Times said, “Winterbranch, one of Mr Cunningham’s great works and finest success de scandale…is… potent and mind-pulverizing.” The News, Adelaide, thought it was “As flat and dull as exposed concrete”.

Highly praised Belgian visual artist Jan Fabre’s four-and-a-half-hour piece The Power of Theatrical Madness had the Financial Times gushing - “An astonishing reaffirmation of the vitality of the European avant-garde theatre” but the Adelaide Advertiser claimed it was a “megapretentious piece of twaddle.”

One of the most successful streams of the festival has been the Writers’ Week, a talk-fest when literary icons provide insight into their craft. Participants through the years have included Alan Ginsburg, Anthony Burgess, Salman Rushdie, Isabel Allende, Margaret Attwood,

Fay Weldon, Peter Carey, David Malouf and Mem Fox. Artists’ Week has also been a significant attraction through the years. Large cutting-edge art installations have been mounted in every corner of the city and surrounds to spectacular effect. One of the most talked about was Christopher Hunt’s inspired idea of placing a giant inflatable horseshoe tube on the River Torrens, through which children could slip and slide, walking on water. A hit of the 1980 Festival, it was an introduction to theatre for many including the six and seven year old Annabel Crabb and Benedict Andrews.

Barry Kosky’s famed Berlin company Komische Opera combined forces with 1927 to present Mozart’s The Magic Flute (2019). Kosky has a long history with the festival, artistically directing the 1996 festival, creating the Red Square bar area, and directing the dramatic oratorio Saul, which opened the 2017 Festival.

Both Circus Oz and Bangarra Dance Company have the Adelaide Festival to thank for their beginnings.

Without its support, both companies would not have got off the ground.

Originally a biennial festival until

2012, but subsequently presented annually, the festival had Royal patronage in 1966 when HM Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother was patron.

The 2019 festival brought 19,046 visitors from interstate and overseas and cost a little over $18 million. As festival junkie Alan Brissenden says, it was “a far cry from the slightly more than 15,000 pounds ($26,921) that was the cost of the first in 1960.”

The Adelaide Festival is the largest arts festival in the southern hemisphere and quite rightly deserves Brett Sheehy’s description of it as the “jewel in the crown of Australia’s festivals.” As director Gale Edwards says, “There is no doubt in my mind that the Adelaide Festival of Arts set me on the path that has consumed, and fulfilled, my life’s journey.”

The book is filled with stunning full-colour images of the productions, and there’s even a separate chapter for William Yang’s superb photographic contribution. Editor Catherine McKinnon, and pictorial editors Sheree Tirrell and Colin Koch, have done a splendid job in the easyto-read layout which brings moments, fragments and memories vividly alive.

Online extras!

The Book Depository is offering 24% off RRP on this title. Scan or visit https://bit.ly/3dqymWP

John Bell (right) with other cast members of The Elizabethan Theatre Trust’s Henry V (1964).

Opposite page: Mem Fox (2013).

Photo: Shane Reid.

John Bell (right) with other cast members of Elizabethan Theatre Trust’s Henry V (1964).

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 31

Stage On Disc

By Peter Pinne

My Brilliant Career (Dean Bryant/Mathew Frank) (iTunes, Spotify) Miles Franklin’s iconic and revered literary masterpiece My Brilliant Career has been musicalised by the awardwinning composer/lyricist duo Mathew Frank and Dean Bryant, with an original cast recording released on all major streaming platforms. The album springs from the initial production of the musical, commissioned and developed in 2019 through the Jeanne Pratt Artists in Residence Program at Monash University. The coming-ofage story of Sybylla, a young woman in rural Australia a hundred years ago who wants to be a writer, and her fight for independence and the right to assert her own identity, pre-dates the 1970s feminist movement by seven decades, and she is an ideal character to burst into song.

Bryant and Frank have done a fine and intelligent adaptation of it. With a chamber musical feel, and an acoustic-guitar and piano heavy 7-piece group as backing, the score leans toward the contemporary musical theatre styles of Pasek and Paul and Jason Robert Brown.

The central character is a fierce sing and Luisa Scrofani has the vocal chops to deliver it: angry in “Life As We Know It”, as the farm is reduced to a dustbowl, stridently pushing her suitor away in “Good Enough” and tender in the finale, “Goodbye Letter”. But it’s the quiet and brooding songs that are the most touching - “In the Wrong Key”, when she compares herself to an out-of-tune piano, and the ¾ “In The Dark”, which probably has the most memorable melody in the score.

But although Scofani shines throughout, it is Andrew Coshan as Hal, the neighbouring farmer, who gives the best performance. His vocals are always truthful, with nice character interpretation. “Wait For You” is just lovely.

Likewise “Working My Way (back to your side)”, which tells of his life on the road herding cattle and cutting cane as he earns his fortune back so he can marry Sybylla as an honest man.

Alister Kingsley is a marvelously pompous Pom, earning laughs on “Brick”, with its retro 60s feel; Melanie Bird, as Sybylla’s rival Blanche, essays “Make a Success” as a pop dance number (a possible break-out song); Anne Wood is a wistful Grannie in “That Girl”, whilst Natalie O’Donnell’s mother is emotionally rewarding as she reflects

Online extras!

Download the cast recording of My Brilliant Career from Apple Music today. https://apple.co/2NlhuG7 32 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

on the past in “Mists of Avalon”, another of the score’s several pretty ¾ tunes.

James Simpson’s orchestrations superbly colour this delicate and distinguished score.  The Colour Orange (Oli Cameron/Sophia Roberts) (Apple Music, Spotify).

The Colour Orange is another new Australian musical getting a digital and a very limited hard copy release. The original cast 8-track recording is sub-titled “Australia’s First Pauline Hanson Musical”, but it’s not the first sketch to take the Mickey out of Ipswich’s most famous diva. With a score that oscillates between country, rockabilly, Latin and oom-pah-pah waltz, Hanson’s political career is encapsulated in songs like “Jesus Wasn’t Wrapped In Muslin”, “Straight Outta Ipswich” (her political career), “Let The Lass Take The Fall” (John Howard throwing her under the bus), “The Color Orange” (her gaol sentence) and “Dancing With the Stars” (being back in the media).

The vocals are un-named on the CD but they’re well sung, and the orchestrations by the composer are guitar and keyboard based, with occasional string work by violin and cello. The Colour Orange has had sell-out seasons at the Sydney and Adelaide Fringe and the Sydney Comedy Festival. Whether it has mainstage legs like its predecessors, Keating and Joh For PM, remains to be seen, but the piss-take is funny and sharp. 

Online extras!

Stream The Colour Orange cast recording on Spotify. Scan or visit https://spoti.fi/2YmBGxE John Raitt (Stage Door 2CD Set STAGE 9072) Stage Door continue their “Original Album Series” with this latest release of four studio albums recorded between 1955-1960 by one of Broadway’s greatest leading men, John Raitt.

The full-voiced baritone’s career crossed seven decades and encompassed every aspect of entertainment. He first came to notice when he played Billy Bigelow in the original production of Rodgers and

Online extras!

Purchase the John Raitt Original Album Series from Stage Door Records. https://bit.ly/2BzrmcY

Hammerstein’s Carousel in 1945, and later consolidated his Broadway career as Sid Sorokin in The Pajama Game.

The compilation release coincides with the 75th anniversary of Carousel opening on Broadway. Of most interest to show music devotees is Highlights of Broadway, which includes songs from Kiss Me, Kate (”So In Love”), Kismet (“Stranger In Paradise”), Brigadoon (“Almost Like Being In Love”), Mexican Hayride (“I Love You”) and Carousel (“Soliloquy”), recorded ten years after his original performance with the voice just as powerful and sure.

Mediterranean Magic features songs like “Amapola”, “Granada” and “Lady Of Spain”, whilst Under Open Skies has songs of the outdoors - Paint Your Wagon’s “They Call the Wind Maria” and Carousel’s “Blow High Blow Low”.

Songs the Kids Brought Home From Camp is a collection of campfire songs which include “Old McDonald”, “My Grandfather’s Clock” and, of all things, Percy French’s “Abdul A Bulbul Amir”. Bonus Tracks include a brassy blues beat of “The Gal That Got Away”, “Ebb Tide” and “Love Is a Many Splendoured Thing”.

This collection was put together with the assistance of Raitt’s daughter Bonnie, who carried on the family tradition and became one of the best female singer/ guitarists of the 70s and 80s. It’s a marvelous salute to her father, a legendary Broadway performer. 

Rating  Only for the enthusiast  Borderline  Worth buying  Must have  Kill for it

Back Together - Michael Ball & Alfie Boe (Decca 0829733 CD with bonus DVD-Video) This is the third album from these two vocal powerhouses, who keep touring the UK to sellout concerts with a mixture of musical theatre favourites and pop.

Starting with Pasek and Paul’s “The Greatest Show” (The Greatest Showman), this collection includes songs from The Phantom of The Opera (in which they have both starred - “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”), The Lion King (“Circle of Life”), Fiddler On The Roof (“Sunrise Sunset”), and a lot of pop - a “Queen Medley”, “Come Fly With Me” and “My Way”. There’s also Labi Siffre’s South African apartheid anthem “(Something Inside) So Strong”, Gene Pitney’s 60s hit “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart” and Dire Straits’ “Brothers In Arms” from Vaya Con Dios.

Once again it’s a winning combination. For thrilling tenor-tones, you can’t go past this album, which belongs in the musthave basket. 

Online extras!

Add Back Together to your Amazon shopping cart. Scan or visit https://amzn.to/3dwmN0k

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 33

Theatre In Isolation

The Boy From Oz

The original Australian cast of The Boy From Oz reunite virtually after 20 years for a performance of ‘I Go To Rio’. youtu.be/yhvg9sEdSTI

Performers And The Pandemic

With concerts, stage shows and film and TV production cancelled, Australian performers have found some novel, positive and hilarious ways to keep themselves working, and entertained. youtu.be/NFyp6B5GkNs

34 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 35

Showcase

Courses Adapt In Horror Year

They’ve had dancing lessons from teachers zoomed in from New York, reinvented classic radio plays, created a digital drama festival, chatted to interstate playwrights during rehearsal and even helped remote band members play in sync. David Spicer spoke to leading academics across Australia about the disappointments and triumphs of 2020.

Liz Hughes CEO of NIDA “Our full-time performing arts students are being taught online and we now deliver our creative short courses for the public Australia-wide via Zoom.

“The silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic - in terms of events, our June season of student productions has been reimagined as a Digital Festival for presentation in August. Six inspirational artists will lead neverseen-before online storytelling projects.

“Another significant online initiative is the hosting of In Conversation talks with industry leaders such as Joel Edgerton, Kate Mulvany, Shannon Murphy and Peter Sellars. Recordings of the talks are available at nida.edu.au/productions/ in-conversation.

“The downside of the pandemic for NIDA as a not-for-profit has been financial. NIDA generates a large amount of its own revenue - in 2020, we expected to self-generate 67% of our operating budget. From midMarch, much of our revenue from the delivery of our face-to-face short courses and our venue hire halted.”

36 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Professor Paul Sabey Griffith University “We made our acting students (perform) in-house and cancelled our main show in August. Fortunately, third musical theatre students commenced in January and we got a full season of the Elegies Song Cycle on in March.

“The hardest thing for final year students is graduating into a business that they don’t see. We know it will recover stronger.

“Going online is challenging but rewarding. Students say how much they have grown in their own time at home. I miss the ability to work with someone in the rehearsal room where students can show their personality off - some of that can disappear on-line.

(Stage) actors also require applause.

“Instead of students flying down to Sydney or Melbourne, we have brought the industry to them. People like Lucy Durack and Michael Cassell have spoken to them. Many have said that students are in the best place, still training. They are not sitting at home waiting for the world to recover.”

Tyran Parke Head of Music Theatre, Victorian College of the Arts “We have encouraged students to approach this period as the artists they want to be in their lives. Artists always have ‘one foot in the unknown’ so we are using it as a time to exercise the muscle that is ‘courage’.

“The biggest changes have been in breaking down our borders to national and international practitioners. I figure, if I can teach the students from home, then so can the best practitioners in the world!

“We capitalised on our international connections to engage an entire staff of teachers, all people of colour, all working on Broadway or the West End. Weekly classes have included Argentinian Tango, Rap, Hip Hop, Gospel, Mambo etc. It has been a remarkable addition to our program.

“In addition, our wonderful donors started an ‘American Songbook in Isolation’ competition that connected our graduates and students, and which was ultimately judged and presented by the remarkable, Michael Feinstein. None of this would have been done, if it were not for COVID19.”

Travis Jenkins Jazz Music Institute “The lockdown inhibited our ability to engage musically with one another with a full connectedness to 'the moment'.

“Just as one loses the luxury of body language when speaking over the phone, or vocal inflection when by text, without being able to be play music in the same room, or at the same time, the conversation becomes like a letter, or an email, and the interplay loses its immediacy.

“After searching even the sketchiest nether-realms of the internet for capable software that does more than just claim to be able to minimalize internet lag, the depressing reality is that even if these programs, occasionally, perform as well as they claim, we are still doomed by the calamity that is the NBN. “When performance classes were postponed, I managed to convert much of the learning outcomes to having more of a 'studio performance' focus and practiced repertoire by using a browser called ‘Bandlab’.

“Each musician workshops the arrangement of their chosen repertoire in Bandlab before confirming their full, unedited live takes and recording to be mixed by myself. They each then received a backing track with their part muted, to be performed as their final "Ensemble" recital.

“Since restrictions have eased, most things have been able to happen on campus. Having been thrust into a more technologically involved experience, I have realised that a lot of content can be delivered quite quickly and effectively online. This was enlightening for future course design/ curriculum.

applicants it is a huge effort of organisation. “(The pandemic) forced us to develop a greater understanding of technology and its possible uses for teaching. I have been excited to see the amount of creative work happening because of people’s isolation, and to be reminded, if we needed to be, of the astonishing amount of talent Australia has. The response of the ‘Scomo’ government to the arts community has been deeply insulting, but not exactly surprising.”

Associate Professor Kim Durban Program Coordinator, Bachelor of Performing Arts, Federation University Arts Academy “I am rehearsing an Australian play about bushfire called Embers by Campion Decent. The live component of rehearsal has moved online. We experienced some problems with technology, but overall it has been amazing. I focussed on similar activities to those I always do at the commencement of a play, especially text analysis and character work. This has worked well, with the set designer adding visual images for us to feed from. The actors are also developing and refining their skills.

“The capacity to collaborate across distance (has meant) the playwright was able to visit rehearsals with a key stroke, even though he lives in Sydney.

The capacity to speak and work online and get simultaneous chat streams going has deepened our skill to reflect and capture everyone's ideas.”

Dean Carey Actors Centre Australia “We had to cancel all our public courses and taught students on-line in the first trimester. 4th year students David King have had their course extended until Head of Music Theatre at WAAPA December. Staff and students have “We’ve had to cancel productions been extremely productive and and move as much teaching as achieved so much whilst online. Their possible online. It’s disappointing for creativity and flexibility is of the the students but, on the whole, highest order. they’ve given it a good go. Their “(However) I, like so many, am understanding of technology has been extremely concerned about the a great help. industry and about its members.

“The audition process will (also) Social distancing will remain until a largely happen online. With 400 plus vaccine is found. How will smaller

theatres survive with drastically reduced capacities? Griffin? Belvoir?

Old Fitz? Hayes? Eternity? Full houses may well be a thing of the past for a long, long time to come. Online will never replace LIVE. Artists have adapted and taken to the online platform but how long can that last and how long will audiences remain viewing online?”

Kim MacKenzie Central Queensland University “Term 1 was converted to fully online delivery, with students engaging through Zoom tutorials in all their practical and theoretical classes.

This included dance, singing, acting and technical theatre studies. Students and lecturers alike embraced new and innovative ways to further the performing arts training of students.

Term 2 will see a return to face to face teaching.

“One of the big positives to come out of this has been that students have had more time to devote to their studies and have been more creative in devising work that suits the medium of online performance.

“The Term 1 main stage production was shifted totally online.

Under the direction of independent filmmaker Akos Armont, the Bachelor of Theatre students live-streamed an online, immersive production over three consecutive evenings in June “After grappling with Orson Welles’ famous radio play The War of the Worlds, the team has created an original, innovative work, War in our World, in response to COVID-19. It was live-streamed on the CQCM Facebook page and can be watched at https://bit.ly/2BrKcT7 Associate Professor Rick Chew Director, Federation University Arts Academy “Our production courses have been postponed until we are able to transition back to on-campus study.

Other students are developing in terms of self-directed study and resilience. In moving online, we’ve also created a wonderful library of music theatre backing tracks, which will be an invaluable teaching tool for years to come.” www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 37

After graduating from Federation University’s Arts Academy in 2006, Josh performed in the UK’s touring Showcase production of Hairspray and won the Green Room Award for Best Supporting Actor in Cats.

“Every time I have the opportunity to step on stage it is very special but shows like West Side Story and Beautiful The Carole King Musical hold unique places in my heart.

As does singing ‘Nessun Dorma’ last year at the Sydney Opera House for Australia Day Live,” Josh said Arts Academy Director Dr Rick Chew, who is based at the Camp Street Campus which is home to Performing Arts students, said Federation University was extremely proud to count Josh amongst its alumni.

“Josh is an exceptional talent. He is extremely versatile, as is evidenced by his ability to cross into operatic territory and be equally at home in the mainstream and cutting edge of music theatre,” Dr Chew said.

“I think Josh made the most of the training he received at the Arts Academy. As he says himself, “It’s pretty simple. If it wasn’t for my time at the Arts Academy, the detail of the teaching methods and the work ethic it instilled in me, I wouldn’t be enjoying the career I’ve had over the past 12 years.”

Josh’s other stage credits include West Side Story, Blood Brothers, An Officer and a Gentleman, Grease 2 and Kismet. In 2018, Josh released his debut album which went number #1 on both the Aria and iTunes charts in Australia.

The Bachelor of Performing Arts degree at Federation University’s Arts Academy has proved popular among contemporary performers, providing a strong foundation for a career on the stage or screen. The course provides students with the opportunity to work alongside leading industry professionals: theatre directors, music theatre Josh Piterman has become performers, screen actors, composers, musical renowned for his musical directors, designers and choreographers. talents on the world stage since A popular recent event for current students was a graduating from Federation University. zoom session with Josh.

The Arts Academy has adapted well to the changing Last year, Josh landed the title role in The Phantom of environment we live in today and continues to link the Opera, making his West End debut, his greatest career students to leading industry professionals and other achievement so far. opportunities online.

“This has been my dream role since I can remember. It is like nothing else. It is so rich, so full of depth and such a thrill to sing. Add to that the fact that I was performing on the same stage, in the same theatre, with the same set that Michael Crawford used when the show opened back in 1986, it is very special. I’m constantly pinching myself,” Josh said.

“The audition process for the role of The Phantom was very rigorous and nerve racking, just as you would expect for a big audition. The creative team was very clear in what they wanted. I had to take on their direction as best as I could in the heat of the moment and remember everything they had said, bringing the character to life more and more in each call back.”

For more information visit Josh Piterman and Kelly Mathieson in The West End production of The Phantom Of The Opera (2019).

Photo: Manuel Harlan.

federation.edu.au/arts-academy 38 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 39

40 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

CQUniversity Triple Threat Zooms Ahead

Showcase

His colourful career has already taken him to Hollywood and New York City, and Australian performer Sean Miguel Perez is proof that skills can pay the bills in showbiz.

The CQUniversity Bachelor of Music graduate has spent a busy decade in Australia’s entertainment industry, following a three-year degree that honed his talents for acting, singing and dance.

Mr Perez said the diverse course, based at CQUni’s Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music (CQCM) and available face-to-face and online, meant he graduated ready for the competitive entertainment world.

“One unit I loved was screen acting, and every week we’d focus on a different kind of acting - monologues, commercials, kids tv, drama, everything!” Mr Perez explained.

“That helped me a lot, because each week was like an audition scenario, and once I was going to real auditions, I always felt comfortable and prepared.”

Formerly a competitive Latin and ballroom dancer, Mr Perez said he began his degree with a dance focus, before realising the importance of developing diverse skills.

“My dream was to be on Broadway, and the course really helped me to broaden that out to a triple-threat sort of deal - dance, and singing, and acting!” he explained.

“The course was structured around putting on stage shows. Every show we had to audition in front of our lecturers with a guest director, and bring in a resume and headshots, and basically have the full nervous experience!”

Since graduating, Mr Perez has had a wide range of stage roles, as well as TV appearances on ABC’s The Unlisted and SBS’s Deep Water, and with Network Ten’s 2012 reality TV drag queen talent show I Will Survive.

The Sydney-based actor has also made it on the big screen in award-winning Australian films What If It Works alongside Brooke Satchwell, and musical film On Hold.

Last year, Mr Perez was proud to celebrate his Filipino heritage on stage in Sydney, in the world premiere of the Filipino musical Noli Me Tangere.

Mr Perez is also focused on the other side of entertainment, working in a talent agency to support other artists.

The move has inspired his creative work - in 2018 he directed, produced, cast and co-edited web series Busy

CQUniversity Bachelor of Music graduate Sean Miguel Perez.

For more information about theatre, music and arts courses at CQUniversity, including audition dates for courses commencing Term 1, 2021, visit cqu.edu.au/auditions As Usual, while starring as the central character, a talent agent.

In February this year the series screened at the Winter Film Awards International Film Festival in New York City, after winning the “under $1000” category at the 2018 Web Series Festival.

Mr Perez travelled to the US for the event, and he’s also made multiple trips to Los Angeles for successful auditions.

While COVID-19 restrictions have effectively shut down the global entertainment industry for now, Mr Perez is staying busy, using Zoom to develop new projects with his clients, and to support the next generation of Australian performers.

“We all know it’s ‘show business’, but when you’re starting out so many people forget about the business side of things,” he explained.

“So I regularly do Zoom lectures with CQUni’s music and theatre students, and with performing arts schools around Australia, to help them take a business approach to the industry, as well as perfecting their craft.” www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 41

All

Lachie Alexander.

Online extras!

Join Lachie and the JMI faculty for a sultry jazz showcase performance. https://youtu.be/m_mxvB6kEMg 42 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

I remember the exact moment I knew that I was going to do jazz for the rest of my life. I was scrolling through Spotify for something to listen to, and then remembered that my teacher recommended ‘Autumn Leaves’ played by Cannonball Adderley on the album Somethin’ Else.

The moment I heard Miles and Cannonball playing together with that band - that was it really.

I decided in Grade 7 to go to university for music. I was so excited that I could do something like that after high school.

I auditioned for other places and studied French at another university but in 2017 I was told about JMI by some friends of mine and decided to audition. My main goal was to just play music at university but JMI introduced me to more than I could’ve imagined. At JMI you can’t help but leave every day with even more passion for it than the day before.

There’s nothing like learning from the best in the business.

The best part of the course is the principal study sessions, because the musicians teaching at JMI are some of the best jazz players in Australia.

I still walk through the halls and get nervous because one of my favourite jazz singers, Kristin Berardi, is just down the hallway teaching at JMI! I feel like I really have the hang of getting the most out of my one on one lessons as well and I’m improving faster than I ever have.

That Jazz

Showcase

Saxophone player Lachie Alexander remembers the exact moment he knew he was going to play jazz for the rest of this life. Now in his third year of a Bachelor of Music course at the Jazz Music Institute (JMI), he explains that his passion for the saxophone has only grown over time.

What keeps Lachie motivated?

I am learning John Coltrane’s solo on ‘My Shining Hour’ and Johnny Griffin’s on ‘Rhythmn-a-ning’ -two very intense players and for very different reasons - so I’m having a lot of fun broadening my playing by adopting their different techniques.

I’m training myself to be able to concentrate for longer so I can get more out of my practice. Last week I went on a “dopamine detox” - that means for an entire week all I let

myself do was practice, read, eat and maybe go for a walk. It was really hard but I’ve improved my focus and willingness to practice.

What are his goals for the future?

By the end of my degree, my goal is to learn how to effectively teach myself because I won’t have an amazing tutor every week forever, and I really think I’m getting close to being able to do that at a professional standard.

What makes studying at JMI so appealing for Lachie?

The community is so tight. You can get so much out of the course and you will join the JMI family. I’ve discovered so much because everyone is constantly finding new things to work and listen to.

I really do view it as a family because even when you’ve graduated you are still connected to this tight jazz loving community that is JMI.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 43

Spring Awakening.

Showcase

Adelaide’s Musical Milestone

Take your Music Theatre career to the next level.

Register at bit.ly/UOA_MT Audition Dates Adelaide - September 24 & 25 Sydney - October 17 Perth - October 23 Brisbane - November 1 Melbourne - November 8 Adelaide - November 26 & 27

preparing for The Addams Family - a glitzy-gloomy musical in which the quick and the dead are equally full of character.

The University of Adelaide’s collaboration with the iconic Adelaide Festival Centre and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival continues, with The Cabaret Project to be performed during the 2021 season. As well as performances in the festival, this partnership allows all University of Adelaide Music Theatre students access to performances throughout the festival.

This will be followed by the spectacular Graduating Showcase in November, productions of songs and scenes by first year students, and a musical presented by second year students.

It’s a busy and exhilarating ride for students with a passion for performance. George Torbay explains: “This unique degree provides students with the complete music theatre experience. The intensive skills -development program is industryOnline extras! focused and designed not just to See how Music Theatre students equip students with the three continued studying during lockdown. principal disciplines of singing, acting https://youtu.be/dukjcLvUUko and dancing, but also in creating theatre. At Adelaide, we are interested in the complete, unique Head of Music Theatre at the University of Adelaide, George and passionate performer who is at Torbay, is gearing up for the first group of Music Theatre home on the main-stage, students to graduate in 2021. commanding in the marvellous cabaret world and ready to tackle While 2020 has seen the versatile students back on campus for a return myriad of theatre-related tasks open students adapt to an online learning to face-to-face teaching. to the talented and committed environment, their second major Six major productions are in the professional.” dance space on campus is nearing works for 2021, including jukebox George is always on the look-out completion. The new state-of-the-art musical romantic comedy Mamma for talent. If you have the drive and studio will complement the existing Mia! performed in the University’s the giddy-up to train in voice, dance dance space in the University of own Scott Theatre, as the jewel in the and theatre, register for an audition in Adelaide Union Building. George is your nearest Australian capital city crown graduation production. Third looking forward to welcoming year students will also be busy now.

44 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 45

46 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Music Theatre ‘Star-Maker’ Queenie van de Zandt began her career 32 years ago.

Her success in musical theatre has ranged from lead roles in blockbuster musicals - including King Kong - to creating hilarious cabaret characters such as Jan van de Stool. Alongside her performance career, she has also been teaching for 20 years and in 2015 she created the Australian Musical Theatre Academy (AMTA).

The school’s focus is on marrying acting and singing techniques, creating authentic and unique musical performance, teaching Queenie’s unique audition practice, and developing the careers of creative artists.

“We do this through courses, workshops and masterclasses where students are coached, taught and mentored by the leading creative artists who are shaping live theatre today,” says Queenie.

“What sets AMTA apart is not only the quality of our industry professional teachers and mentors, but also the success rate of our alumni.”

AMTA’s former students have played lead roles in shows such as Shrek, Ragtime, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Come from Away, Book of Mormon, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Pricilla: Queen of the Desert, The Rocky Horror Show, The Sound of Music, Grease, Matilda, Singin’ in the Rain and Les Misérables. It is the success of AMTA’s students that has seen Queenie hailed in the press as a ‘musical theatre star-maker’.

Another unique aspect of AMTA is that their workshops, courses and masterclasses run out of a variety of venues across Australia and internationally.

So when COVID-19 hit, they were well placed to move their courses online. Moving forward, AMTA is re-

Showcase Queenie van de Zandt.

Online extras!

Find out all that AMTA has to offer.

Scan the QR code or visit https://youtu.be/CEAcUggRbGk modelling its classes in musical theatre performance, career development, audition technique and creating cabaret, to work online as well as face to face.

“Although this COVID-19 period is hugely challenging for us all in the arts, being creative artists, we actually have great skills in innovation, imagination and going where no one has gone before,” says Queenie. “At AMTA we are already finding new ways to help our students combine their talent and tenacity with our training. We look forward to continuing to help them find their path to living creative, passionate and fulfilling lives.”

Get info on AMTA’s online courses at amta.net.au or email queenie@amta.net.au www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 47

The Importance Of Versatility Lyn Pelgrave, the Principal of the Academy of Dance and Musical Theatre in Brisbane, explains why performers need to be masters of a variety of performance styles.

Versality, by definition, is the ability to adapt or be adaptable. For musical theatre performers this means possessing and developing skills in a range of techniques. It is not enough to be a master in just one style of dance or singing, as performers are frequently asked and expected to be across multiple genres and step out of their comfort zone.

The necessity of musicality, rhythm, choreographic and dance versatility and the ability to develop characters all stems and grows from solid foundation training over a variety of genres. As a musical theatre performer, it is important to develop this wide range of skills and knowledge to be an adaptable, versatile and confident performer.

From auditions to the final curtain, anything can happen in live theatre and it is important to be able to think

on your feet, act fast and troubleshoot on the fly.

The ability to harness your existing skills and talents, which in turn help you as a performer grow and develop into a professional working artist, can be achieved with performance-based learning. Having industry professional teachers and guest artists offering holistic training methods helps you grow the wide range of skills and talents you need to become industry ready. The moment you place limitations on yourself and minimise your styles, you close off a whole range of opportunities.

So where can you go to get the training you need? For most musical theatre performers, their dance and singing training begins at an early age. By the time they reach upper secondary school, students can commence more focused studies

Heathers.

Photo: Paul Stone.

48 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

made available by the Creative Arts & Cultural Training package. There are many RTO’s (Registered Training Organisations) equipped to deliver courses available under this package.

For example, the Academy of Dance and Musical Theatre Brisbane and Australian Teachers of Dancing ATOD (31624) are training students in dance and musical theatre courses towards a variety of vocational qualifications. These courses are remarkable for young students who wish to enhance their employability skills in these areas or are looking to change their career path and add to their professional skill set.

CUA30113 Certificate III in Dance is a fantastic starting position, however if prior training has been completed recognition can be given for senior students to enter a CUA40113 Certificate IV in Dance or CUA40513 Certificate IV in Musical Theatre with results and qualifications achieved crediting points towards your ATAR score. One of the most attractive features of studying through the vocational education system is its flexible learning options.  Complete over 12 months fulltime during a gap year to extend your training and work towards advancing your skill set to gain university entry requirements.  Study over 18 - 24 months alongside schooling or work.  Self-paced completed over a period of up to 2 years.

Completing formal training contributes to the versatility in handling a range of different styles / genres. This will make a student more employable and marketable as a musical theatre professional. Through studying with ADMT or a similar institution, a student will develop focus, dedication and lifelong skills that will serve in all avenues of a future career in the performing arts.

For course and enrolment information, visit admt.com.au or call (07) 3195 7086.

Drama At The National Theatre School

Showcase Photo: Sarah Walker.

The National Theatre Drama School is one of Melbourne’s oldest training institutions and has produced a number of prolific actors including Kat Stewart (Offspring, Mr & Mrs Murder, City Homicide), Esther Hannaford (Beautiful, King Kong), Bella Heathcote (Dark Shadows, Pride Prejudice and Zombies) and Lawrence Mooney (The Cup, Winners and Losers, Dirty Laundry Live) just to name a few.

The National Theatre Drama School boasts purposebuilt studios and its own heritage 800 seat theatre, and focuses on training emerging actors in stage and screen, preparing them for professional careers in the industry.

One of the school’s most recent successes, Harvey Zielinski, shares his experiences as a transgender actor in the industry: “Three days after my graduating showcase, I was lucky enough to be cast in Taylor Mac's Hir at Red Stitch Actors' Theatre, directed by Daniel Clarke. A month later I was made the Red Stitch Actors' Theatre graduate ensemble member for 2018, so I spent my whole first year out of drama school working in shows at Red Stitch.”

He now will now be starring in the new Hollywood series Don’t Look Deeper, directed by Catherine Harwick.

His advice to emerging actors is to “be prepared to work really hard but also maintain balance. Don't forget the other things you love. Don't forget why you love acting either, when the industry/business side of it takes over at times. Have fun in your work, always. Remember to be your version of the role, not other people’s.”

Current student Monica Reid notes that The National Theatre Drama School is unique in its approach to each individual student, “it is not a one size fits all, ‘cookie cutter’ kind of course! I was drawn to the course for the small cohort size, the emphasis on devised theatre and the significant amount of film and television units in second and third year.”

Roz Hammond (Muriel’s Wedding, The Librarians, The Heights) has been teaching Screen Acting at The National Theatre and loves sharing key skills when it comes to working the camera. “I think many young actors do not realise the discipline involved in screen acting. There are many technical requirements - hitting marks, continuity, lots of line learning in a short amount of time, and a lot of repetition.”

Third year student Konstantina Samartzis notes how the course has challenged her ability to be vulnerable.

“For me it is something that I’ve really needed to encourage and nurture. The course has allowed me to examine the guards that I had put up as an actor and has

For course, audition and enrolment details, visit nationaltheatre.org.au/drama or call (03) 9534 0223 given me many tools and techniques to shift them. The great thing about the course is that not only has it equipped me with the relevant skills to do so, it has given me the opportunity to meet other like-minded artists, many of whom I hope to create work with once we graduate.”

Trent Baker, Director of Drama at the school, said that what makes the school unique is its focus on creating real life on the stage and for the screen, not an approximation of life. “Actors need the freedom to inhabit every moment they are performing, to respond to their fellow performers, their environment and themselves truthfully.

To truly live and breathe a part.” This was aided by teachers who are working professionally in the industry and are also highly sought after teachers in their respective fields.

The National Theatre Drama School offers a number of courses ranging from introductory short courses such as the Foundation in Acting, which runs for 6 months part time, all the way through to the 3 year full time professional training course - the Advanced Diploma in Acting. Auditions are now open for 2020 and 2021 with VET Fee Help available for eligible students. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 49

Applications to audition for NASDA’s 2021 intake close on August 30.

Advertising Feature

To learn more visit ara.ac.nz

If you’re a keen theatre goer, or you love locally produced film and TV, chances are you’ve been wowed many times over by talented graduates of the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art (NASDA).

Across New Zealand and around the world, NASDA-trained performers can be found singing, dancing, acting and producing to great acclaim.

NASDA’s reputation for producing exceptional graduates means the demand among aspiring performers for places on its Bachelor of Performing Arts is strong, year after year. The threeyear programme at Ara Institute of Canterbury not only hones students’ performance skills but also equips them with the ability to sustain a career in this highly competitive field.

One of the main attractions of the degree is the amount of realworld performance experience students gain. NASDA puts on several plays, musicals and revues a 50 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Court Theatre is the largest performing arts company in Christchurch. For our students to engage with a full-time working theatre company through such a year. Recently, Ara signed a threecomprehensive partnership is an year partnership with The Court opportunity that we believe sets Theatre in Christchurch, creating NASDA apart from any other even more opportunities for NASDA performing arts programme in students to broaden their Aotearoa.” experience and gain exposure at a The calibre of NASDA’s teaching professional level. staff is another reason why NASDA NASDA’s manager Andrew Snell at Ara is considered one of the top says the new, formal partnership places to train for a career in the with The Court Theatre bridges the performing arts. Staff not only gap between the educational bring a depth and breadth of environment and the real world of experience and expertise, but a the arts industry. passion for ensuring students “Ara prides itself on its succeed in their careers. connections to industry and The

Online extras!

Discover the amazing facilities, tutors and training opportunities on a student-led virtual tour of NASDA https://youtu.be/sKf--LyJhMs

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 51

If At First You Don’t Succeed Beth Keehn reports on the journeys of three alumni of the Queensland Conservatorium at Griffith University in Brisbane who, despite missing out at their initial auditions, have gone on to professional success.

Georgina Hopson.

Photo: Andrew Raszevski.

Georgina Hopson

The journey so far: Georgina comes from a family of doctors, but fell in love with MGM musicals. Since graduating in 2014, her appearances have included Ragtime (The Production Company) and My Fair Lady (Opera Australia and John Frost). Georgina was due to star in The Secret Garden in 2020.

On study: “Before I found out about The Con [Queensland Conservatorium], I was studying Business. But, after a twoweek a summer school in musical theatre, I decided to audition for the Con and Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) - I didn’t get in. But it was a blessing in disguise - in the interim year I worked hard on my acting, singing and dancing, and I was lucky to receive an offer the following year.

“I’m grateful to have played piano violin and cello growing up - the discipline and theory skills are so valuable. Even the business study was helpful: as a performer, you’ve got to market yourself.

“We had a rich education from a range of great teachers who continue to be mentors today. In the final year there were opportunities to perform at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC). Plus, I made friends for life!”

Career high points so far: “Meeting Dame Julie Andrews, and hearing Anthony Warlow sing at the media launch for The Secret Garden. Magic!”

Words of wisdom: “Be disciplined, be humble, be passionate and be true to yourself, everyone’s journey is unique.”

Fave stage musical? “Once on This Island - I cried from start to finish.”

Shubshri Kandiah

Shubshri Kandiah as Princess Jasmine in the 2019 Singapore production of Disney’s Aladdin.

Photo: James Green.

52 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

The journey so far: Shubshri made her professional debut straight out of university in 2017, playing the lead in Disney’s Aladdin - The Musical.

She was due to start in Everybody’s Talking about Jamie, when the show’s tour was cancelled (hopefully postponed) during the lockdown.

On study: “I got so much out of the course and I learnt a lot about myself, moving away from home. I had such wonderful teachers, who could get the best out of me.”

Career high points so far: “Making my professional debut in Aladdin.

Also, Griffith’s close connection with QPAC gave me the opportunity to perform with Liz Callaway - one of my biggest singing idols.”

Words of wisdom: “If you find something you are passionate about keep trying. Also, it’s easy to work on things you are good at, but pushing yourself in areas that need improvement will make you a better performer.”

Fave stage musical? “Once on This Island - it was such a cool mash together of lots of things I love.”

Vidya Makan The journey so far: Vidya always wanted to be a football player. At 15 she completed a training program with Manchester United in the UK. To celebrate, her Dad took her out to see Wicked - and that was it. Since graduating in 2015, Vidya’s performances have included Green Day’s American Idiot (Shake and Stir) and Merrily we Roll Along (Watch This).

She finished the Sydney run of Six in March 2020.

On study: “I always loved music, but my dream was to play soccer and perhaps be in the orchestra pit! But, after seeing Wicked, I decided to audition at Griffith. I didn’t get in - but it was probably the best thing that happened. I went to an acting school for a year and auditioned at Griffith again, and got in. The course gave me discipline, craft and technique, and the knowledge that you have to love what you do - not just performing on stage or the curtain call - the rehearsal process too.”

Career high points so far: “Writing and composing my own material made me realise what I wanted to say - that changed the energy I brought into the audition room.

“I was lucky to book my first pro show - Hairspray - when I was in third year. But the smaller independent shows led to my role in Six - which is seriously an electric experience.”

Words of wisdom: “Be yourself - that confidence is important. And don’t forget it’s a team job - those support networks will get you through.”

Fave stage musical? “Barbara and the Campdogs - I laughed and cried the whole way through!”

Showcase Vidya Makan.

Photo: Andrew Raszevski

Find your place on the world stage at Griffith University. Visit griffith.edu.au/music

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 53

Venice Inspires Physical Theatre

Online extras!

Check out a trailer for Make A Scene’s Pinocchio. Scan the QR code or visit https://vimeo.com/282116338 54 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Stage Whispers chats to Rosa Campagnaro, the founder and director of Make A Scene, a theatre arts education company specialising in Commedia dell’Arte performances and training in schools.

Stage Whispers: How did Make A Scene start?

Rosa Campagnaro: I was inspired to start the company in 2003 while visiting Venice, my father’s hometown.

I stumbled across Venezia InScena, a school dedicated to Commedia dell’Arte, and here my passion began.

The training continued with Norman Taylor (Jacques Lecoq technique) and Giovanni Fusetti (Bouffon) - teachers who have greatly influenced my approach to theatre training and performance.

SW: How are you coping in 2020?

RC: It’s actually our 10th year anniversary and despite the challenges we’re facing as a result of COVID-19, we still have lots to celebrate: incursions to hundreds of schools, a company of super talented performers and two published plays through Currency Press. We may be in iso but we’re using the time for inspo getting ready to take off once restrictions lift. In the meantime, we’ve been busily creating teachers’ resources and the word on the street is - they’re pretty fabulous! (see testimonial) SW: Can you explain how incursions support learning?

RC: Our shows and workshops tick all the boxes for commedia: exaggerated stylised physical comedy, audience interaction, improvisation and use of mask. Students experience performances with high production values by skilled professional actors - it is accessible, inspiring and encourages students to try it out themselves.

SW: Tell us a little about your solo adaptation of Collodi’s Pinocchio.

RC: We are proud of this show that features commedia conventions and masks. A fantastic team brought their expertise to develop this magical piece, with original music and a whimsical interactive set. The show works for

Find teachers resources, workshop info, and tour dates at makeascene.com.au info@makeascene.com.au primary and secondary students - with lessons on empathy and resilience, and for older levels - lots to analyse about the creative playmaking process.

SW: How do the performances apply across the school curriculum?

RC: The skills learned through commedia are transferable to other styles and there are opportunities for cross-curricular learning and groupbased projects: studying and making masks in Art; looking at the style and culture in History; or learning the Italian language through visual storytelling and gesture. In English, students can write commedia playscripts they’ve developed through improvisation, or study the choreography of commedia as a form of Dance. We’re also all about supporting teachers with professional learning sessions, our publications and teachers’ resources.

Showcase This image and opposite page: Jasper Foley in Make A Scene’s Pinocchio.

Photo: Lisa Businovski.

“I purchased the digital pack for $60 and I can't rave enough.

The package has links to professional clips by the actors showing individual physical offers based on the lesson plan. It is well laid out into 14 lessons... that is less than $5 a lesson ready to go, with questions, clips, activities, and deep contextual knowledge. I am supporting my students learning and a small independent theatre company.”

- Andrew Benson (Newtown High School for the Performing Arts)

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 55

Showcase

NIDA’s First Virtual Open Day

NIDA 2nd year student production of Twelfth Night, or What You Will(2019).

Photo: Lisa Tomasetti.

Online extras!

Watch an extract from Twelfth Night or What You Will. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/tfiAsE3IsMM 56 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

NIDA held its first Virtual Open Day in June, enticing nearly 1500 registrations from people across Australia and internationally, keen to get a taste of what it could be like to be a student in 2021.

Highlights are also available of the annual Festival of Emerging Artists that features fully staged productions led by student creative teams.

If you missed a session of interest, students who have graduated and are There’s also 10-episode web series all the videos, alumni talks and now in the workforce. called How I Got Into NIDA, featuring student projects are available for Under the videos tab on each students and alumni discussing their catch-up viewing. course page is an Open Day Zoom top tips for auditions, portfolio tips, The information is available at presentation, as well as videos about and how to focus on and prepare nida.edu.au/productions/Open-Day Masterworks and tours of the your application.

Recommended for a first look is a workshops in Kensington.

If you’re interested in applying, digital ebook - the NIDA Course Under Student Life, click on the click on the application guide for Guide 2021. This details all the Master SCON campus walkthrough and see 2021. of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts and more of the facilities at the Kensington Campus.

Diploma courses on offer.

Applications to study at NIDA in Next, dig deeper and select a Click on the student productions 2021 open on July 6 and close course video. Course leaders and tab and enjoy an extract from NIDA’s 2019 production of Twelfth Night, or students explain what each course on September 30. Visit contains and the experience of What You Will, directed by Jim apply.nida.edu.au Sharman.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 57

58 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Photo: Stephen Weir.

Showcase

Class Of 2020 Year 12 students Charlie Dakin, Prudence Dallen and Adam Watt describe what they enjoy about attending the Australian Performing Arts Grammar School in Sydney.

2021 enrolments are now open. Visit apgs.nsw.edu.au Charlie: I love the networking having industry professionals come in and learning from their experience helps us figure out what should be the next step for us going forward and the best way to tackle a performing arts career.

Prudie: I found - talking to people from other schools - people didn’t take subjects like Drama seriously. I wanted to be surrounded by other students who really wanted to learn and shared my passion for the subject.

Adam: I enjoy being around likeminded people who have similar aspirations and being able to collaborate with people who have different ideas; being at a performing arts high school I have the opportunity to do that all the time.

What are the advantages of studying at a performing arts school for your final years of high school?

Charlie: There is definitely an advantage for creative subjects and that has been a big help for developing my Drama major work. The art course here is also really intensive. I’ve had the opportunity to do film making as a PA elective and I’m now making a film for my Visual Arts major work.

Prudie: APGS brings in professionals to run the performing arts classes. Our academic teachers are passionate about the arts and they know how to help you achieve the marks you want in the HSC. Adam: Our teachers for our arts based academic courses have experience in the industry - it helps us to understand how all the things we are learning about will be put in to practice.

For example, we have a self-devised choreography PA class - we learn the choreographic process and come up with movement banks that are useful for choreographing our dance major works.

What area of the arts are you most passionate about?

Charlie: Acting has always been my passion in life. Recently, upon meeting people here who are talented musicians, I’ve dabbled in that and tried my hand at a few other things.

Prudie: When I first came to APGS Drama was the only performing arts subject that I did but I have been really enjoying Visual Arts lately. I just picked it up because I needed another subject but then I ended up finding it really fun.

Adam: I do a bit of everything: Dance, Drama, Music and I am

passionate about all of them in different ways. For example, for Drama I’m passionate about directing, in Dance it’s choreography, and in Music I love bringing people together and working with an ensemble.

What are your plans for next year and for the future?

Charlie: I want to spend a year working and building up some money and be ready for uni when I do go. So next year I’ll do some auditioning and working, and I’ll apply to various universities for admission in 2022. I’m keen on doing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting, possibly at QUT. Prudie: I’m looking at uni’s like WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) and also looking at scholarships in America to study Drama over there.

Adam: I definitely want to continue performing. I think I’d love to start putting together my own thing, a dance or drama performance. I’ve already made some great connections at APGS. Our performing arts tutors are all active in the industry, so they have really helped nurture the idea of breaking out on my own and creating my own thing. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 59

MTI High School Editions

Music Theatre International is releasing high school editions of many of the classic musicals it represents.

MTI High School Editions include resources to assist teachers, including director’s scripts, reference recordings, Rehearscore App and fully orchestrated backing tracks.

Titles include school editions of Les MisĂŠrables, Rent, West Side Story, Miss Saigon, Aida, Avenue Q, Ragtime and Sweeney Todd.

A new release for MTI is Oliver!

JR. This spirited 60-minute version of the Golden Age musical introduces a new generation to Oliver Twist, Fagan, the Artful Dodger, Nancy, and other cherished characters.

As with every Broadway Junior show, there is a role for everyone to join in on the fun.

Oliver! JR.

Teacher Resources Australian Plays has launched a new resource to help teachers integrate the performance or study of locally written works into the school curriculum.

Each script and the accompanying activities are designed as a mini unit of work or series of lessons for students.

The on-line resource suggests monologues, duologues or scenes for

students to perform and be assessed on. There are also ways for students to consider the design element of theatre, interviews with playwrights and production trailers.

Masquerade.

60 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

One of ten works featured is Masquerade by Kate Mulvany, based on the book by Kit Williams.

The resources analyse the themes of love, courage, mortality and dreams in the musical.

There are also interviews with the set designer, composer and playwright.

Other works include School Dance by Matthew Whittet, Things I know to be true by Andrew Bovell and Stolen by Jane Harrison.

A Message From ORiGiN Theatrical

Choosing A Show

These are incredibly challenging times for the entire theatrical community. We are here to do all we can to spread some cheer and help to keep us connected.

Some of the cheerful things we are offering include:  Free access to the entire TRW digital script perusal library!

No limits, free of charge. Visit origintheatrical.com.au for the links.  Free Read Friday - Weekly free PDF downloads of play scripts and musical perusals. Sign up to our e-newsletter via our home page to receive weekly free reads direct to your inbox.  Online performance rights for Nick Hern Books titles available for both live-streamed performances and broadcasts of recorded productions. Visit origintheatrical.com.au for all the details and to apply.  SPOTLiGHT ON - A series on Facebook where we are shining a SPOTLiGHT ON exceptional productions from 2019. Keep an eye out for someone you know.  …and many more exciting things to come!

Stay safe and well.

Team ORiGiN™ Theatrical

origintheatrical.com.au facebook.com/OriginTheatrical instagram.com/OriginTheatrical twitter.com/ORiGiN_Theatric enquiries@originmusic.com.au

Staging The Magic Pudding A new release from David Spicer Productions is the only adaptation available for licencing of Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding.

The children’s classic was adapted into a musical by Andrew James and composer Sarah de Jong for Sydney’s Marian Street Theatre for Children in 2010.

Until then, all stage adaptations of the book, first published in 1918, had featured marionettes or rod puppets playing Albert, the cantankerous Magic Pudding, and the cast of pudding owners and villains.

Andrew James’ adaptation has a cast of 11 and chorus. It includes one puppet in the lead role of Albert the Pudding. He was too difficult to be played by an actor given Albert's round, pastryskinned tummy and pencil-thin legs.

“I considered putting an actor in a suit for all of a couple of seconds,” James admits.

For more details visit davidspicer.com.au/shows/magic-pudding www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 61

Smithy.

Choosing A Show

Simon Denver is represented by Maverick Musicals.

This year the company, founded by Simon’s family, was proudly taken over by new owners Rachel Fentiman and Howard Tamplin. Between them they have over 50 years of theatrical experience.

“We believe we have the best job in the industry: helping you, your school or theatre group discover the best play for your needs,” they told Stage Whispers.

“It’s our privilege to guide teachers, directors, producers and everyone in-between, all over the globe, to find that perfect play. We will help you narrow down plays that have the right cast size, theme, genre and whatever else you’re looking for to make your play a roaring success.”

For samples and online rights applications visit maverickmusicals.com

The Benefits Of Youth Theatre Simon Denver, the writer of Man of Years ago, I read the results of an international survey on fear. The greatest fear facing an individual was not Thermo-Global Nuclear War. Neither was it cancer, terminal illness or extinction-level events such as asteroids, volcanoes, tsunamis or climate change. The eventual winner left them all in its wake. Divorce, losing your job and the aforementioned fears were all in the shadow of the undisputed number one: the fear of public speaking. No wonder the rest of society looks upon performers in a strange way. It's not that we don't have this fear - it's because we have learned to rise above it. And how? Here is a recap of what belonging to a youth theatre, or being in a school musical or play, should teach you.

Trust All theatre is a huge trust exercise.

And just as you are trusting everyone will get their bits right, they trust that you will get your bit right. When working to a deadline you don't have time to develop your "relationship" with everyone; certain shortcuts must 62 Stage Whispers

seemed like an impossible journey over a frighteningly short time frame.

Pride You soon learn to take a pride in your work. No matter whether you are chorus, lead or backstage you Steel, shares his trade secrets. should take pride in your work and be taken. You have to learn to trust strive to constantly be better. A chain your co-workers from the get-go. You is only as good as its weakest link. forge an effective working Your pride in yourself and your relationship with people, whether you project should make sure that this is like them or not. You must learn to not you. trust early and completely.

Confidence Teamwork Any show is a monumental The more disciplined and achievement in its own right. This rehearsed any theatre team or achievement gives you confidence in ensemble is, the better the result. yourself. I recently went to a youth Getting something right is never easy. theatre reunion. Dozens turned up.

If it was easy then everyone would One of the common topics discussed always get everything right. It sounds over a few refreshing ales was strange but the more disciplined the confidence. Many claimed youth rehearsals, the more the team has fun theatre had given them skill sets, led and finds solidarity. It's never a case of by confidence, to guarantee they'd learning your place in the team, it's never fail a job interview. about realising that the team actually needs you and it isn't quite the same Adaptability without you, and vice versa.

A great skill set to hone. The more theatre you do, especially Camaraderie improvisation, the more you learn to The friendships you make in youth think laterally. Theatre tends to theatre stay with you for life. Why? present us with almost inconceivable Because you share that special time problems that need us to come up that "outsiders" just don’t understand. with some incredible solutions. It You were part of a highly emotionally teaches us how to explore a situation charged project which had what from more than one viewpoint. In short - it keeps you on your toes.

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at www.stagewhispers.com.au

Reviews

Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee in Bombshell In Concert.

Online extras!

Watch the cast of NBC’s Smash reunite for Bombshell In Concert. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/9CzV1_HOf-E Bombshell In Concert Music: Marc Shaiman. Lyrics: Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman. Director: Michael Mayer. Musical Director: Marc Shaiman. Choreographer: Joshua Bergasse. People.com free live-stream. May 20. Still available online.

BOMBSHELL In Concert is manna from heaven for musical theatre geeks who worship at the shrine of Smash, the beloved NBC series which aired for two seasons in 2012-13. The fictitious Marilyn Monroe Broadway musical at the heart of the series spawned a concert on Broadway (and a CD) with the original cast in 2015.

The concert aired on TV for the first time on May 20.

Of course the two Marilyns, Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty, dominated the show. Opening with “Let Me Be Your Star” (according to the cast one of the greatest songs ever written), and closing with “Don’t Forget Me”, these two ladies nailed it every time. McPhee and dancers blew up a storm in “The 20th Century Fox Mambo”, whilst in “The National Pastime” Hilty was much more suggestive and phallic than the TV version. McPhee’s “Never Give All The Heart” was full of emotion, whilst Hilty’s “Second Hand White Baby Grand” was simply beautiful and in my opinion the best number in the score.

Christian Borle (in suit) and the male ensemble in boxers did a terrific routine to “Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking”, Will Chase was searing in “On Lexington and 52nd Street”, a clone of Sunset Boulevard’s title tune, and Leslie Odom Jr. was in his element with the big-band salute “(Let’s Start) Tomorrow Tonight”. Ann Harada got

laughs as the continually harassed stage manager Linda and displayed great comic timing on “I Never Met a Man Who Didn’t Love To Howl”, but it was Jeremy Jordan opening the second act with a blistering version of “Cut, Print…Moving On” that was one of the night’s great showstoppers.

It’s a terrific score and one continually admires the attention to detail and period with echoes of Roger Edens and Kay Thompson all over it.

Debra Messing and Christian Borle’s introductory remarks were warm and had them reminiscing about the show’s beginnings in easy banter, and the finale had a few words from an emotional Shaiman before McPhee and Hilty wrapped it up with “Big Finish” as the encore.

Peter Pinne Take Me To The World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration Music & Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim. Producer/Narrator: Raul Esparza. Director: Paul Wontorek. Musical Director: Mary-Mitchell Campbell. Streamed Apr 27, and available on broadway.com/YouTube.

STEPHEN Sondheim has long been exalted for his defining and ground-breaking work in musical theatre, which stretches from 1955’s Saturday Night, through Company, Follies and Sweeney Todd to Into the Woods and beyond. There are songs from all of them, but not necessarily the most obvious, in this online birthday tribute, although there are plenty of favourites, especially toward the finale.

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at www.stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 63

Brian Stokes Mitchell in Take Me To The World.

Online extras!

Watch the entirety of Take Me To The World. Scan the QR code or visit https://youtu.be/A92wZIvEUAw The tribute opened with Stephen Schwartz at the piano playing the “Prologue” to Follies, which was followed by 21 musicians on multiple-screens playing a blistering version of the brass-heavy overture from Merrily We Roll Along.

Kelli O’Hara, whose career has taken her through the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon of heroines, claimed it was Sondheim who taught her as a performer emotionally. Singing “What More Do I Need” from the early Saturday Night, she effortlessly proved her point.

A Little Night Music was represented by the profound “The Miller’s Son”, delivered with precision-point clarity

by Elizabeth Stanley.

Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald did a wonderful boozy split-screen rendition of Company’s iconic eleven-o-clock number, “The Ladies Who Lunch”, whilst Linda Lavin repeated her original cast performance from 54 years ago in The Mad Show with “The Boy From…”, written by Mary Rodgers and Estaban Ria Nido, which was really an in-joke and pseudonym for Sondheim.

Maria Friedman’s “Broadway Baby” (Follies) was a bit studied and not as gutsy and raw as others have performed it, but Alexander Gemignani did what was probably the most joyous and wacky version I’ve ever seen of “Buddy’s Blues”.

My personal favorites were two songs from the illfated 9 performance flop Anyone Can Whistle - Brandon Uranowitz in a superb reading of the haunting “With So Little To Be Sure Of”, and Patti LuPone doing likewise with the achingly beautiful title tune.

64 Stage Whispers

Although the concert officially ended with Bernadette Peters in a heartfelt a-cappella “No One Is Alone” (Into The Woods), there was an epilogue of the entire cast on a matrix of their individual screens singing “I’m Still Here”. It was emotional, tear-inducing and a most effective conclusion to this 90th birthday tribute to Sondheim. He deserved it.

Peter Pinne St Nicholas

By Conor McPherson. Directed by Shelley Higgs. The Street Theatre, Canberra. Online performances Jun 5 - 7.

OF all the ways white middle-aged men deal with midlife crisis, falling in with a bunch of vampires is one of the less cliched. Thanks to COVID-19 social distancing regulations, The Street has adapted this one-man piece to video.

Close ups and unforgiving crops show how well-drawn Alexander’s performance is. His cadences are those of a writer, with pauses to consider the best word to use in a situation. He punctuates his words with a long, noisy inhalation - a kind of backward sigh with which he buys time before he starts to speak. Alexander’s critic is a raconteur with an empty life, taking out his bitter ennui on those whom he writes about.

However, the character’s distain for other people is nothing on his own self-hatred. Later in the play the closest he comes to being able to salvage a little selfesteem is by noting that he, unlike the vampires, has a conscience - even though he’s loathsome, at least he loathes himself. The beauty of it is that in spite of his

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at www.stagewhispers.com.au

Online extras!

Check out the trailer for St Nicholas.

Scan the QR code or visit https://vimeo.com/376745123 Craig Alexander in St Nicholas.

Photo: Creswick Collective.

being utterly pathetic, you like him. You feel sorry for the utter creep.

The stage is styled as Edwardian decay, a nod to the vampires, and the lighting is suitably creepy. Rounding out the atmosphere is the excellent sound design and music by Den Hanrahan, featuring a drawly, bluesy steel guitar played live throughout.

It’s great to see The Street adapt and explore within the challenges posed by the new environment.

Cathy Bannister

True North Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC).

Online live-streamed concert. Jun 6.

QPAC’s Chief Executive, John Kotzas told Stage Whispers: “We are focused on finding new ways to continue connecting with communities, artists and audiences.” This quest included True North, a concert for Queensland Day. This is the first time artists have been seen (socially distanced) together in Brisbane’s South Bank spaces since the lockdown. The song selection was a mix, mainly from American musicals. It certainly highlighted our wealth of Brisbane-born and Queensland-based

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at www.stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 65

True North.

Online extras!

Watch as Sásta perform ‘Never Trust The Jig’ from QPAC. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/P-_8LukjRJc

musical talent, most of whom were accompanied by musical performer and arranger Luke Volker, on piano.

Amy Lehpamer hosted and performed ‘Natural Woman’ from Beautiful: The Carole King Musical; Alex Woodward sang ‘I Believe’ from The Book of Mormon; the QPAC Chamber Choir sang ‘Lean on Me’ by Bill Withers, led by Timothy Sherlock; Katie Noonan sang her own arrangement of ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)’; and Queensland Conservatorium Musical Theatre graduates, Shubshri Kandiah and Alex Woodward performed ‘A Whole New World’ from Disney’s Aladdin: The Musical. The duo were joined on stage by Noonan and Lehpamer for a moving closing rendition of ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story.

Stage Whispers Directory Premium listing: $20 Get noticed on the Stage Whispers website with a premium listing

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Refreshing additions to the stage were Steven Oliver singing ‘You Make Me Feel’ from his show Steven Oliver: Bigger and Blacker; Celtic group Sásta’s ‘Never Trust the Jig’, and multi-instrumentalist and beat box artist Tom Thum, looping and sampling live to his ‘Love Has Left Here’. Classical music was courtesy of Camerata Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s Brass Ensemble and Opera Queensland. Li Cunxin, Artistic Director of Queensland Ballet, introduced a filmed piece performed by Mia Heathcote and Victor Estevez from the group’s 60 Dancers: 60 Stories. As Li said: “While the world has changed in ways that we couldn’t imagine, there is one thing we can be sure of - now more than ever - art must prevail.”

Lockdown-inspired entertainment inspired has certainly highlighted the lack of local musical, comedy and variety content on our television channels. Perhaps, once they’ve adapted to the technology, our theatre companies could help to fill this void.

Beth Keehn Begotten: The Radio Play Written and performed by Bianca Butler Reynolds. Minola Theatre. Launched online May 16.

IMAGINE going back in time to talk your grandmother or your great-grandmother when they were young. What would it be like to hear an uncensored version of their life choices? It could be confronting, sentimental, provocative, worrying - in the case of Begotten by Bianca

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at www.stagewhispers.com.au

Minola Theatre’s Begotten The Radio Play.

PERFORMING ARTS MAGAZINE

JULY/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2020. VOLUME 29, NUMBER 4 ABN 71 129 358 710 ISSN 1321 5965

All correspondence to: The Editor, Stage Whispers, P.O. Box 2274, Rose Bay North 2030, New South Wales.

Telephone: (03) 9758 4522 Advertising: stagews@stagewhispers.com.au Editorial: neil@stagewhispers.com.au PRINTED BY: Spotpress Pty Ltd, 24-26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville, 2204 PUBLISHED BY: Stage Whispers PRE-PRESS PRODUCTION & DESIGN BY: PJTonline Solutions, email: pjtonline@pjtonline.com DISTRIBUTED BY: Gordon & Gotch, 25-37 Huntingdale Road, Burwood, 3125

Online extras!

Listen to Begotten: The Radio Play on demand. Scan the QR code or visit minolatheatre.com.au/begotten Butler Reynolds, it is all of the above. The writer has woven together one family’s passions, secrets and lies into a fascinating tapestry, brought to life with music and audio effects as a radio play.

Deftly directed by Kat Dekker with superb sound design and editing by Siobhan Finniss, the piece tells five clearly delineated stories: Alice, Eileen and Clea (in Australia in 2019, 1998 and 1970); Hazel (England, 1941); and Laoise (Ireland, 1919).

From the opening image of Alice day-dreaming on a bus, the Begotten carousel picks you up and takes you for an intriguing ride to discover more about a bloodline of stories, interwoven monologues that go back in time to Laoise, the original ancestor in Ireland.

Butler Reynolds proves she has strong performance skills: changing tempo from the more pacey, modern Alice to a slower and more considered Laoise. The music motifs and sound effects work well to isolate each character in her time zone, and there are many succinct visual images that sing, and strong and memorable lines.

The final, disturbing story is set in Ireland, immediately evoked by the lilting folk song ‘She Moved Through the Fair’ - it’s a fitting piece to leave us dancing with the ghosts of the five women, their hopes and dreams, the compromises they have made and lived with. Alice talks about “diving for pearls in an ocean” - and that’s what this process feels like - a beautiful technique in retrieving gem-like moments from lives lived to explain the thread that connects successive generations.

Beth Keehn

DEADLINES For inclusion in the next edition, please submit articles, company notes and advertisements to Stage Whispers by September 14th, 2020.

SUBSCRIPTION Prices are $39.50 for 6 editions in Australia and $60AUD elsewhere. Overseas Surface Mail (Airmail by special arrangement). Overseas subscribers please send bank draft in Australian currency. Maximum suggested retail is $6.95 including GST. Address of all subscription correspondence to above address. When moving, advise us immediately of your old and new address in order to avoid lost or delayed copies.

FREELANCE CONTRIBUTORS Are welcomed by this magazine and all articles should be addressed to Stage Whispers at the above address. The Publisher accepts no responsibility for unsolicited material. Black and white or colour photographs are suitable for production.

DISCLAIMER All expressions of opinion in Stage Whispers are published on the basis that they reflect the personal opinion of the authors and as such are not to be taken as expressing the official opinion of The Publishers unless expressly so stated. Stage Whispers accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any opinion or information contained in this magazine.

LIMITED BACK COPIES AVAILABLE ADVERTISERS We accept no responsibility for material submitted that does not comply with the Trade Practices Act. CAST & CREW Editor: Neil Litchfield 0438 938 064 Sub-editor: David Spicer Advertising: Angela Thompson 03 9758 4522 Digital production: Phillip Tyson 0414 781 008 Contributors: Cathy Bannister, Anne Blythe-Cooper, Mel Bobbermien, Michael Brindley, Rose Cooper, Kerry Cooper, Ken Cotterill, Bill Davies, Coral Drouyn, Jenny Fewster, Graham Ford, Peter Gotting, Frank Hatherley, Jude Hines, John P. Harvey, Barry Hill, Tony Knight, Neil Litchfield, Ken Longworth, Kiesten Mcauley, Rachel McGrath-Kerr, Roger McKenzie, Peter Novakovich, Shannon O’Connell, Peter Pinne, Martin Portus, Sally Putnam, Lesley Reed, Lisa Romeo, Suzanne Sandow, Kimberley Shaw, David Spicer, Penelope Thomas, Anthony Vawser, Carol Wimmer and Mark Wickett.

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at www.stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 67

Musical Spice In March I posted out a set of musical scores and scripts for a production of Essgee’s Pirates of Penzance to the Ipswich Musical Theatre Company, for a season scheduled for September. I had this sinking feeling that I would not be seeing the books again for a very long time. A week later came a request from the company to hang onto sheet music until 2021.

Managing an arts business during COVID -19 is a bit like being a skipper of a boat at sea when a cyclone comes out of nowhere.

You need help to bail the water out, whilst you get back to shore as fast as possible.

At my theatrical agency - David Spicer Productions - the pandemic caused a spectacular collapse in revenue.

Turnover declined by 97%, due to no new bookings and no completed productions.

Stage Whispers Magazine, which I co-manage with Neil Litchfield, experienced an 80% decline in advertising revenue for the May-June edition; there were no shows to promote and consequently companies which provide services to theatres were bleeding.

For the last few months emails have been trickling into DSP from amateur theatres and schools cancelling or postponing their musical or play seasons. Most community theatres postponed their productions by twelve months as they had already commenced rehearsals and invested in building their production, so they want to put their show on - eventually.

For high schools this is not always possible. School musicals fit into a tight schedule where Year 12 study commitments take priority over everything else. My company is now receiving cancellations and refund requests on a weekly basis.

As we go to press many schools are waiting to see if COVID-19 restrictions ease just enough to be able to stage their productions later this year, even with restrictions on the size of their audiences. The prevalence of large barnlike school halls makes this a possibility.

NSW Minister for Tourism Stuart Ayres with Trafalgar Entertainment Executive Chairman Tim McFarlane at Sydney’s Theatre Royal.

Photo: Murray Harris.

Online extras!

Stage Whispers TV tours Sydney’s Theatre Royal redevelopment. https://youtu.be/g-A4RitQNJg 68 Stage Whispers July - September 2020

Wellington Repertory Theatre postponed their production of Ladies in Black in March until November.

One school - Snowy Mountains Grammar - had a neat solution to their postponed season of We Will Rock You. The only member of the cast currently in Year 12 has pledged to return to the school to take part in the show in 2021.

Help to ‘bail water out’ has been on hand in generous supply. Both businesses are structured as companies that qualify for cashflow assistance, JobKeeper for employees and a grant from the NSW Government.

This is the first time either DSP or Stage Whispers have ever received a grant from any Government. Having six months of wages guaranteed is very much appreciated.

Sadly, freelance artists who have not qualified for JobKeeper have not been so lucky. However anecdotally I have found that more people have received assistance than you might think from the complaints on social media.

In April, the Federal Government forked out $76 million in JobKeeper payments to more than 25,000 workers in creative and performing arts companies. According to the Sydney Morning Herald this accounted for more than 1% of all JobKeeper outlays, whereas creative and performing arts workers only account for .3% of the workforce.

But what of the future? If COVID-19 restrictions prevent the performing arts functioning fully into 2021, then I fear that a great deal of pain lies ahead once the Government help runs out.

One year of disruption, cushioned by generous grants for small businesses, is manageable in the long run. But if disruptions stretch into 2021 and a second year of shows is cancelled, performing arts businesses may start to sink.

However, on a brighter note, DSP received two paid bookings from a school and a community theatre during May, for productions to take place in 2020. Both bookings came from New Zealand. And Stage Whispers published a magazine in print, which you are now reading right to the last page. We are all doing better than expected from just a few months ago.

David Spicer

Read scripts, listen to music and order free catalogue at: www.davidspicer.com.au david@davidspicer.com (02) 9371 8458

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