My Mother Told Me Not To … Rehearse

My Mother Told Me Not To Rehearse

For those of you who know me, which I’m assuming is at least some of you because of the obscure title of my blog, you will know that I am currently experiencing the privilege of rehearsing an incredible new children’s opera, ‘My Mother Told Me Not To Stare’, by international children’s playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer and Oxford University Composer extraordinaire, Martyn Harry. This production is being produced by Miranda Thain and the team at Theatre Hullabaloo and directed by Action Transport’s Nina Hajiyanni.

I was fortunate enough to be cast in the role of ‘The Man’ last September. Which is great because I’ve always wanted to be a man and now not only am I living that dream, I’m ‘THE’ man. Sweet. I was informed about the auditions two days before the deadline by my friend and theatre collaborator Katie Boon, and on the off chance emailed my newly created headshot and CV into the Producer and the rest is history… although I do remember thinking (after having googled the other people on the audition list and thinking them rather intimidating, that maybe I shouldn’t have bothered). As it was, the person I was most intimidated by on google didn’t show up. So lucky me.

I remember calling my friend ‘The Bee’ shortly after I had been told the good news, that I would be going on tour and after a heartfelt ‘Congratulations!’ and then she promptly followed it with ‘I HATE you!’

At the following two short periods of rehearsal I met my fellow cast members, Andrew, Luci, Eva and John, all of whom play instruments, act and sing wonderfully. Together we enjoyed days filled with Martyn Harry’s music which has continued to become stuck in my head at the most inconvenient moments (just prior to bed, in the toilet and on the tube) and John’s sense of injustice at the fact that the vegetarian breakfast at the hotel we were staying at includes two eggs, whilst the normal breakfast only had one.

After having subjected my newly acquired girlfriend to numerous line learning sessions in London, in which she was forced to play the roles of Bobby, Emily, Mr and Mrs Rogers, The Fixing Kitchen Woman and numerous disappeared children, I arrived in Darlington to the beginning of the end… the final rehearsal period for My Mother Told Me Not to Stare…

This is where you find me now… five days into rehearsal and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it. The atmosphere in the rehearsal room is one of collaboration and playfulness, fostered by our excellent Director Nina. We had three children burst in on rehearsals yesterday thinking they had booked the studio, and the first thing they had said (after the mouths had dropped open) was ‘Woah!’. It is not often that the disillusioned youth of today are at a loss for words, but if anything is going to do it, it would have to be the sound of opera singing on a stunning set that looks like it could have been built out of a 10 year old’s favourite nightmare. All hail Bek Palmer, the set/costume designer who has created the world of Upper Crumble within which we have set about to tell this exceptional story.

It’s such a pleasure to be working with a script that is intelligent, quirky, funny and (as all of Fin’s work is so good at doing) doesn’t talk down to children but treats them with the respect any audience member deserves. The story is dark, twisted, subtle, horrifying and beautiful, and all packed into (at the moment!) seventy four minutes.

We managed a full sing-through of the show after two days of rehearsal and both John and I agreed that we’d been in shows in the past where the quality of what we had just done was akin to the dress rehearsal of previous shows. A promising start.

We have now begun working, in minute detail, on the individual scenes and it is wonderful to see them developing so well and so quickly. When people aren’t in scenes themselves they are invited by Nina to watch and offer suggestions, and with ideas flying about the room and bouncing off the walls it has been very exciting to see the show start to develop into the exciting thing that I know it will become, even if it’s not there yet.

On the first day of rehearsal Nina set the tone with the light hearted comment:

‘Any idea is a good idea.’

She promptly followed it with…

‘Unless it’s a bad one. If you have a bad idea, just keep quiet.’

Playing the role of Narrator in the show is proving challenging for me at the moment but I very much expected that. For me, I think it is important that ‘The Man’, knows and is aware of every detail of every scene, in order to tell the story. Consequently we have not worked very much on the character of the Narrator yet. Time is being spent on the scenes that the story is portraying, but this is definitely the right order of events, as there is no way that I can know how to tell a story until I know what story it is that I am telling. And the more I get to know the story by watching my fellow cast members act and sing and play, the more I am becoming aware of how their story might be told. It is still elusive but I think it will arrive soon.

I’ll leave it there for the moment as Eva is cooking us a lovely meal of salmon for dinner and I don’t want to miss out. I will write again in a few more days with more adventures of My Mother Told Me Not to Rehearse.

By Darren Clark, playing “The Man”

Taking already hideous creations to a new depth of odiousness

It’s been an incredibly stimulating and exciting week for me up in Darlington, putting the show together ahead of our opening night on 1st June. Our set designer, Bek, has been very busy since last we met, back in March, and everyone is delighted with the new additions to the set – namely the Fixing Kitchen. As the evil Woman whose home this is, I get to have the most fun, fiddling around with all the dials, playing with a big spoon (my favourite prop!) and generally enjoying the fantastic new set. Well done Bek! I think I’ve got quite a job ahead of me working out all my movements in order to make the most of the set, whilst simultaneously challenging my adversary and tending to my main prop, the poor little baby – but I’m ready to tackle it. In this scene, my ability to make a fake baby move like a real one is just as important as my singing the right notes at the right time, so I think I’d better start practising that!

There are plenty of other challenges for me in this show; as I also play Holga Rogers, Bobby’s mother, I am required to wear both a hefty mask and a delightfully unflattering padded costume. Nina, our director, has been helping Andrew (who plays my husband) and me to discover the best ways to use our faces to accentuate the masks and make them seem part of us, rather than a hindrance. The same goes for the padded costumes – we’ve both had to devise a certain walk to give each character an individual and instantly recognisable persona, that works with, rather than against, our costumes. It didn’t take us too long to make these already hideous creations reach a new depth of odiousness – much to the merriment of everyone else!

I consider myself very lucky to be playing not just one but two different ‘baddies’ in one show. Having played The Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute a few times, I have had experience of portraying evil; but now I have the added fun of combining extreme ugliness to my portrayal – very liberating!

By Luci Briginshaw playing Mrs Rodgers/Nurse/Piano/Ensemble

Why it’s amazing to revisit work

In some other places in Europe (Germany, Belgium, Denmark…) within the children’s theatre sector, there is generally a much longer development and rehearsal period for shows with many productions staying in the company’s repertory for years once they have been made. This seems good for ambitious projects, not least because you can keep revisiting them and, with the use of time, exploit creative talents and ideas. It seems strange to work so hard on something and then for it to be over in a matter of weeks (and not be seen by thousands instead of hundreds!) Importantly though even before this stage, when making a new show you need space and time to experiment and make discoveries otherwise you are simply doing what you already know…and this can’t be good for art. Even with all the current funding constraints and challenges for small companies making and programming new work for children (‘opera’!), Theatre Hullabaloo (in association with Action Transport Theatre) have found a way to continue the journey and here we are rehearsing version two of ‘My Mother Told Me Not To Stare’ (new and improved). Since 2009, we have never really stopped working on this show, so the version which will tour in a few weeks time is the product of more than three years work and the creativity of more than 40 people, young and old. Here are my 10 favourite things about working on this new version of the children’s opera (in no particular order) – 1) Listening to amazing opera singing on a daily basis 2) Seeing the new elements of the story (rewrites) making the story better. 3) A new cast and a new dynamic 4) New bits of music 5) 2 original cast members pushing themselves further than before 6) The pot in the fixing kitchen (for boiling the badness out of babies) 7) Finding more complexity to the child characters – Bobby and Emily (giving them loads more attitude) 8) The whoosh sound to mark the disappearances 9) The new character masks. 10) The new orchestral backing track I hope many people who saw the show the first time round get to see it again, as well as children and adults who have never seen the show before. When working on this, it seems clear to me that shows like this don’t come around that often.

by Director – Nina Hajiyianni

My Mother Told Me Not To Stare

My Mother Told Me Not To Stare is touring again this Summer, with substantial rewrites of both story and music. As three of the original five performers have moved on to new projects (E4, the priesthood, etc etc) auditions were held for new cast. This was no simple task: originally we were auditioned before the opera was composed, since each of us was required to play an instrument as well as sing roles, so the calls were kept fairly open. Now there’s a stronger idea of who’s needed, but the skill-base is too specific to replace exactly – for instance, the hero Bobby Rogers was a tenor / flautist and is now a baritone / accordionist.

 

So after lots of wondering how it would all turn out, Martyn Harry’s re-composed scenes arrived one by one by email during December and we met for a few days in January to try it all out. Some of the music is brand new, some of the old music has gone, some has been extended, some shortened, some is the same but in a new key, some the same but with new text. Mercifully a few bits are completely unchanged! The new cast are great and really hit the ground running – we managed a full music run on the second afternoon.

 

As a Guildhall student nearly 30 years ago I played in Richard Strauss’ semi-comic opera ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ which involves two theatre companies being told they must perform both their shows in the time each would take alone. So every cast member argues with the composer that the cuts should be made in the others’ parts. No need for that with our composer – I couldn’t be happier. The biggest cut is a whole scene I wasn’t in, another involves singing in a squeaky boy’s voice for only a fraction of the time I used to, which anyone who heard before would agree is no bad thing. The roles of the hero’s unpleasant parents have grown by 50% and are nasty in so many new ways it’s too complex for the old life-size puppets, so we’ll be in costumes and big masks being nasty ourselves. For me the biggest change is my nicer father character – the original distraught dad of the first rule-breaker to disappear is now only mentioned in a mayoral announcement, and instead I play the previously-unseen father of the brave heroine Emily Ives. Re-working his solo was the biggest challenge for Martyn (rumour reached me that if it was cut I might be too upset to come back…) as the situation and text were quite different but needed to fit the existing music as far as possible.

The result, as throughout the whole opera, is something with all the strengths of the original piece and lots of new ones, which I’m looking forward to touring tremendously.

Andrew Sparling

March 2012

FANTASTIC NEWS!!!

 

 

Our Grants for the Arts application has been successful, our operetta for curious children and their grown-ups will definitely go ahead next summer – We are all absolutely thrilled!

Well done Miranda on the successful bid!

Watch this space for updates, and bring on June 2012!

Now Casting

As you know, we will be re-touring our deliciously dark operetta for curious children and their grown ups in June 2012 – Yay!

Unfortunately, due to their availability, two members of the original cast will not be able to tour with us again – Boo!

Although we will miss them greatly, this means that we are now in need of two brilliant performers to join the team – an excellent opportunity I’m sure you’ll agree!

We are looking for:

A SOPRANO or MEZZO SOPRANO to play the role of the FIXING KITCHEN NURSE and also many other ensemble roles. An excellent pianist with strong acting ability is essential.

 

 

A COUNTER TENOR, TENOR, BARITONE or BASS to play the role of THE MAN. An excellent actor/singer is required as a charismatic and quirky narrator. THE MAN can be of any age, old or young. A strong singing voice, a high level of musicality and a good rapport with a young audience is essential.

FULL CASTING INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND HERE

 

FANTASTIC NEWS!!!

Following our successful inclusion in the Arts Council’s national portfolio and with support from the John Fell Foundation, Theatre Hullabaloo will be redeveloping our fantastic gothic operetta, My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, for national venue touring in the summer 2012.

The show will be directed by Nina Hajiyianni and is in association with Action Transport Theatre.

My Mother Told Me Not to Stare is currently booking and we have very limited dates available in June 2012, please contact Miranda on 01325 352 004 or miranda@theatrehullabaloo.org.uk for details.

My Mother Told Me Not to Stare will tour once more in Summer 2012

When you have had the opportunity to work on such an amazing project as My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, storing it away in its box after the tour has finished just isn’t an option!

So, funding permitting (nail-bitingly we await the 29th March), we will be putting Our Mother back on the road in the summer of 2012.

A little something to whet your appetite!

“This show is really something special and unexpected!”

Great new review from Friday’s show at South Street Arts Centre in The Wokingham Times

Read the review here

Playing the Bad Guy

Eleanor Meynell – Nurse/Piano

Yesterday we did a show in the Rose Theatre in Ormskirk. I’ve never been to Ormskirk but the University where the theatre was seemed very nice (especially the lovely open plan cafe with gallery and comfy sofas). The theatre is super – just right for this show as it isn’t too big and the stage space doesn’t have ‘flies’ (wings and a space above the stage with lights) so when we sing our sound goes straight out into the audience without being lost.

We had a great audience yesterday too with a nice mixture of adults and children. I was particularly glad that my first entrance as the wicked nurse got a guffaw/ chuckle from a man sitting far back on the left (who I later learned was composer Patrick Dunley?). It sounded as if he just simply couldn’t stop himself. He obviously has a very sick sense of humour!). He is supposed to be scared!!! My own father, on seeing the show, said he found it deeply scary and that “it was all too much” for him – sorry dad. If you haven’t seen it yet, I have a mask with slanty eyes, spectacles and pronounced cheeks and a huge, foam bouffant hair-do. I lay the red lipstick on thick too, resulting in, what I hope, is a sinister and nightmarish effect.

My favourite bit is singing about boiling little children in a pot – it’s odd, but I always notice the children on the front row taking a peculiar delight in this. I like that I can pull the music around about for dramatic effect and sometimes I don’t even sing everything but speak/sing it to make it sound even more scary. That feels nice because I don’t have to worry about making a beautiful sound all the time. In fact, for this role, beautiful voices need not apply! It helps that I’ve sung a piece called Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg many times as the dramatic declamation that is required is similar for both pieces.

Eleanor