Good morning.
Its cold and a bit snowy here this morning and staying in bed for a few more minutes was persuasive, but I resisted!
A number of people have asked me recently about how I got into theatre, so I thought I would pause here for a moment to give you a bit more background, which will perhaps shed light on the passion and desire I had to set up Arc.
I was always an artist first and foremost. I knew this from a very young age, although I didn't have the words for it. I happily lived in my imagination, loved learning poetry by heart and inventing imaginary people and stories. I was in fact a solitary child for the most part, except when I was playing make-believe with friends or organising performances with school mates at Primary school.
I spent my first 6 years in Bangor in North Wales, and when my Dad's job was relocated to Tonbridge in Kent, my parents in their wisdom decided to send me to elocution lessons. I am not so sure that such lessons would be called that now. The word has fallen out of fashion, maybe only to be given the nod in the film The King's Speech.
But like Eliza's cockney in My Fair Lady, my parents were concerned that my Welsh accent might make my assimilation into the South East more difficult along with all the other changes we were going through.
The elocution lessons were wonderful. I used to look forward to 4pm on a Tuesday evening with relish. Rather than simply migrate to an RP accent (which would have happened anyway at this age), it opened me up to a world of wonderful language, emotion and image. My teacher, Mrs Donovan was a kindly lady who lived in a rose covered cottage some 400 yards from my house. She definitely wasn't a drama teacher, but poetry oozed out of her every pore. She was funny and passionate. She introduced me to Hilaire Belloc, Wordsworth, Blake at 6!
In those days in the mid sixties it was de rigeur to learn poetry by heart. Matilda by Hilaire Belloc was my first and The Lamb by William Blake my second. I remember them still.
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost though know who made thee?
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;...............(etc)
Learning poetry by rote was soon to become outmoded and the mainstream education establishment now frowned on it. I have always thought that to be a big mistake. Carrying language, metaphor and image around in your own head can be nothing other than enriching. I have known many people who have a large repertoire of memorised poems and speeches from plays.
Actually of course its a great discipline for actors, as learning text is a key skill and one which needs to be maintained and developed. That particular part of the brain needs exercising. Have you ever been at a party or out for dinner when someone had mesmorised their friends with reciting a poem. Its a skill that draws respect and admiration from others (as long as one is sensitive about not reciting more than one reasonably short one!)
In my experience often, after listening for a while many people have the urge to join in, often with half remembered fragments. I guess its like going to church even if you don't usually. The hymns begin and if you were brought up singing them in assembly - they emerge in tact from that part of your memory! I love that.
A funny thing that also happens regularly with actors, is that they retain whole scripts in their heads for years, especially if they think they might have cause to perform them again. It can be months between performances and when I call a re-rehearsal, most of them have retained at least 75% of the text!
And so as well as Mrs Donovan's elocution lessons, primary school proved to be another place for me to find my imagination encouraged. In those dim distant days, there was no National Curriculum. Teachers could teach what they wanted would you believe. It was brilliant if you happened to get an inspired teacher, but pretty soul destroying if you got a rubbish one!
Standards varied enormously and it seemed that no one was really accountable. Of course the move to standardise teaching styles and content has been a move forward, even though there is also a loss attached.
You may have seen the 1989 film Dead Poet's Society in which Robin Williams plays John Keating, the maverick rebellious english teacher who inspires his students to love poetry and to carpe diem or 'seize the day'. And that was how primary school felt to me. Not so sure it did for everyone, but that was its beauty. We were free to explore every avenue that attracted us and more than that encouraged to pursue it. Its only recently, indeed since writing my blogs, that I have come to understand how significant this has been for me.
Out of four primary teachers I had two inspired ones, one of the other two was a witch and the other kindly like an elderly aunt. I have little memory of the latter, but the former filled me with dread. But Mr Ingle and Mr Richardson were my heroes.
In my second year, Mr Ingle shared poetry just like Mrs Donovan. Only he also created a space to encourage us as writers ourselves. In that year I wrote copious poems, supported by Mr Ingle's attention and criticism. I worked really hard at them, was rarely satisfied. But that year he entered me into a national poetry competition and I won much to my and my parents' amazement.
The poem was called Pain. As I sit here funnily enough and almost in contradiction I am struggling to remember it, but I will at some point! My parents must have a copy in their attic. I guess maybe it was the writing not the learning by heart that was the objective then. In that year Mr Ingle also awarded me the English Prize for the school. Its a big green book of fairy tales. I still have it. On the inside cover it said - Carole Pluckrose 2I - For achievement and effort in English.
Mr Richardson's class was my final year in that wonderful school (St Augustine's Roman Catholic School in Tunbridge Wells). He was a francophile, and speaking the language was his personal hobby. He taught us vocabulary and pinned pictures and words on the wall, alongside the rotting plastic bag of silage he left there for a year to teach us about farming and cattle! (Never quite got that one!)
I was always enthused by languages. French in particular had a rich and lilting feel on the tongue. In their enthusiasm to support me, my parents bought me a child's illustrated French dictionary. It was big like the fairy tales book but bright yellow. It was full of english words and their French equivalents with a picture next to each one.
What a gift. I decided to write a play in French and get some of my willing classmates to act in it. I laugh at the memory. I painstakingly wrote a twenty minute script in what I thought was French. It was easy. All I had to do was think of what I wanted the character to say in English and then write the corresponding word in French.
What I did not understand at that stage was that verbs have to be conjugated and nouns declined. Its French grammar that was missing from the plan! But the mastery of Mr Richardson I now realise was that he never told me that. He encouraged my play writing and let me put my show on! It was a funny simple little play set in a cafe. I borrowed ice cream boats from home, filled them with cotton wool and sprinkled them with cocoa powder for ice cream.
We were allowed to rehearse for hours in the school hall and then to perform the show for the rest of the school. I loved every minute of creating and directing that French play, (well not sure I can call it a play really!). And I pay hommage to Mr Richardson for his genius and encouragement. I have never heard of him since leaving St Augustine's but I now understand that I have an enormous debt to him. You know what they say about one inspiring teacher.
So that's my training and life in theatre aged 6-11. I will pick it up again shortly. It may not be tomorrow - as who knows how today will go? Nita and I are off to a meeting with one of our commissioners British Transport Police to ensure all the set up for an eight week tour of our play Mullered written by Olly, which tells the story of Thomas Briggs, the first person to be killed on the railways in 1876. We do enjoy a mixed diet!.
Have a good one.
Director's Suggested Exercise of the Day
Take a look at your bookshelf. See if you have an anthology of poetry lurking there. You may already be a poetry lover, but it doesn't matter if you are not. Open the book at random and see if the poem you see speaks to you in any way. If not pick again at random. I would advise a short poem to start with, maybe a 14 line sonnet or a 5 line Haiku. And learn it by heart. Carry it with you during the day, and in those little moments learn it again, until you can recite it by heart. The important thing here is to do it for yourself and have fun with it! See how it affects your day too.
Its cold and a bit snowy here this morning and staying in bed for a few more minutes was persuasive, but I resisted!
A number of people have asked me recently about how I got into theatre, so I thought I would pause here for a moment to give you a bit more background, which will perhaps shed light on the passion and desire I had to set up Arc.
I was always an artist first and foremost. I knew this from a very young age, although I didn't have the words for it. I happily lived in my imagination, loved learning poetry by heart and inventing imaginary people and stories. I was in fact a solitary child for the most part, except when I was playing make-believe with friends or organising performances with school mates at Primary school.
I spent my first 6 years in Bangor in North Wales, and when my Dad's job was relocated to Tonbridge in Kent, my parents in their wisdom decided to send me to elocution lessons. I am not so sure that such lessons would be called that now. The word has fallen out of fashion, maybe only to be given the nod in the film The King's Speech.
But like Eliza's cockney in My Fair Lady, my parents were concerned that my Welsh accent might make my assimilation into the South East more difficult along with all the other changes we were going through.
The elocution lessons were wonderful. I used to look forward to 4pm on a Tuesday evening with relish. Rather than simply migrate to an RP accent (which would have happened anyway at this age), it opened me up to a world of wonderful language, emotion and image. My teacher, Mrs Donovan was a kindly lady who lived in a rose covered cottage some 400 yards from my house. She definitely wasn't a drama teacher, but poetry oozed out of her every pore. She was funny and passionate. She introduced me to Hilaire Belloc, Wordsworth, Blake at 6!
In those days in the mid sixties it was de rigeur to learn poetry by heart. Matilda by Hilaire Belloc was my first and The Lamb by William Blake my second. I remember them still.
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost though know who made thee?
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;...............(etc)
Learning poetry by rote was soon to become outmoded and the mainstream education establishment now frowned on it. I have always thought that to be a big mistake. Carrying language, metaphor and image around in your own head can be nothing other than enriching. I have known many people who have a large repertoire of memorised poems and speeches from plays.
Actually of course its a great discipline for actors, as learning text is a key skill and one which needs to be maintained and developed. That particular part of the brain needs exercising. Have you ever been at a party or out for dinner when someone had mesmorised their friends with reciting a poem. Its a skill that draws respect and admiration from others (as long as one is sensitive about not reciting more than one reasonably short one!)
In my experience often, after listening for a while many people have the urge to join in, often with half remembered fragments. I guess its like going to church even if you don't usually. The hymns begin and if you were brought up singing them in assembly - they emerge in tact from that part of your memory! I love that.
A funny thing that also happens regularly with actors, is that they retain whole scripts in their heads for years, especially if they think they might have cause to perform them again. It can be months between performances and when I call a re-rehearsal, most of them have retained at least 75% of the text!
And so as well as Mrs Donovan's elocution lessons, primary school proved to be another place for me to find my imagination encouraged. In those dim distant days, there was no National Curriculum. Teachers could teach what they wanted would you believe. It was brilliant if you happened to get an inspired teacher, but pretty soul destroying if you got a rubbish one!
Standards varied enormously and it seemed that no one was really accountable. Of course the move to standardise teaching styles and content has been a move forward, even though there is also a loss attached.
You may have seen the 1989 film Dead Poet's Society in which Robin Williams plays John Keating, the maverick rebellious english teacher who inspires his students to love poetry and to carpe diem or 'seize the day'. And that was how primary school felt to me. Not so sure it did for everyone, but that was its beauty. We were free to explore every avenue that attracted us and more than that encouraged to pursue it. Its only recently, indeed since writing my blogs, that I have come to understand how significant this has been for me.
Out of four primary teachers I had two inspired ones, one of the other two was a witch and the other kindly like an elderly aunt. I have little memory of the latter, but the former filled me with dread. But Mr Ingle and Mr Richardson were my heroes.
In my second year, Mr Ingle shared poetry just like Mrs Donovan. Only he also created a space to encourage us as writers ourselves. In that year I wrote copious poems, supported by Mr Ingle's attention and criticism. I worked really hard at them, was rarely satisfied. But that year he entered me into a national poetry competition and I won much to my and my parents' amazement.
The poem was called Pain. As I sit here funnily enough and almost in contradiction I am struggling to remember it, but I will at some point! My parents must have a copy in their attic. I guess maybe it was the writing not the learning by heart that was the objective then. In that year Mr Ingle also awarded me the English Prize for the school. Its a big green book of fairy tales. I still have it. On the inside cover it said - Carole Pluckrose 2I - For achievement and effort in English.
Mr Richardson's class was my final year in that wonderful school (St Augustine's Roman Catholic School in Tunbridge Wells). He was a francophile, and speaking the language was his personal hobby. He taught us vocabulary and pinned pictures and words on the wall, alongside the rotting plastic bag of silage he left there for a year to teach us about farming and cattle! (Never quite got that one!)
I was always enthused by languages. French in particular had a rich and lilting feel on the tongue. In their enthusiasm to support me, my parents bought me a child's illustrated French dictionary. It was big like the fairy tales book but bright yellow. It was full of english words and their French equivalents with a picture next to each one.
What a gift. I decided to write a play in French and get some of my willing classmates to act in it. I laugh at the memory. I painstakingly wrote a twenty minute script in what I thought was French. It was easy. All I had to do was think of what I wanted the character to say in English and then write the corresponding word in French.
What I did not understand at that stage was that verbs have to be conjugated and nouns declined. Its French grammar that was missing from the plan! But the mastery of Mr Richardson I now realise was that he never told me that. He encouraged my play writing and let me put my show on! It was a funny simple little play set in a cafe. I borrowed ice cream boats from home, filled them with cotton wool and sprinkled them with cocoa powder for ice cream.
We were allowed to rehearse for hours in the school hall and then to perform the show for the rest of the school. I loved every minute of creating and directing that French play, (well not sure I can call it a play really!). And I pay hommage to Mr Richardson for his genius and encouragement. I have never heard of him since leaving St Augustine's but I now understand that I have an enormous debt to him. You know what they say about one inspiring teacher.
So that's my training and life in theatre aged 6-11. I will pick it up again shortly. It may not be tomorrow - as who knows how today will go? Nita and I are off to a meeting with one of our commissioners British Transport Police to ensure all the set up for an eight week tour of our play Mullered written by Olly, which tells the story of Thomas Briggs, the first person to be killed on the railways in 1876. We do enjoy a mixed diet!.
Have a good one.
Director's Suggested Exercise of the Day
Take a look at your bookshelf. See if you have an anthology of poetry lurking there. You may already be a poetry lover, but it doesn't matter if you are not. Open the book at random and see if the poem you see speaks to you in any way. If not pick again at random. I would advise a short poem to start with, maybe a 14 line sonnet or a 5 line Haiku. And learn it by heart. Carry it with you during the day, and in those little moments learn it again, until you can recite it by heart. The important thing here is to do it for yourself and have fun with it! See how it affects your day too.
1 comment:
We like this Jazzi - another side to the many-sided artist that you are. My favourite poem is the Listener by Walter de la Mare - its on my *favourites button! Haven't tried learning it by heart, but will now....!
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