Purple Heart at the Gate - Notting Hill. Blog 74

Morning

I met up with an old friend yesterday to go and see Purple Heart by Bruce Norris at the Gate theatre in Notting Hill. I haven't been there for a while. 

I did some performances of my one woman show Fallen by Polly Teale at the Gate back in the late eighties. Its a great little space which has  always punched above its weight in uncompromising quality and taking risks. 

Bruce Norris' play Purple Heart set in 1972 is a gripping and intimate piece of work that takes you right into the interior world of a woman's rage fuelled grief at the loss of her soldier husband in Vietnam. 

The smallness of the Gate space invites us closely into the living room in which the entire action takes place over 2 hours. The intimacy is palpable and it draws us into the grief and incidental humour like an emotional surf board. Its simply one of the best plays I have seen in a while. Brian Norris' script is saturated with truth and manages to get in between the cracks of the everyday platitudes and controls that come with the grief rituals. The dialogue is often fast and the interjections build satisfyingly upon each other, broken with monologues that capture authentic attempts to express the inexpressible. 

Underneath the  demonstrations of admiration such as the awarding of the Purple Heart for bravery to her husband, Carla (Amanda Lowdell) kicks out at life, injustice, brutality and love.

The oppressiveness of her controlling mother-in-law Grace (Linda Broughton) who is just trying to "do her best out of love" is keenly observed and claustrophobic. Carla's son Thor is touchingly played by Oliver Coopersmith whose clarity of performance drew me in throughout.
.

One of my favourite moments is a silence  which extended beyond the 'norm' within the naturalistic convention. It requires a deftness in the director (Christopher Hayden) to be brazen enough to let an authentic silence hang thick in the air without compromise way beyond its time. I just loved that - Trevor White as the injured serviceman Purdy, sits waiting in the living room for Carla, and he waits and we wait for a good 3 minutes in silence. Its beautiful and true. 

This is a truly fine piece of direction and the performances are all outstanding. I highly recommend a trip to see Purple Heart at the Gate before it closes on April 6th.

In the meantime - eat chocolate!

  

Guest Blog: John Rayment- Currently playing Thomas Briggs in Mullered by Clifford Oliver

Now this is a departure. Two blog posts before 8.30 am! Must be on a roll. In

John Rayment - Actor

fact as I was posting earlier I was thinking about John Rayment, currently on tour as Thomas Briggs in Mullered by Clifford Oliver. When I dropped into the show at St Bon's last week I asked John if he would write about his experiences of working with Arc for the first time last September. I had a hunch he would write well and tell it as it is for him from the funny little mini-blogs he puts on Twitter which always make me roar.  I have asked a few people to write guest blogs for me and some come back immediately whilst others still drag their feet! (you know who you are), but I do also appreciate that some people would rather stick needles in their eyes than put fingers to keyboards. I let you off... for the moment.

So I am really pleased that my hunch about John's ability and willingness to write has landed in my in-tray this morning. Here it is:

I'll begin with a provocative statement:  "I don't like children"

That perhaps demands some explanation and context.  As a plain statement, it's quite true:  I don't particularly like kids, never have. I don't actively dislike

Is this why John?

them, but for some reason I've never been blessed with any parental instincts, so my reactions to them tend to be coloured by my own recollections of school, and by the somewhat loud and ill-behaved specimens that inhabit my local Tesco.

Harsh, yes.  Doubly so for someone coming from a family populated heavily with teachers.  My mother, her sister, my  grandmother, two further aunts, a cousin; all with the dedication, patience, passion even, to educate.  Somehow though, the "teaching gene" passed me by.

I tell you all this by way of context.  When, a few years back, I took the ridiculous step of attempting to make my living by acting, a lot of the other people just starting out in the business were doing this mysterious thing called "TIE", which apparently was sometimes quite well-paid.  Having ascertained that this was Theatre In Education (as opposed to some improbable Star Wars reference), and therefore would involve working in schools, with kids, I mentally backed away from the idea quite quickly.  "I'll never do TIE", I remember saying. Often. To anybody who would listen.  Probably to the annoyance of many.  It became a sort of mantra that I trotted out to protect me from the idea.  I even remember saying it quite clearly and firmly to my current agent when I first signed up with her a couple of years ago…

Forward to July 2012. My agent emails me a casting.   A play called "Mullered", for Arc Theatre, based in Barking.  Sounds like a nice part, the brief synopsis of the play sounds interesting, and it's paying above Equity rates.  I read further, and found the line, "…tour to Secondary Schools in Barking & Dagenham and Havering".  It was a TIE job.

I'll admit it, my first thought was "nooooooooo!" Then my second thought was that I couldn't really afford not to do it.  Money was very tight (when is it not?), and this would be good pay.  I resolved to at least go to the audition.  My agent had put the effort into getting me seen, the least I could do was to show up.  If I didn't like the setup, I could always choose not to do it (quite apart from the fact that they might very well not pick me!)  In any case, my irrational fear of TIE was  just that - irrational.  I should go for it.

Well, if I was going to audition, I would have to make the best stab at it I could.  I may not be a fan of kids, but I'd rather not make an arse of myself at an audition.  Besides, auditioning is a worthwhile thing in itself:  You meet people, you stretch yourself.

I didn't have an audition piece handy that really suited, and there was a week before the casting, so it seemed like high time I prepared a new piece.  For some reason, finding a new audition speech is always much, much scarier than actually auditioning, but eventually I picked a piece that seemed to fit the Victorian gent I was auditioning for, and had bits of gravitas and bits of out and out comedy.  Good.  Got it learnt, and, unusually, felt I'd made a decent choice.  Good.

Audition day.  Arrived far too early - bad habit of mine.  However, smiles all round from Carole and Natalie, and into the audition room.  Did my piece, not as well as I might have done, a lot of paraphrasing, but managed to keep in character.  Then a long chat about the play, about the company, about my interest in the part, whether I was interested in educational theatre.  Made me look quite hard at myself, at why I do what I do, why I was there at the time.  I found myself liking the company, in spite of all my irrational prejudice against TIE.  Came away feeling happy I'd done it - which, most of the time is all you can really expect from an audition:  Any casting you walk away from with your dignity intact is a good one, I reckon!

Then it all got a bit scary.  My agent rang and said that Arc had offered me the part.

There were three things that made me decide to accept.  First of all, I'd warmed to Carole and Natalie during the audition.  They were clearly people I would enjoy working with.  Secondly, as my agent said, if I didn't like it, the tour was only for two weeks, and that would be that.  Thirdly, another little mantra:  "If in doubt, do the scary thing" - which usually works out

John as Thomas Briggs with Jordan Barrett in Mullered by Clifford Oliver

quite well when I can't make my mind up.Ok, yes, can't deny it, the fact of being paid decent money for acting, when I was thoroughly skint did have some influence.

So I said yes.

Rehearsals.  First rehearsal day began with some stress - front door was shut, and the doorbell seemed to be missing.  First meeting with Karl and Jordan (the two cast members I'd not previously met) occurred on the fire escape, trying to get into the building.  Little did we know the stresses going on within - Arc had been burgled the night before, and there was a great deal of running around and sorting stuff out happening behind that door!

The rehearsals themselves were pretty enjoyable.  A nice balance between workshoppery, text, and getting up and walking about.  I tend, by default, to be one of those lazy actors who, given the choice between working on the text and doing an exercise or drama game, would probably choose the text…  but having done the exercise, can't avoid the obvious fact that it's helped enormously.  Odd though, I can't actually recall any of the games or exercises we did.  Interesting thing, the memory. 

I do, however, recall being very struck by the emphasis on the quality of the work.  I'd never seen a TIE show when I was at school (not sure they even existed then), so my view of what such shows might be like was heavily influenced by friends' less-than-encouraging anecdotes, and, if I'm honest, by a certain fictitious TIE group featured in the League of Gentlemen.   It was, therefore, very refreshing, and a nice surprise, to find that this company at least, treated their work as seriously as anyone putting a major production into a conventional theatre.  More seriously, compared to some, actually.

The rest of the cast all knew each other already.  Natalie and Jordan had worked with Carole for many years, and Karl too had done several Arc shows.  Always an odd experience, diving into the midst of a group of actors who've worked together a lot before.  There's a tendency to feel like an interloper.  Not that I was given any reason to feel anything of the kind though. Or indeed any chance - partly because everybody couldn't have been more welcoming, and partly because there was a lot of work to be done, which everybody just got on with.  It's a one of the best things in this job, to suddenly discover yourself partway into rehearsals, getting on well with (and working well with) people you'd not even met two days previously.

Six days of rehearsals.  Probably about right.  It always feels like you could do with a couple more days, no matter how long the rehearsal period actually is, but in practice, until you can get the thing out in front of an audience, and see what works and what doesn't, extra rehearsal is sometimes just going through the motions.  You become more confident in the lines, certainly, but there's nothing quite like not being able to ask for a line to focus the mind!

So to the first performance - and this is where I get to refer back to all that rambling context at the beginning, and to point my metaphorical finger at myself, and to laugh.  Theatre In Education.  Well it certainly was educational - for me.  The show itself went fairly well, and was enjoyable, if a little terrifying, being the first, and was well received by the 150 or so Year 10s… but the Q&A session afterwards was a revelation.  The kids had listened, had laughed, had thought about the issues, and come up with a whole stack of intelligent questions.  Of course, it says far more about me than about them, that this should seem remarkable.  I won't deny, it changed me.  No, I haven't suddenly acquired a desire to teach, or to be a parent, but the reflex of ingrained, automatic, unthinking "I don't like kids" seems to be unravelling.

That was last September, and there have been plenty of performances since then.  There have been the favourite schools, those that Arc has a long association with, or who've been particularly taken with Mullered the first time they see it, and who've kept asking us back (hello Alperton!).  There have been the ones where the teachers were terribly worried about the content, with concerns that their little innocents would be marred by our coarse worldliness… the children themselves almost always simply taking it in their collective stride, being far more worldy than the teachers perhaps give them credit for.  And then there are those few schools where the teachers couldn't be nicer to us, offering refreshments, eager to help… but whose hordes of rampaging Year 7s then almost demolish the set on their way in, and barely pause in their conversations while the play is on.

There have been the schools where there's a parking space right by the door to the hall; those where friendly teachers and caretakers have lugged stools and floorcloth and hatstand; but also those where people are surprised that we might need to park at all, or who seem to think that the minute or so between the end of Assembly and the scheduled start of our show will be more than enough time to get ready.  That said, as we found from experience early on in this leg of the tour on the occasion when the van was stuck in dreadful traffic for hours - we actually can do it in a couple of minutes if we have to… though I'm not sure it made for our very best performance!

I'm writing this in the Easter break, after four weeks of the 2013 tour.  When we come back, there are another three weeks still to go. 

I'm enjoying it.  Yes, me - the chap who said he'd never do TIE.  Enjoying working with a bunch of talented people, in a friendly company and seeing the reactions of hundreds of children - even those whose "audience skills" might need a little attention!

Roll on the final three weeks!

Editor's note:

I will now let you into a long guarded secret John et al. 

The TIE company created by League of Gentlemen is a somewhat dubious hommage to Arc. Reese Shearsmith worked with us as an actor at the beginning of his career - and his take on the company has always smarted just a little, not least his reference to Olly Plimsole! But I guess we could also see it as flattering in some odd way - You can put the rest together! 

Tee-J Lands Romeo at the National Theatre: Reminiscences of Boy X: Blog 73

Good morning!
Back refreshed from my blog holiday in virtual Brazil - it was hot (I think!).

TJ being cool - getting the National Call?

I was thrilled to see the post from TJ (Tendayi Jembere) on Facebook last night 'So its official you are looking at the next Romeo for the national theatre!'

What fantastic news for this talented young actor. TJ has been part of the Arc family for over 6 years and has performed in many of our shows. He was with us only last month on a London schools tour of Crossing Over by Clifford Oliver and I noticed how much he has developed as an actor over the years. Everyone at Arc is so proud of him and can't wait to see the show! Of course when we see our family of actors grow and take on new and exciting challenges its a wonderful thing. 

Probably the most significant piece of work that TJ has been part of over the past four years is Boy X by Clifford Oliver. He was one of the original team (Troy Glasgow, Jordan Barrett, Lee Vassel) who came together to workshop ideas for the piece back in 2009. The show grew from this and Olly wrote one of our most enduring pieces which toured the country and indeed is back on the road in the autumn. 

Boy X came out of the Arc stable because it was a piece of work that we all wanted and needed to make about the impact of murder on a young London community, the power of male friendship, the corruption and seduction of gangs and the untimely loss of so many young men. TJ played Zane, murdered as a revenge attack by another gang, and the play explores the emotional heart ripping of the aftermath of his death. Sadly we too often see such stories of shattered lives.

It a great joy and no surprise to me that TJ will carry his emotional understanding and experience of life in inner city London to bring a freshness and new resonance to Romeo in the ultimate and universal gang story. The depth and fragility of young mens lives sits under the surface of pride, bravado and sex. I so look forward to seeing this iteration.

Here's a glimpse of TJ in action with Jordan, Michael and Lee in the 2009 Boy X trailer.

Bring it on! 

Have a lovely Easter

Blog Holiday in Brazil. Blog 72

Morning!

I spent some time yesterday with a colleague who is a self avowed dinosaur when it comes to technology and whom I have been prodding to get moving on social media for his business for some time. He knows he should but its not really his thing. So we decided that I would spend a bit of time with him setting up a Facebook page and a group for discussion. We did have a laugh and it reminded us that we are in a cross over generation, the internet migrants in a world where our children are natives! It seems that some of us of a 'certain' age are self professed dinosaurs and some rather (or maybe very?) annoying evangelists! No guessing which one I am.

Anyway he emailed me last night threatening to throw his laptop over the balcony and was having a minor temper tantrum. My suggestion that its all intuitive, so to follow his nose was met with an air of frustrated derision! He finds the whole thing illogical. And it sort of is I suppose. But if its illogical and intuitive it speaks to the way a lot of us learn and think? I haven't given this any consideration but I am pretty sure that its totally logical and its just its method of discovery and adventure is intuitive? 

It can be frustrating but we all teach ourselves as we go and the internet unfolds in unpredictable ways just like life really. Isn't it simply a virtual mirror of how we are and how we interact and communicate. So if like my colleague you aren't a networker then the virtual 'party' that is social media is potentially as excruciating as the physical one perhaps? I hear this morning though that he has sorted it! Of course he has.

Anyway this little exchange got me thinking that I sometimes like to take a brief blog holiday, and so with this logic I can go off wherever I like on here!  I thought about where I might go on my brief blog holiday for the next few days and I have settled on Brazil. 

I have never been to South America but I have always heard amazing things about Brazil. So I am off on a short and very cheap couple of days to virtual Rio De Janeiro!

I might even see what theatre is on there! I quite fancy whats on at  Copacabana’s Theatro Net - Tim Maia Vale Tudo (Tim Maia Anything Goes) O Musical in which the cast bring the legendary father of Brazilian soul and funk to life in the musical written by Nelson Motta and directed by João Fonseca. I haven't heard of Tim Maia but it sounds like a great show! Apparently sold out in Sao Paulo.

And I quite like the look of the Ipaneima Beach hotel - 

My virtual hotel window view!

So I'll check in from blog holiday in virtual Rio in a couple of days. 

My virtual breakfast

Enjoy the Blighty weather!

Mullered at St Bonaventure's Newham: Featuring Arghya Bormon aged 13! Blog 71

Morning All. 

Would be nice if Winter would let go of its untimely grip on Spring please?

St Bonaventure's School in Upton Park - Newham

What a fantastic morning I had yesterday. Having had a very nice chat with a taxi driver about the fact that it was the end of March and he hadn't pruned his roses yet, I arrived in Upton Park for a performance of our touring show Mullered at St Bonaventure's Catholic Boys school. And it was a bon adventure! 

Arghya Bormon with Team Mullered!

It was a warm and welcoming reception at St Bon's and I was excited to see the Mullered team as I haven't been out with the show now for a couple of weeks, (well four John informs me - oops!)  

They are organised like a military operation under Natalie's leadership, and they are a wonderfully supportive and tight team. That's Nat, John, Karl and Jordan pictured here with 13-year old Arghya who had become a member of the team before the morning was out! 

Its great to be out on the ground with the show, as no amount of pontificating or philosophising about what we do can substitute for the real thing. The transformation of spaces and the engagement of hearts, minds and souls in a shared experience. Its what its about, a bit of community storytelling on an ordinary day in a place where children come to learn. I love working in schools with all their challenges, frustrations and joys! And make no mistake they are tough places to work, as well as excite you they can also zap your energy in a moment. Teachers are on the front line daily dedicated to doing their very best to inspire and ignite children's learning often against the most difficult of odds. And they mostly achieve the impossible. 

So its easy for us, a travelling band of storytellers to go into a school and weave a bit of magic for an hour or so. We don't have to sustain the ongoing
relationships and contain a large number of competing challenges. We might get the best really for a short time.

And yesterday was one such best time. The boys entered the hall with the usual and expected boisterousness of a group of 150 13 year olds. Testosterone flying - you could smell it in the air! (sorry if that offends at this time in the morning!). But this energy which can seem anarchic is of course full of promise and possibility - its what I love about this age group. 

Arghya, Olu, Andre,Paul, Bengelino,Alton Ajay.

Within moments of the show beginning the space is transformed into a theatre and off we go. The show is well embedded now, apart from a few notes and gentle tweaks I am broadly happy with it. The comedy is working particularly well and Olly's writing rhythm hitting most of its marks now. The confidence of good timing and an intriguing story and characters hold the room. And the boys are fully with us. Its a joy.

As the discussion finishes at the end of the show - I am approached by a young man who says to me "Miss, that was an excellent play, and very educational". These measured and adult words came from Arghya, who clearly wanted to talk. There were a couple of others who came up to join him, and by happy coincidence one is Olu, the brother of Freya one of my Cinderella chorus last year. He asked me if I had directed Cinderella and we had a momentary lovely reminisce. 

I asked the boys if I could have an impromptu chat with them about their responses to the show, and ever keen to capture such opportunities I whipped out my Iphone and got filming (bit of a grand word!). This is the link - you will see what I mean about Arghya! My friend Amari suggested that he is a leader of the future and perhaps the Eton boys should keep a look over their shoulder!  I concur. 

I am looking forward now to John writing a guest blog for me over the next week or so with notes from the road.

Natalie and the boys - the unseen glamorous bit of schools touring! 

Very lovely and helpful caretaker!

Great morning, and a good reminder about why I spent hours on Sunday writing funding bids!  I am really proud of our team! 

Have a lovely day.

This schools tour of Mullered by Clifford Oliver is made possible by the generous sponsorship of British Transport Police.

The Actor and his body - The legacy of Litz Pisk: Blog 70

Good morning All

Naughty but nice!

All my proposals got finished as planned yesterday and the broccoli and yoghurt soup was delicious. However the piece of New York cheese cake that followed was possibly a mistake!

Having being invited to run a workshop in Wroclaw I have been considering the precise nature of what I want to explore with Polish actors. The Polish actor training is historically demanding, highly physical, disciplined and emotionally exposing. The cultural scene is heavily set by the legacy of Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor and others in particular and carried on by a new young group of directors. I am sure that my coming back into that space 25 years on will renew my sense of the core, uncompromising - almost holy respect for the body as 'expressor' that pervades Polish theatre.

The emphasis of much of Grotowski's early work was on the actor as an instrument through which any number of images, ideas and emotions are channelled. As such the body must be trained and tuned to allow emotion and voice to flow through it unhindered. This is tough, because we use our bodies in all sorts of ways for everything! Tuning them as instruments as a primary attention may present all sorts of personal challenges. However its an investment that might be made by an actor if she wants to move beyond the lazy and the ordinary.

Another great influencer in the field of body and movement in theatre in the UK and aligned to Grotowski's approach is Litz Pisk who died in 1998. She is widely regarded as the finest and most influential teacher of modern theatre movement. She was professional director of movement at the Old Vic, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the English National Opera, and in television and films, including the movement for Vanessa Redgrave's film role in Isadora. She was Director of Vienna's School of Art and Movement, and a teacher at the Old Vic School, the Bath Academy of Art, RADA and the Central School of Speech and Drama. The Actor and His Body is her seminal work. 

You would think perhaps that it is nigh on impossible to learn anything about movement from a book, but hers is perhaps unique in this not least because as a visual artist her dynamic line drawings express the quality of movement she describes in her exercises. Its a practical book, which guides the actor through a wide range of ways of freeing the body, and has much synergy with the work of Kristin Linklater who I talked about in a recent blog on voice. 

Litz Pisk's way of working had nothing to do with striving for a preconceived ideal physique; instead she was concerned to free the individual body she saw before her from all its constricting habits and limitations. Initially this process might involve a certain amount of chaos, welcomed by her as a first step on the road to what she called "a second simplicity". When you could stand before her relaxed and balanced you were ready to allow your imagination to shape your body.

 After her death the director Michael Elliott said of Litz Pisk.

"She had a contagious seriousness that can create an atmosphere of deep concentration as if by magic, with a glance of the hooded eyes and a half-lost mumble".

So I will return to Litz shortly and reread her book as a refresher. I owe much to her approach in how I like to work with actors and of course these influences become unconscious in one's own practice. I always find it salutary to return to a source of influence and rediscover things that I may have forgotten or indeed never learned in the first place!

I'm off to check in on our show Mullered at St Bonaventure's school in Upton Park this morning. I'll pass on the donuts!

Have a good Monday. 

Heading North To Poland and Teatru Arka: Blog 69

Dzien dobry!

Teatru Arka: The Temple. Dybuk - Jewish Legends

Good day yesterday.I travelled west to meet Rob Marshall from Nostairway Media at Teddington studios where his company is based. The strange weather was a bit taxing, with the mix of high winds, snow and sleet enough to disintegrate my umbrella! But it was a fruitful meeting and today we will bash the proposal back and forth for this online soap opera. I am looking forward to working with Rob, whose work I like a lot  - http://www.nostairway.com/

Turning now to the title of today's blog. Some of you may remember way back in January I became exercised by the fact that my Cinderella Blog http://broadwaypantocarolepluckrose.blogspot.co.uk/ was getting a high level of visits even though the project was finished. But more than that at least 70% were coming from Poland. I am still curious about this. I have spoken to a few Polish people about it including a lovely woman called Marta who does a mean holistic massage at the Zen Health Spa in Notting Hill. She told me without much hesitation that she believed Polish people would be reading it because of hope. Hope to come to the UK maybe to improve their lives economically, hope because we have the funding and resources (!) to make theatre in the UK and its virtually impossible to get funding now in Poland, a country well known for its experimental theatre and some of the greatest 20th century directors.

Marta's may be a helpful hypothesis, plus Pradeep's suggestion that it might be used as a case study by students. 

In any event it prompted me some weeks ago to further my conversation with my friend Maciej (was a fellow actor with me in Triple Action Theatre) in Wroclaw. After our great catch up SKYPE conversation I decided to book a trip to Poland, to see if I can get a feel for things there and get a sense of what's happening artistically and socially for myself.

Teatru Arka: Edyta Stein

I am so excited about the news I got yesterday from Maciej that I have been invited to lead a workshop at Teatru Arka  (love the synchronicity of this - a company with the same name as ours!). Indeed Maciej was off to see their new show last night at teatrarka.pl

I have yet to get more details of Arka's work. I hope to speak to Anna, their Artistic Director this week before I head over to Poland in early April. 

I will be leading a workshop called The Soulful Actor which will be a practical and physical exploration of the beginning of creating character through archetypes. I will invite actors to enter the imaginal space to work both on their own imaginative skills development and their emotional and spatial connection with each other in an ensemble.

This is an entirely new workshop project in which I hope to develop a laboratory approach to exploration of the actor's work outside the pressures of putting a show together. I know I have a lot to learn and I am very excited to use this opportunity to experiment with actors in Poland,  a country and theatre which very much influenced my professional career as a young actor in the eighties. 

Broccoli and Yoghurt soup

I also plan to run The Soulful Actor as a four-day laboratory programme for professional and emerging actors in the August Bank Holiday week at our studios at Arc, and will post more information about this when I get back from Poland. 

In the meantime, today is back to writing the soap opera proposal and making some nice broccoli and yoghurt soup inspired by Dorinda's last weekend.

Have a good Sunday.

Serendipity And The Energy of Social Media: Blog 68

Good Saturday morning!

This isn't actually my nose

I have always loved following my nose, which I have to admit is quite big. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that some of my friends and colleagues might even go so far as to call me nosey - I rather like to think they mean more benignly, curious. 


Years ago on an Arc team retreat in Frinton we did the Meredith Belbin management team roles theory exercise and I discovered, not to my surprise that one of my identified roles was an off the scale 'Resource Investigator' aka nosey or curious.

(NB.if you don't already know Belbin Team Role Theory - its worth a trip out to http://www.belbin.com/)

Sorry - this is random google! I just loved it

Definition: The Resource Investigator gives a team a rush of enthusiasm at the start of the project by vigorously pursuing contacts and opportunities. He or she is focused outside the team, and has a finger firmly on the pulse of the outside world. Where a Plant creates new ideas, a Resource Investigator will quite happily appropriate them from other companies or people. A good Resource Investigator is a maker of possibilities and an excellent networker but has a tendency to lose momentum towards the end of a project and to forget small details.

Mmmm - with any of these things, psychometric testing, horoscopes - any of it, we need to proceed with caution as its very easy to get seduced, flattered or even demotivated by descriptions of ourselves. For example I always like to think I am better on detail than I actually am, but fortunately I am surrounded by a number of 'completer-finishers' who cover for me on that weakness!

One of the most useful things about Belbin however is that its about playing to your perceived strengths in a team. The downside can be that you might then relinquish any responsibility for areas that aren't as strong for you which in turn could stunt growth and possibility. Its very useful stuff but does come with a health warning to proceed with caution and not to get stuck. In my book all these things are useful and have a part to play as long as you don't think you have found the Holy Grail (Unless you have of course, in which case could you kindly point me in its direction!)

Yesterday was a primary example of my positives and negatives as an RI. After a lovely coffee with some friends staying at the Strand Palace Hotel I had two cancelled meetings, which meant I had to get back to the proposal writing part of my job and I have a lot stacking up to write. Its not that I don't like writing them, its just that I prefer the people-having-ideas-together bit more! And its one area of potential procrastination in a decisive life. If I don't do them too we will all end up hard up at Arc! 

When I got back home to work quietly on the proposal, I did the usual pencil sharpening activities. This time it included a check in on all my social media platforms. I do love them, but then I would wouldn't I? I love meeting people and the apparent randomness of chance conversations that can often lead to unexpected joys and indeed new projects. So whether in the physical or virtual world I am happy doing that. You see I am even doing it here. 

I noticed I had a new Twitter follower who has a film making company.We did the usual courteous hellos and thank you for following mes, and then I returned to write my proposal for a 4 part online mini-soap opera. I realised that it was 4pm on a Friday afternoon and I needed a quote for fees from a film company. I have worked with a number, but as this new one just happened to tweet me this afternoon I thought it worth a chat. And R** and I had a good call although with the usual reception gremlins familiar to all of us on the go. Its resulted in our agreement to meet this morning at Teddington Studios to look at the possibility of Green screen CGI for the project and to see if we like each other's work.This means hopefully that I am now on the way to getting this proposal done over the weekend. Don't want to predict the outcome though as sometimes we follow our nose up a blind alley!

Not quite sure what I draw as a conclusion from today's rather eclectic post, although serendipity raised its wonderful head as it so often does! I am sure all will become clearer in due course.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Generosity Factor: What Makes a Good Actor: Blog 67

Morning All!

I was on the tube earlier this week with a large case, a rather silly decision given the hustle and bustle of the London rush hour. I was perfectly able to circumnavigate the escalators and corridors slowly with this monstrosity but I have to admit that it was a bit of a pain! 

You could sometimes do with a good suit of armour to make your way into a carriage in the midst of all the pushing and shoving to get on. It always strikes me, and I know I am not alone in thinking this, that we do become slightly odd when we are travelling on the tube. Its as if we take a leave of absence from our bodies and just let them get on and survive the invasion of physical space, the loss of civility and the collapsing of our usual social norms. Except I guess these are the tube social norms!  

It strikes me that people are genuinely 'not there' but temporarily checked out. I often try to imagine the internal narratives, emotions, locations and destinations of my fellow passengers. It passes the time interestingly and often competes with the kindle. 

On Monday though, when attempting to lift the monster case down some steps, a man coming down in the other direction suddenly stopped, broke his flow and turned round and offered to go back up the stairs with my case, which was quite a way. He got it to the top, turned round, smiled and went on his way. I said thank you. This in itself is no extraordinary thing, and I know that most of us have offered this kind of small help to a stranger, and indeed been offered it in return. The thing that interests me about it though, is that it takes someone to break the personal and collective trance to even notice a middle-aged woman struggling with a monster case up a set of stairs.

People often talk about little acts of kindness, there is even a campaign I believe. But the thing is, you may just need to be awake to actually think to do them. The tube man was suddenly awake to me and in that moment of kindness we had the tiniest connection, that reminded us both I am sure that even under the extremes of the 'rat race' we can stop for a tiny moment to be human with someone else.

What has this to do with acting?  Well its about generosity. And that's of course a moveable feast. We aren't all generous all of the time. Sometimes the pressures and circumstances we live in make that difficult. But when an actor comes into rehearsal to work with other actors to create a piece, apart from being supremely talented, curious and inventive of course, generosity is the other essential ingredient.

Actors being generous on Mullered by Clifford Oliver! .. Well maybe?

Generosity makes the world of difference to creativity. I am not talking about some soft sentimental type of sycophancy, I am talking about being prepared to give yourself wholly to a process. This means giving an idea a chance to grow without shooting it down immediately. It means listening closely to other people's ideas particularly when you are not convinced they will work.Surprisingly other people have good ideas too! Its about not interrupting others  but at the same time building with them, its about the "yes and" of improvisation I talked about the other day. Its about sharing your passions and ideas in a way that they can be heard and understood by others. Its about robust criticism, giving the idea the critical attention it requires. Its about dumping and letting go of an idea because you are satisfied it won't work. It means being present to each other fully as human beings, taking the risk of being wrong and at the same time welcoming the space for something to be fully explored.

I am fortunate in that almost without exception all the actors we employ at Arc work with supreme generosity and I believe this reaps enormous rewards in the quality of what we are then able to produce. Indeed these actors continue to be long term members of our ensemble in one way or another.

Generosity is an alchemical ingredient in life - it works wonders and it sparks imagination and creativity. 

Might be fun to notice those little acts of ordinary kindness in whatever way they appear for you today.

Have a good one.

The Presence of the Actor: Blog 65

Good morning first day of spring, and my eldest daughter Grace's birthday. Happy birthday darling!

For some reason I woke up this morning thinking about the nature of presence and the meaning of being present and in particular what this is in terms of the actor on stage. We often talk in theatre about stage presence which is a great accolade in a performer if they demonstrate it. Indeed in his book The Presence of the actor, director Joe Chaikin of the Open theater goes a long way to unpack this idea and to talk about this essential ingredient of great performance. 

As I often do I began by checking the definition in the dictionary.

pres·ence 
n.
1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence.
2. Immediate proximity in time or space.
3. The area immediately surrounding a great personage, especially a sovereign.
4. A person who is present.
5.
a. A person's bearing, especially when it commands respectful attention: "He continues to possess the presence, mental as well as physical, of the young man" (Brendan Gill).
b. The quality of self-assurance and effectiveness that permits a performer to achieve a rapport with the audience: stage presence.
6. A supernatural influence felt to be nearby.

The key word that jumps out of this definition for me is rapport.

And of course presence is not limited to the actor in a performance. It shows up everywhere in our lives. Its absence is often very present too. It appears intangible and it probably is. But we all recognise it when we see it. 

Last year I had the privilege of attending the Stephen Lawrence murder trial with Neville Lawrence, who along with Jon Snow (who exudes presence from our tv screens every night!) is a patron of Arc. Being alongside Neville throughout the trial at the Old Bailey demonstrated this notion to me in bucket loads. 

Neville's height and quiet dignity changes the energy in a room the moment he walks in. He doesn't have to do or say anything, but people know he has entered the space. I watched people respond to him in court, in the cafe next door, on the street. Is it because people know him from the TV and recognise the huge emotional strain he has been through in his fight for justice? Is is that we see something in him that brings out a deeper side of ourselves? I don't know, except to say that when I accompanied him to tv and radio interviews he transformed the space we were in regularly. I suspect its a mix of his natural rapport with people, his softness and his resoluteness. But its also largely what people project onto him too. I watched as people elevated him without words to a place of great respect and admiration. He would simply smile, and his eyes would twinkle mischieviously. The beauty was that he didn't succumb to it in any narcissistic way which would have been so easy to do. He simply remains present with those he is with. 

My dearest friend Amari is the same, but she doesn't do it in public. When I visit her in her peaceful first floor flat in Whitechapel, I feel the size and quality of her presence the moment I walk through her front door. She doesn't do anything, in fact she might simply be making herself a cup of coffee, but her energy can immediately change the mood I am in. She knows about presence, but does nothing to cultivate it. She has learnt over many years as a political activist and then psychotherapist what it means to be present with those she is with. Its both simple and hard simultaneously to be totally present with another human being. We all have our own agendas after all, and in a conversation we are often lining up our answer as the other person is speaking, often trying to second guess them and control the conversation. We are often failing to listen fully to them, with our own internal noise dominating the exchange. 

I know from my own experience that when someone is fully present and in rapport with me, I feel a change and intimacy that is second to none. The quality of the air even seems to change and become still. And in this space, called 'active listening' by psychologists, its possible to be truly present with another human being. This is a wonderful gift. 

In my experience the reverse is also the case. Spending time over the past few weeks with a friend who lost her husband recently I witnessed profoundly with her his absence. In her excruciating grief she repeats to me many times "he isn't in the world anymore, he can't see the spring or call me softly". The presence of his absence saturates the room we sit in. 

Its a curious thing, not easily defined but fully known by us all. Its the stuff of life in all its uncertainty. And its the joy of life when someone enters your space with it. Its there in abundance in intimate relationships.The excitement and pleasure of anticipation at the being with someone who is present with you  is wonderful. The immediate rapport they create lifts the heart and soul and its a joy to be with them. I think its also what draws us back to live performance again and again, whether it be a singer, an actor or a great orator. And of course to those people we love personally. An energy that we can't put our finger on pervades the atmosphere.  

The common denominator whether in a domestic or public encounter is that this person is fully themselves and present with you. They instinctively build rapport, show genuine interest in you, remember things about you and have a generosity of spirit that lifts you up. You in turn are naturally drawn to listen to them. In so doing we understand that whilst we are fundamentally alone, we are also deeply rooted in tribe and community. 

The ancient Greeks have four words to describe love, Agape, Eros, Philia and Storge. When we are in rapport with someone or a group of people I believe we are experiencing Agape love. Part of the definition of Agape is love in community 'unselfish love of one person for another that is spiritual not sexual in its nature'.

And here's the rub - in a truly powerful performance the actor is fully present in the moment in the character they are playing, the relationships they are manifesting and the energy of rapport they are creating with their audience. I believe that this is the secret to those moments of transcendence that we can experience in the communion of theatre performance -  when you 'could hear a pin drop'.  The audience and the performers are in true rapport with each other and the active listening is exquisite.

Actors learn to be in the 'now' in a good drama school training, but it can evade us when we are subject to the personal narratives, conflicts and daily doing that we are caught up in. Actors have to work hard to learn to stay present to the moment, and therefore open to the multitude of unspoken possibilities in creating character and narrative.

These skills are natural to some great actors, but can also be learnt in the training or rehearsal room. Its what makes the difference between good and great. Whilst I don't generally enjoy auditions, when someone walks through my studio door brimming with 'nowness', rapport and agape my heart leaps and I am most inclined to give them the part!

If you have a moment to pause today in the presence of another - just notice your energy shift when you find yourself in deep rapport with them. Its better than drugs! 

Enjoy this first day of spring! I intend to.