A classical weekend.

For months I've seen posters all around Newcastle advertising two Shakespeare's being put on at the Theatre Royal by Propeller. I neither knew who Propeller were or what the plays were about, but I was determined to go and see another Shakespeare; seeing The Winter's Tale on my trip to Edinburgh made me realise just how much I love classical plays.

After using all of my persuasive techniques I couldn't get Becky– a friend of mine from college– to come with me and I couldn't ask Jade (she wasn't exactly keen on The Winter's Tale), so I decided it was time to introduce the parents to Shakespeare– risky, I know. Luckily for me, I'd already intrigued them through our little chats about drama school, monologues and plays I'd been reading (Troilus & Cressida, Love's Labour's Lost, Julius Caesar), making my suggestion to go and see one at the theatre quite logical. Just to make sure I wasn't throwing her in at the deep end I recited a monologue to my mum to see if she could understand it– god did I underestimate her. Apparently her addiction to Spartacus: Blood and Sand has made her "totally in tune" with classical language.

Friday night was The Taming of the Shrew, attended by myself, the mamma and the paps. There was a preset of the actors walking through the foyer, around the stalls and on the stage before the performance began but we didn't see much of this due to rushing up to our seats in the gods (the Gallery is the cheapest and the highest) and for being in the gods. Although, sitting in the Gallery is nowhere near as bad as people make out. Yes, you can't see the roof of the stage and you have to lean forward in your seat to see the action, but for £14 a ticket (and sometimes as little as £7) you can't really complain. Ian did find it a bit uncomfortable though, so people with back problems beware.

Propeller are an all-male Shakespeare theatre company, directed by Edward Hall. When talking to someone about the show they were quite against the idea of an 'all-male' theatre company, what with it being so much harder for female actors to get jobs than male actors. But I disagree, I mean yes, it is hard for women in the performing arts industry but that doesn't mean that it's wrong to have an all-male cast. If that were true then it should be wrong to have an all-female task too, if equality is what we're after. Unfortunately for us ladies, Shakespeare was originally performed by men anyway– the performances from Propeller replicated the humour found in many of his plays because of this very well in their interpretation of the texts.

The Taming of the Shrew was witty, fast paced, full of energy, hilarious and oh-so bitter sweet. That overriding moral of how women should and should not be treated just seeps through the whole performance and is encapsulated by the brilliantly added line from Edward Hall and Roger Warren: "Tis' but a play". Go. And. See. It. Even if you don't like Shakespeare, I bet you would enjoy this. It's not what you would expect at all. Aaaand the cast play a short musical set during the interval of all Shrew performances to raise money for ovarian cancer (see there not trying to be sexist after all!).

Saturday night's Twelfth Night was similarly brilliant, just as funny, if not a little more laughing-out-loud, equally energetic, a tad bit more confusing– but what play wouldn't be when you've got a man playing a woman who is pretending to be a man who looks almost identical to their character's brother too. Confusing. I took my dad and step mum to go see this one for their birthdays! They loved it, which made me very very happy. Scenes like the boxing match between Viola and Malvio really demonstrate how much Propeller have adapted these plays as their own, and show us just how pliant classical texts can be. From the sheer contrast of his two performances and his superb characterisation for Olivia and Biondello, Ben Allen stood out in particular for me; Vince Leigh played a much-to-convincing drunk/bad-boy in both and Liam O'Brien's Irish lullaby's were hauntingly good. It also has to be said that Dan Wheeler's Katherine was superb. 

The musical elements and instruments used in both performances boggle my mind. Not because it's amazingly difficult to do or anything, but just for the sheer naturalistic-ness of it– like you couldn't imagine it any other way.

Grey Street is probably the nicest street in Newcastle, the architecture is just amazing.

Our wonderful Theatre Royal.

Isn't she pretty?

Guildhall

I mentioned in my last post (Work and Weight) that I had my drama school audition for Guildhall recently, here's my diary for the day.

7 am – Woke up, got ready into black jeans, burgundy top and my favourite blazer (tailor made) with my hunters, country jacket and an All Saints bag I bought a few years ago.

9 am – Arrived at Castle Gate in Newcastle for the audition a tad early. I was put in a waiting room and twiddled my thumbs for 10 mins before being joined by 7 other auditionees. We were taken down into the basement (not as scary as it sounds) by two ex students, Patrick and Anna. If you watch some of the videos on the Guildhall website about the acting course you'll see Anna talking about her year three show "Summerfolk".

9.30 am – When everyone arrived (6 boys, 2 girls- it's usually the other way round!) we all handed in our headshots, were given a number and had to write down our audition pieces. Funnily enough, I was given my lucky number 4 (not that it gave me any luck). Coincidentally, the  ambassador that had been in my National Youth Theatre audition a few weeks ago was there too!

10 am – After this we were given time to change and all taken into another basement room to meet Christian Burgess, head of acting and Dinah Stabb, head of movement– she was in Get Him to the Greek!!! We had a 15 minute warm up which involved lots of spacial awareness, eye contact and team work games. If you're not used to doing warm ups before sessions, what I mean by "spacial awareness" is you all have to move around the room and balance the space as much as possible, watching everyone around you so that all gaps are filled and you don't bump into anyone! Making eye contact was a big thing for Christian and Dinah, we had to find out the colour of everyones eyes and look everyone in the eye when passing them. Don't freak out though! It's a lot more fun than it sounds, especially when everyone is smiling and supportive– my group were lovely! If you're familiar with the number game, we played that a couple of times and managed not to mess up– which is hard. Basically, as a group you have to count to the number of people there are but if anyone speaks at the same time you have to start again. It's a lot harder and more intense than it sounds. Great for a concentration and awareness warm up though. To my surprise, Dinah joined in with everything which was really brilliant; having someone who is "on the inside" involve themselves in a warm up instead of just dictating it is so comforting. Finally, we were all asked to get into lines according to various factors (hair colour, height) without speaking and then had to line up against the back wall. This was the scary bit. Well, I say scary, but what I really mean is: we were put on the spot. Christian dictated something for us to say to him, which went along the lines of:

Hello
My name is...
I was born in...
Today I have come from...
The best day of my life so far was...
The worst day of my life so far was...
The reason I am interested in Guildhall is...

This may not seem like much, and it isn't, but I hate it when people ask me what the best/worst days of my life are. I just don't know. In a way, I suppose that proves what they're trying to say about being too young to get on the course. But the reason I don't know is just because I can't choose! So being put on the spot for that particular question freaked me out a little, as it did with a couple of others too (I think).

10.30 am-12 pm – After I'd finished freaking out and had watched everyone else (internally) freak out we were escorted back to the previous room in order to wait for our individual auditions. Being 4th, I had some time to chat with the rest of the group before going in. I rehearsed my monologues very dedicatedly and thoroughly to prepare myself for the audition that could change my life forever. That's what should have happened, but as my scoring out hints, I used the time to discuss plays and films with my new peers instead– which calmed me right down anyway, so I felt better. This is a piece of advice that could be brilliant or absolutely terrible, it's entirely dependent upon the person and their situation. I'm a people's person, like to calm my nerves by talking, had already performed all of my pieces too many times and was trying to find out a few things from Patrick about using him as a warm prop in my speeches. Which, interestingly enough, is a major difference about Guildhall to other drama schools: they encourage eye contact in your audition– so much so that I was able to use Patrick as a dead body for my Breathing Corpses speech!
On that note, I'll tell you about the audition shall I? So, Patrick took me to wait outside the room where we had our warm up and we had a little chat about what I was doing etc etc– he was lovely. Christian came and asked us to go in, he and Dinah were sitting behind a table on the left hand side of the room, Patrick took up a seat in front of it on the right, facing me. They asked me which piece I would like to do first, which was great because I love doing my Bellafront speech. I started with that, using Patrick to say it to (he reacted to me as well! Really nice to have someone do that during an audition), then they asked to see my Breathing Corpses speech (they found it quite funny when I asked Patrick to play dead) and finally I had to sing a few verses from my song. Stupidly, I always panic when I'm asked to sing, even if they just want to see how I act the song. Firstly, I said the song was from a play/musical by Lee Hall when it's actually by Alan Plater (I knew this but crumbled as soon as they said "Can we hear your song please?"), secondly, I avoided eye contact at all costs (I'm not used to small-scale audience eye contact, especially when singing) and thirdly I closed my eyes too much. Leaving all this firmly behind, they asked me a few questions about why I wanted to go to drama school and not university– which I could have answered better– then I was free to go. I went back to the happy room and carried on conversing.

After everyone had been seen, Christian and Dinah came in to tell all of us that no one was going to be recalled (very nicely of course). In all honesty, it was probably my worst audition so far so I wasn't that surprised, disappointed of course, but I saw it coming.

To cheer ourselves up, Owen (NYT ambassador), Michael McIntyre ("yes, like the comedian" he told us with exasperation) and I went for a coffee round the corner at Great Coffee (it's good, but expensive). This turned into 2 hours of chatting about auditions, plays, films and god knows what else, then we went into the winter and ended up talking about american history, politics and a lot more of god knows what else for a good 45 mins! Lots of laughter and good stories made for a nice end to the day.

If anyone reading this has any auditions coming up soon, GOOD LUCK! Feel free to get in touch with how it goes/your experience or any questions you might have– but I warn you, I am most definitely not an expert. It's just nice to share.

I'm finding it kind of therapeutic writing about about my audition, post-audition. I think I might write up My RADA and Bristol experiences while I'm at it. Clear my head a little before Central and Drama Centre!

J'habite en Angleterre

It has been overcast, dull and gloomy in Newcastle for what seems like an eon. I usually just get on with it, live with it, forget about it. But on Tuesday, my cousins who moved to Australia two years ago, came back to visit.

The nice thing is that they're not completely "Aussie-fied", they may have picked up the twang and developed a highly sought after skin condition known as "The Golden Effect" but they are surprisingly pro-England. I like that. Makes me feel like my patriotism isn't unjustified. 

However, it did not alter my hopes for a change of climate. 

I live fairly close to the beach and I try and frequent it as often as I can: the sea is pretty ambiguous to me. It acts as an end or a stop, by which I mean that when I go there I'm satisfied that unless I start swimming I can't go any further. So if something is at an end, it's becomes a nothingness, right? Well, imagine that in this situation it does. Having such a vast nothingness in front of me allows me to really think. Hard. And then a raindrop falls on my face.

Longsands, Tynemouth

Refreshing though raindrops may be, during periods of hard thinking they're not exactly helpful. I do like rain, for lots of reasons, but when you see the forecast is rain for two weeks with the chance of floods that "like" is preceded by a "dis" and those peaceful walks on the beach give you a head cold. 

Which brings me back to my Anglo-Australian cousins, who tried to bring the sun back with them only to have it hidden by the clouds. According to them it's 39 degrees in Brisbane right now. 39 degrees! The last time I felt heat like that I was in Egypt– nearly 5 years ago. My adventures in Europe usually don't exceed 32 degrees and as I mentioned in my last blog post, Thailand was rainy (our own fault– we went during rainy season). So this piece of information triggered the part of my brain that was handed down to me directly from my mother: I want to live somewhere hot.

Amalfi coast, Italy

Now of course, when the sun is at least kind-of out and I'm visiting some jolly old English village in Northumberland, I could not think of a better place on Earth to be. But that doesn't happen enough, which is starting to make that part of my brain get a little out of control. 

Eventually, I have come up with a plan. 

I'm going to travel (obviously). But now I'm starting to decide where to and why. First and foremost, I have two very close friends who have an obsession with Italy. I've been before a few times and fell in love with the place so have no objection in going back; I fancy living on a vineyard and picking grapes in the summer! Then I'm going to save up and repay the visit to the Anglo-Australians. Word is that there's a spare bed with my name on it and jobs paying twice as much as over here– an offer I am more than willing to take up for a few months. Either after I've finished my next college course or a degree at university, me and my Anglo-Australian cousin (and possibly her little brother) are going to travel as much of the world as we can together. Hopefully, when we're jet-setting around the globe, we'll also be doing voluntary and charity work to help wildlife, communities and the environment. 

Problem = Solved. 

It might never happen, but it feels good to have a plan.

Jensen

Pictures-

Amalfi Coast, taken from beautiful town of Ravello

Tynemouth Beach