Multitasking - 1

Why is it that I feel I may have to revisit the challenges of multitasking a few times over the course of me writing this blog?

When you're engaged in musical theatre, one of the things that you discover at some point down the line is that you're going to have to develop an ability to move in a structured fashion at the same time as you try to remember the words, notes and rhythms of the songs themselves. To those who sit and watch it's a simple case of sing and dance.

Let's take last night as my first example discussion point. We're singing 'Cabaret' as one of the numbers in our Autumn show 'Life is a Cabaret' this year (September 23rd and 24th I think) and as it's one of those numbers that most folk have heard at some point, it was a relatively easy song to learn (just have to remember to sing the harmony not the melody).

So it made perfect sense that our incredible choreographers would choose it as one of the early numbers to set. You can almost imagine a bit of swaying, the odd (perhaps that should have been occasional?) arm raise and then a kick step here and there as needed; nothing to it really.

Well that wasn't quite the reality that I experienced last night. The sways at the start were ok: I can count to eight whilst singing. And then I can more or less remember to turn my hands around to the front and raise my arms at the same time as everyone else. The challenge came at the little bow bit - do I still bow if the guy to the right of me doesn't bow? What if I bend too far, or not far enough? Will the spotlights reflect badly off my bald patch (it's such a worry). And then I had to remember to walk forwards at the right time, collecting two lovely ladies en route to the corner.

Of course that was the point at which the silence in the room demonstrated that I, together with the rest of the guys, had suddenly forgotten to sing. The ladies were of course continuing to warble away merrily, whilst daintily placing their feet in the correct position and smiling merrily with eyes stage front. So incredibly unfair.

And twenty minutes later, which was probably the tenth repeat of the song, with our choreographer starting to look just a little fraught at the front, we more or less managed to remember the words, most of the notes and the majority of the movements and all at the right time! Hooray for us.

So before I forget again, here we go! 'Come to the cabaret!' with a step kick, step kick, sway ........

Singing in the shower - good acoustics or what?

So there I was this morning, singing away and enjoying the perfect resonance of the bathroom, when my beloved wife very politely asked me to keep the noise down! Now I accept that her argument was that I was singing one song and Dan was in the other room singing another one and that the two didn't really complement each other that well.

But it did get me thinking that our audience may never enjoy the sounds of our voices quite as much as we do ourselves.

And that in turn made me think about the delights (or otherwise) of last night's Eurovision song contest.

Personally I liked the Iceland song the best, nice harmony, shared out the melody between them, looked as if they enjoyed singing with each other and quite a good song too. I would have thought that the sob story that accompanied it would have ticked some boxes too. But it seems that Azerbaijan was the favourite. Hey ho.

I don't expect to ever sing to a crowd the size of that at the Eurovision yesterday, nor do I expect that anyone would be over impressed if I did so (though Bosnia and Herzegovina did well). So perhaps I'll stick to singing in the shower, to my audience of one and a half, and carry on enjoying the null point (please use French accent) that I gained this morning.

Better luck to the rest of you!

And it's returned - hooray!

In case the title makes no sense, yesterday evening my Thursday blog had disappeared and so I blogged on that . Today I blog on its return.

I will get back to possibly more relevant blogging again soon!

Where did my last blog go?

It was here when I woke up this morning! Any IT folk able to tell me how to get it back?

Who do we perform for?

The organisation that I work for is having a meeting in London later this year and half the team have already booked to go and see Mamma Mia whilst we're down there. Here in Manchester the worldwide premiere of Ghost is well underway and has been picking up rave reviews, as well as big audiences. And the NODA website assures me that over 40 million people attend local amateur dramatic performances across the country each year.

But are we all aiming for the same audience and performing for the same reasons?

It got me thinking (well you have to do something on the train from Liverpool to Manchester don't you!)

My workmates are going to see Mamma Mia because they've heard it's a good show, or they like the music. They don't much care who is performing it; they're safe in the knowledge that as it's a West end production it will be good. They will also be paying loads of money for their tickets!

The Manchester crowd are going to see Ghost largely because they liked the film many years ago, with some going out of curiosity and apparently a few because it's got Richard Fleeshman in it. They're also going because their friends are (and it's quite exciting to have something premier in Manchester rather than the West End or Broadway!)

But why do people come and see shows that we put on as Belper Musical Theatre?

My Mum comes (and brings a minibus load of friends) because I'm in it and because we're not too far away from Sutton Coldfield. It obviously helps a great deal that we're also very good at what we do.

But if we want to get audiences of 200 people every night, then we either need significantly bigger families and more friends, or we need to work out what our audience want.

And I reckon that brings me back to the main question. Who do we perform for?

We're a membership society, so we perform to meet the needs and wants of our members don't we?

We put on shows that have great chorus numbers, because we're a great chorus.

But we got a nomination for Best Musical for our incredible production of the King and I, which had little chorus work.

So when we pick a show, who is it for?

Is it to get a big audience?

Is it to show off our chorus skills?

Or is it just to put on a show that we fancy doing?

Share your thoughts on here!

A Blog for BMT

One of the things that we've chatted about at Belper Musical Theatre in the past has been the challenge of engaging people with our events and encouraging them to come along.

So I thought that I'd put together this blog and invite all BMT members and anyone else who has a vibrant interest in what we're doing, to join in and share their thoughts and comments.

I'll try to post something here each week after rehearsals about how things are coming on and offer you some insight into the backstage fun that we have in our local company.

If there is something in particular that you would like to see here, then please drop me a line and let's try and get it loaded!

In the meantime, remember that our next show will be in September - can anyone remember the dates?