A moonlit serenade?

Last night I found out that a number of the ladies in the company are doing the moonlit walk through Derby towards the end of June to raise money for Treetops Hospice. You can sponsor them online here  Jess Hutton Just Giving although I am not suggesting any bias or favouritism by giving you Jess' link, she does seem to be the first to get it up and running - and Megan gained the £10 over the table last night by having her sponsorship form with her! Anyway, I digress (much like most of the meeting last night).
The other thing that I found out during the meeting was that Jen Lewis is going to be on Radio Derby on Tuesday 4th June at about 3pm. She will be talking about why Belper Musical Theatre is supporting the Treetops Hospice cause and with about five other females from the company will be singing live on air. How exciting!
I will try to find the relevant clip and post it on here so that you can tune in yourselves after the show.
In the meantime, why not set your alarms now and get listening to Radio Derby.
And if you have a few spare moments, then please click on the Just Giving link and help us raise money for this great cause.

Pitching it right

My intention with this blog post was to share some thoughts (and embarrassment) on trying to find the right note when you need to! But then i noticed the inadvertent pun of the title and thought that it may be useful to take the opportunity to think about promoting our next show as well whilst I was at it. After all overselling seats is what my boss would call a high class problem and I guess it's a problem that we could look forward to!

We had a great discussion at our Annual General Meeting this year on how we can try to get more bums on seats. One of our members used to be the Chair of Ripley and Alfreton, which seems to almost sell out with every performance - and we're better than them! (Only slightly biased opinion from me there you'll notice). We also have members from the Derby Opera Company, which has sadly closed down as the cost of shows was greater than the income from them. So we have both good and bad experiences of the challenges with breaking even from musical theatre.

So what do we need to do in order to encourage people to part with hard earned money in order to come to one of our shows?

We try to keep the ticket prices fair. It does cost more than going to the cinema, but less than going to a theatre show and a lot less than going to a West End production. And sometimes our performances, and the effort that goes in to them, are up there with some of the best that you'll see at a regional level. (Or the West End on a bad day ;-))

We put our shows on in Belper Community Theatre. This has fully tiered seating, a disabled ramp built by Ian Jennison (see Life members post) and is a great, small venue for an engaging performance. We do get comments that there aren't enough toilets when it gets to the interval, but we try to offer a decent length interval to take account of this - and we serve hot and cold drinks and the odd glass of wine to help others pass the time.

We work hard to give fantastic performances. Indeed we get feedback from our regulars that anyone who has been to a BMT show will come back again and again as they are such high quality. And since we have regulars from Birmingham, Leeds, Crewe and Kent, I think that there's an element of truth there.

But since we struggle to gain an average audience of 60 percent, we do need to do something more to fill the extra 40 percent of seats.

We would appreciate it if you could tell your friends and work colleagues about our shows - I've persuaded people off the train in Manchester to see the shows -and if you could share email addresses with us, then we can let them know what's coming up next. We can email you copies of our promotional stationery - flyers, posters, booking forms, business cards, so that you can send them on to other people.

But maybe we're getting something wrong? If you have any ideas on what we could do, then please let us know. I'm sure that I will blog on different approaches for publicity again soon - your ideas would be helpful. Thank you.

Life members

One of the nice things about being part of the committee for Belper Musical Theatre is that you get to find out why people have been proposed for life membership of the company. It's one of the few ways we have available to us of recognising the sustained effort that people put into supporting the company over the years, so I thought that I would use this forum to let you know who our newest life members are and a little bit about why they gained the honour this year.
I guess that I should also say at this point that we do have many other life members in the company who haven't had this public record created. That doesn't mean that we don't appreciate what they did. And if anyone would like to write a piece about them, then I would be delighted to see it and share it here on the blog.
This year our three life members were Ian Jennison, Linda Jennison and Andrea Sparham.

Despite our chair announcing the first two as 'My Mum and Dad!', there is no suggestion that this is why they were nominated.

Linda has been a member of the company since its first performance and over the years has not only been in most of the shows, she has also played an active role in costumes, props, prompting, assistant production roles and other activities. As well as the main company, Linda has provided the same sort of support for Belper Junior Musical Theatre.
Ian has directed shows both for us and for Belper Junior Musical Theatre but is probably most renowned for the effort, time and creativity that he puts into building sets for us - often very substantial sets for those of us who have to lift them from storage to stage! Both Ian and Linda give up their time and their home life to support the company - many members will have been to their house at weekends to paint set and scenery. We appreciate all of this time and effort and are pleased to welcome them as life members.
Our other life member this year undertakes a role which is a lot less visible, but is equally time consuming and hugely important to the company. Andrea manages our ticket sales. For about two months before each show Andrea will spend a few hours on the phone and her home office every day sorting out bookings and ticket sales for us. As anyone who has spoken to her to order their tickets will know, Andrea tries hard to meet people's needs when selling their tickets and offers an excellent and personal level of service. Andrea also uses her knowledge of our customers and their feedback to help us improve the flyers, posters and booking forms that we develop and use.
It's great for us to have this dedicated support from these excellent company members.

Thank you.

What's in a word?

Satyrs

That's the word, now how do you say it? And what about the person sitting next to you, or next to them?

If you've read my earlier blogs then you know that one of the areas that fascinates me relates to the tiny little subtleties of performances that can make the difference between competent and fantastic. We've talked about stolen time and enunciation of consonants in the past. And in BMT we are frequently asked to remember how to sing a triplet. But my interest this time was sparked by this single word.

In our Autumn concert this year one of the songs that we are singing is Masquerade from Phantom of the Opera. It's a great song with amazing lyrics, although sadly I feel that few people will be able to pick up on all of them - I've listened to the live track loads of times now and it's one of those that you have to play again and again to try and hear what is being sung. Anyway, as were singing through one of the pages, we came as a group across this word ' Satyrs' and I heard four different pronunciations of the word in the area around me. It's not that surprising really as it's the not the sort of word that most of us use in our daily conversations and it's lacking in vowels that tend to keep us on the straight and narrow.

With so many versions just around me, I worked on the theory that many others were not certain of how to say it, so stuck my hand up and asked our Musical Director, Terry Bailey. It turned out that Terry wasn't that sure either. I hadn't expected it to generate quite the level of discussion on correct speaking that it did: I simply wanted Terry to pronounce it for us and then we would all follow. And I certainly wouldn't argue with a pronunciation verdict given by the MD!

A week later Terry came back and had investigated it for us - he has now told us that we will pronounce it Say Ters, which seems ok to me. You'll have to listen out for it when you come to our concert this September and see if it sounds good, consistently good, to you too.

So why blog about this? Well sometimes wanting to get the little things like this right can be disruptive and it can seem like it's causing trouble just for the sake of it. That's not the case. I want to do a great job in the company. And I think that most others want the same. When you're working through a song you can work out many parts for yourself. We have a shared understanding of how many words are to be pronounced and we know what PP, P, F and FF stand for (we do seem to differ on understanding MP and MF still!). So the parts where we benefit from guidance and instruction from our MD are going to be the little things like this, enunciation, pronunciation and no doubt other things in the future.

For me, when I don't understand something, or think that I or others are getting something wrong, I will keep trying to learn and to find things out. I will also bring a pencil with me so that I can make notes and try to keep getting it right...

Beauty and the Beast

This weekend sees Belper junior musical theatre take to the stage at the Ecclesbourne school to present Disney's Beauty and the Beast junior. If you haven't got your tickets just yet, then you may be lucky enough to get one of the final few available from Andrea on 01332882909. We are particularly lucky in Belper to have not only got a great team of talented children who can sing, dance and act as directed, but also to have a great team producing the show as well.
Many of you will recall that Becky Osborne stepped down from the musical director role a couple of years ago and Jess Hutton has become our new driving force. As an ex junior herself she has followed in Becky's footsteps and made sure that rehearsals are fun filled as well as with purpose. She has been joined in delivering this show by Jen Lewis, fresh from her success in directing the amazing 'Me and My Girl' for the adult company. Together they have captured the imagination of the children and pulled together an amazing version of this classic fairy tale.
Elizabeth Brookes has also played a key part in pulling together the props for the show - bear in mind that each of the pewter tankards that you see on the stage started life as a Pringles' packet!
And finally Stacey and David have provided input and guidance on the choreography. Put together the whole thing looks amazing and we' re looking forward to welcoming you there.
Since it is many members of the adult company who have given up their weekend to manage front of house, I really do mean that we are the ones who will welcome you!
See you there soon!

What a great show

Well as the week on stage finally draws to a close and all of the set, props, scenery and costumes are packed back into boxes and bags and returned to their rightful homes, it's the point at which the blues start to kick in again.
Thankfully this year the feedback and reaction from our audiences looks like it will keep us going for a few days longer - and I for one am glad to lock Gerald up, fairly securely, and not to allow him to take centre stage. Is it strange to play a part that you don't like do you think?
One of my work colleagues sent me this email which I thought I would share:

"Hi Matthew
Wow! What a good show! I loved the real orchestra (Larry's panto music was all taped, you know) and there were some very good performances. Fay, Mike, Amanda and I laughed like drains at the bit (not featuring you) with the portraits of the ancestors - like Kind Hearts and Coronets meets Monty Python!! You were so good, my dear. Chanelling Julian Clary at times, which was a revelation! And those vowels - you got them just right. And how you enjoyed it! It was obvious you were having a really good time!
Thank you. And congratulations to all in the Society.
See you soon, I hope.
Ann"

I was pleased with that, especially as Ann works in the Drama School here at the University of Manchester. Not bad at all.

But one of the things that really jumped out at me from her email was her delight in the real orchestra that we use. It was smaller this year, but no less impressive for that. But it's also one of the big cost areas for our show and one of the things that we always have heated discussions about sticking with. We could save a lot of money if we used recorded music - but at what cost?

It seems this year that overall we had about 65% of seats occupied over the six shows, and that means that we may not have lost too much money - tiny chance of possibly breaking even!

I know that before the show I blogged a couple of times on how we could promote our shows more effectively - get people to try it on the Wednesday or Thursday night, rather than finding we are full by the Saturday. If any of you have any more ideas on this one, then I would love to hear them. And in the meantime, please tell all of your friends how good this show was.

From me, for now, thank you to everyone who played any part at all in getting this show up and running and so fantastic. And that includes the audiences.

Imaginary birthdays

My phone this morning told me that it is Doris Millers birthday. It seems strange to me to think that anyone could consider celebrating the birthday of an imaginary character (remember Doris Miller was the person we never got to meet last year in Copacabana) and when one group member, widely believed to be Richard Poole (especially after he admitted it) saw fit to create Doris Miller as a real person on Facebook, many others then made friends with her. I still think that it is interesting to note that some people who were friends with  Doris were not listed as friends with Richard. Let's leave it at that. Anyway one year on it seems today is Doris Miller's birthday. Happy birthday Doris.
That got me thinking about the way that the show takes on a life of its own. My wife often comments that when this time is here it seems that there is nothing other than the show itself. It is a hungry beast that consumes everything in its path and still wants more. I'm sure any of those who gave up their evening yesterday packing things into the van, either at Ian's or the yard, then unloading again at the school, and keeping going from 4 till 9, or even just an hour or so, will completely agree with that. And for those with an early morning back at 9am with no intention of being home before 9 pm this evening it'll feel even more the case. Is it worth it? Well I think so. It's a great show. And the only surprise to me is that we haven't sold out for every performance. The script is good, casting great and I think it promises to be a brilliant show all round.
So my final thought today is that it would be a fabulous birthday present for Doris if you book a ticket for the show, or remind anyone who hasn't got theirs yet to get that sorted. It promises to be a great night out.
Happy birthday Doris Miller.