That's how to Sing!

I will just start off this post by saying a huge thank you to everyone invosashayed athe BMT Sing Concert over the last two days. I ended up in the audience, rather than on the stage, which meant that I was able to enjoy the whole experience of the show from the seats instead of the wings. And it was fantastic. From the welcome at the door, through to the rousing finale I enjoyed every single moment. I know it's a team effort, so thank you all.
In the past I've given a kind of highlights approach to my review, but this one was full of so many highlights that I want to indulge myself in taking each number in turn.
Top Hat Medley
The last time that I rehearsed this was at the end of July and we knew the words but hadn't started movement. What an amazing impact six weeks has had. This was an inviting and gentle start to the show, which really showcased the talents of so many of our members. From Mark and colleagues right at the opening, through Ian's stroll through the ladies this was BMT at its best. It was real show music and a show stopping number that started it all off perfectly.
Sarah Stone - Company
It was a delight to be sitting behind a couple of ladies who laughed their way through this song. With the mix of Sarah's faultless notes and facial contortion, this show grabbed us all. It's not often that a single (previously unknown song - to me anyway) can have you laughing out loud on the first hearing, but this one really did. Brilliant.
Little Shop of horrors
Ok, so it's another show that I don't know, but the team were amazing in this one. From Dom's confident and clear introduction we were wowed with cartwheels and then the whole junior company bringing the stage to life and the audience loved it.
Alison, Fiona and Nicola - Bridge over troubled waters
I'll comment on this again later, but vocal harmony is an area where BMT really excel and this arrangement made the most of it. Alison was strong and confident in the melody, soaring over the harmonies provided by Fiona and Nicola. They all took their turn, played their part and did a grand job.
David, Duncan and Brian - Razzle Dazzle
Loved it - and what amazing spangly waistcoats. David may have led on the dancing, but this was a real team act with three different styles and approaches coming together wonderfully to deliver a top class number.
California Girls - The guys
Well I was singing along to this one from row G as the guys raised the roof with this Beach Boys number. I was listening out for the tricky timing in the second verse and it was 100 percent spot on. Great stuff.

You've really got a hold on me - The ladies

Bringing life and exuberance to this song from the 60s, the ladies swayed, sashayed and smiled their way through this fun song. Loved it.

God Only Knows - the Beach Boys
We've rehearsed this one hard and it was brilliant - it really showed.
Song from Rent - BJMT
Ok it's another show that I don't know but the song was well performed by the Juniors. I am really enjoying the fact that so many of the children are being given the opportunity to sing solos and to build their confidence.
On my own - Adela
Wow. I would leave it just there, but this was a brilliant solo. Not stacks of movement, but deeply felt, hugely emotional, great use of timing and feeling and note perfect. Loved it.
Oh my God you guys - Jess and the girls
This was a high octane, dance rich number that brought the stage to life. It was a great team effort from the girls involved and so much fun to see the smiles and acting.
West Side Story Medley
Absolutely brilliant. Jen asked me what my favourite was at the end of the show and I said this. Even the next day and looking back at all the amazing performances, it's still this one. Partly I guess it's because I actually knew the show and the songs, partly it's because it was so well put together and performed, but mainly I think it's because it was sung with feeling - both the joyful and the softer more poignant moments. And the rousing final of one hand and somewhere was just amazing. What a way to close the first half.
Masquerade
After a short break to grab a drink and chat to my pals back stage, I was back in my seat and loving this number. The masks, movement and song came together perfectly. I was really impressed that no-one burst out laughing on 'Faces' - that must just have been me then. Yes it was hard to see Hannah steal my partner Kat, but she's a much better dancer than me so I will let her off.
Paula - It wasn't meant to be
What humour! So good to see the ladies moving into the guy's traditional make 'em laugh territory rather than the soulful balllads. Again this was enhanced hugely by the buy in of the two ladies in front of me who loved every moment and provided a running commentary as the song progressed.
Charlie and Megan - Loathing
This number offered great characterisation and good acting - I was very nearly persuaded that these guys didn't like each other! It was a really good number and it was lovely to hear these two sing; adding to their amazing dancing from the rest of the show.
Mike - Love
This song really suited Mike in terms of tune, rhythm and style and he delivered it with panache. I don't know if it came from a musical or not - but that won't surprise anyone who knows me.
Jan, Paula and Adela - Mr Postman
This was a brilliant trio who continued the theme of the concert and shared the melody amongst themselves, each offering a different interpretation which came to an amazing whole.
Sarah, Elizabeth, Jen and Becky - Memory
It's always a joy when this group of ladies come together in song and this number continued to show the amazing talent that we are lucky enough to host in the company. From verse to chorus to the closing bars of the song, the ladies brought the song to life and captivated the audience.
Disney Dazzle - BJMT
Ok, so I'm biased but this song got me from the start. With Dan taking the first solo moment the number was a winner from the start and the rest of the junior company kept this going. Of course it helped that these were songs that I knew as well. Great stuff guys.
9 to 5
What fun! As the ladies walked on stage with their chairs and entertained us with synchronised typing we knew this was going to be good. Stacey powered her way through the first solo section, ably accompanied by Kat and later Liz bringing different characters to the show. And with the ladies and guys joining together in a high octane number, we were all toe tapping along.
Chris - Until you sing again
I thought that Chris executed this with perfection. It was a challenging number with a big range, but he hit his high notes and lived the low notes so that this song flowed through and touched the heart.
Jen - Burlesque
I was amazed that Jen could sing at all after apparently running around the stage, changing her shoes and carrying a chair on stage. I'm sure she needed to sit down. But despite all of that, she delivered a brilliant number. Fabulous.
Sing - BMT and BJMT
It was a brilliant idea to bring both companies together for this final song, uniting us all in the one thing that we all enjoyed about the concert - singing together. With the smallest children starting it off and the steady crescendo as others joined in, this was a brilliant production, uniting everyone in song.
West Side reprise
Having uplifted the audience in the unity of Sing, the adults powered the evening out with the final segment from the West Side story medley again. It was a perfect close to a fantastic show, highlighting the harmony and power that BMT do so well.
Thank you, as I said at the start, to everyone who brought this together. Singing is a gift that can lift the soul. And you did.

Spread the Word

Advertising - The Key to Success?

The Show "Circle of Life"

As I sit here redeveloping the new Belper Musical Theatre website, I wondered how theatre companies managed to spread the word about their up coming shows before the internet existed. Posters and hand bills have been in common use as a means to advertise entertainment since the late 1500s and we still use these methods now, but how effective are they? Before that even, in medieval times, travelling performers processed through the streets announcing the play they were to perform. So nothing changes there either!  You may have noticed that we still stand out on King Street in Belper, accosting passers by and thrusting a flyer on them advertising our next great production.

What this all comes down to is advertising.  It feels like we are on the cusp of a revolution in the way we advertise our productions.  The tried and tested methods of processions, hand bills and posters that have been used for 100s of years may become less effective with the demise of our traditional high streets.  More people shop online, socialise online and as a result, don't see things that are out in the real world. So we need to promote our shows online as well. The internet is interactive and animated. Flat posters by the side of the road could be everywhere and you might pass by them every day, but do you see them?

So we advertise online, via our social media accounts and our website.  Should we drop posters and our wet Saturday mornings standing cheerfully outside Poundland with a fistful of flyers?  I think not. We are probably a generation away from that.  Once the vast majority of people are online with active social media accounts and frequent access to email perhaps, but for now we still need to publicise using our 16th century methods.  We can make our posters and flyers as enticing as we can and we can encourage interaction with our social media and website pages, but we cannot drop the humble poster yet.

Why does this all matter?  Advertising is a crucial part of the show circle of life.  We advertise to sell tickets.  Ticket sales bring in vital revenue to the company.  The revenue is spent on the production. If the production is successful, enough revenue is generated to advertise the next production... and so the cycle begins again.

Perhaps I have missed the most important method of advertising.  Word of mouth, telling our friends, neighbours, family and colleagues, people down at the pub and the mums and dads down at the leisure centre waiting for the children to finish their swimming lesson.  Let's hope that we don't forget this most important way of reaching out. Because human interaction, talking to people face to face, is vitally important.

The radio show - listen quick!

You will know from my post about the Moonlight Serenade that a group of the ladies from Belper Musical Theatre are raising funds for a local hospice when they do the 10k Moonlight walk. We were delighted that they were interviewed by Andy Potter on Radio Derby this week and you can listen to it again here.

Jen and the ladies on Radio Derby

But be quick, because apparently you only have until Monday 10th to listen to it! So tell all of your friends now. And whilst you are telling all of your friends, please share this link with them as well so that they can donate some of their hard earned cash for such a great cause. Thank you.

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...