I have been working on a Say Nothing project that went live yesterday evening. One Silent Night was a concept put together by Jonah Hagans. He had this idea to write about the 1914 Christmas Truce on the Western Front and to have people read some of the letters written at that time and to sing the carols they sang. Of all the Christmas ideas we talked about this one resonated with me. 2020 has been a difficult year and it seems important to remember other times in our hist

I took part in Tokyo International Players Shakespeare from Home series. I greatly enjoyed getting to work on a monologue, though found the concept of videoing something intimidating. Titus Andronicus is a bloody revenge tragedy and Tamora is the Queen of the Goths who just became the Empress of Rome. In this monologue from Act II Scene iii, Tamora lies through her teeth in the lead up to the murder and rape of her enemies. #theatre #shakespeare

When I'm telling stories about the work I am asked to do all the funniest stories are about the strange descriptions I am given. "Could you just hum for a few seconds under the narration..." or "can you sing like an scared mouse", or "can you produce a sound that could be mistaken for melancholy but is actually a sign of life". One of the hardest things we do as directors or theatre-makers is explain to other creative people what we want. We use words that we think are des

I have been working on Say Nothing's upcoming concert - The Musical Pioneers. With a combination of online rehearsals and socially distant in-person rehearsals we should be ready to film the event this weekend. I envy groups that have large productions team. When the team is only 4 people you end doing all sorts of things that you don't feel qualified for. I am very happy running a rehearsal but creating an email campaign takes more time than I would like as I end up fight

Online everything has become the default. Now, when I schedule a rehearsal, I have to clarify if people will be meeting "in person". And then I have to list the rules for doing so. Tomorrow I will be back in a physical rehearsal space for the first time since the production of Cinderella I was directing was postponed at the start of April. This new concert, The Musical Pioneers, is involving a combination of in-person and virtual rehearsals. Rehearsing with singers online,

I have watched many online events over the past few month. Some of these I have loved, such as the Traverse Theatre Festival, and Elephant Room Productions As I Was, Not As I Am. Others I have found dull and forced into the "zoom" format. It's hard for these productions to feel like theatre as being part of a virtual audience feels nothing like being in an actual theatre. I have not been keen on putting on virtual shows. I worked on one zoom musical and it involved recordi

I have been watching the theatre situation here in Japan hoping that someone will find a way to put on a performance that would be commercially viable for the small theatre companies I work with. Our first problem is renting performance space. Most small theatres work out at around ¥1,000 ($9.41) per seat but I have not seen many reductions in the price of renting spaces. Given that we now have to reduce capicity to at least 50% this is doubling the seat cost. I have seen o

Elephant Room Productions is putting on its first virtual production: As I Was, Not As I Am, by Alice Hakvaag, directed by Julianne Schaub. The show will be presented online for three nights from August 28th - 30th at 7:00 PM EDT. #theatre

As the summer progresses each day merges into the next. The increase in the number of coronavirus cases in Japan is making it unlikely that I will be back in the rehearsal room again this year. Productions need to be planned months in advance and at the minute the risks seem too great. Like many people I am struggling to get motivated. And the concept that Shakespeare may have written one of his greatest plays during a pandemic does not help when even the thought of makin

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. -- Hamlet III:2 I have been continuing my solo study of Shakespeare. Thankfully there are many resources to help me. I have been watching more of the Shakespeare workshops provided by the Collective Creative Initiative. All three were given by Jake Murray, who is an award-winning theatre director and A

What makes a convincing and moving performance of a song in musical theatre? Many singers seem to think this is about the perfect studio produced sound or some sort of vocal athletics that means you need a four octave range and use of your whistle register. They want to sing songs that are about topics that they don't and often can't realistically connect with because their favourite star is singing it. They don't know that the words and telling the story are the most impor

The show I was due to start directing in September has been postponed until next autumn. Although I did look at rehearsal practices and the theatre was implementing the government guidelines for small events it was felt that we would be putting the cast, crew, and audience at risk by going ahead. Most of the virus response in Tokyo has been about clusters and for the past couple of days there have been news stories about a cluster in a theatre in Shinjuku. The play was perf

The day started with Ian Weinberger, the Musical Director of Hamilton on Broadway talking about rehearsal practices. He started with the bad news, that we need to accept the reality that rehearsing music together online is not yet possible. This has definitely been bothering me since the start of this, and I am still trying to come to terms with it. He then continued with suggestions as to what we can do online. Music direction, like other forms of direction in the theatr

Jenn Colella opened the day with a brilliant example of how you should coach singers online. She was incredibly positive and kind. There are teachers who are very tough on their students but Colella believes that the students will be hard enough of themselves and that the world is tough enough without their teachers also being like that. She was warm and welcoming to both of the students that she worked with. She provided positive praise and showed demonstrably that she w

The day started with a talk from Jeffrey Seller, who is the Tony winning producer of Hamilton. I have been really enjoying hearing the stories from professionals in the industry. It's encouraging to hear about the amount of work that goes into making something successful. We often just hear the end of the story. We know that Hamilton is a major success but we don't always know that it took a year to write the first song. John Cariani's workshop on play writing was very pra

The day started with a chat with Gavin Creel who originated the role of Elder Price in The Book of Mormon in London. This was followed by a talk on "Scenic Design: Teaching Remotely and Tips and Shortcuts for Scenic Solutions" given by Rob Bissinger. He talked about understanding the play poetically and applying visual elements of colour, shape, form, and texture to that poetry. He showed examples of his mood boards for contrasting shows, and then the finished sets. It wa

This summer I had been hoping to travel to the UK to attend Shakespeare workshops. I have been thinking about directing Shakespeare for a couple of years now, but haven't been able to put any concrete plans in place. At the minute I can't travel and 2020 is not looking good for any sort of directing. My 2021 is already filling up with the projects I was meant to be working on this year pushing my dreams of Shakespeare even further into my future. This, however, does not me

My good friend Jonah Hagans and I were interviewed for the current edition of Tokyo International Player's newsletter. This newsletter also features another behind-the-scenes interview, turning the spotlight on directors Jonah Hagans and Karen Pauley. Having worked with both Jonah and Karen on multiple occasions both onstage and off, I can vouch for their amazing skill as directors, as well as their keen insight into theater in general. #theatre #tokyoplayers

I have been incredibly busy working on a number of different shows. I have been very fortunate that each show has its own set of challenges and that I'm not only doing the same sort of work over and over again. I worked as vocal coach for TIP's production of Robert Askin's Hand to God. The lead actor in Hand to God has to play two characters: a teenager called Jason; and a puppet called Tyrone. The voice of the puppet was very different than Jason's voice and neither voic

As part of my recent work on TIP's production of The Diary of Anne Frank I recorded a version of Mahler's Wenn dein Mütterlein from Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). Although I studied lieder it has been a long time since I attempted to sing in that style. I was aiming for a sound that was more choral than the operatic sounding versions of the song that are more common. I had to work on the placement of the D5 in my head voice. So much of contemporary sin