The Compton Players' NEWSLETTER MARCH 2002

Contents

Editorial - Who'd have guest it?
It's good to talk
'Allo 'Allo - work in progress
Learning lines
Dave's cartoon
Chairman's message
CP calendar
Autumn production
Next newsletter
Final thought

Who'd have guest it?

So. Guest editor then. A euphemism meaning, "we'll give you a chance to try it, but if you mess it up, we can quietly dispose of you without anyone losing face." Fair enough. It also discourages me from making any major changes to the format, which is probably just as well - Rob has done a marvellous job with the Newsletter since he has been editor.

Now that the excesses of the festive season are behind us, a large part of the membership is concentrating on the excesses of 'Allo 'Allo, and it's good to see that yet again we've got some new faces in this production. There are some thoughts from Ian, the director. And appropriately for this stage in the production, Rob offers his thoughts on learning lines.

It's been a busy year for the committee, and with the AGM coming up in May our Chairman (or as she sometimes prefers to be known, Chair) Tracey looks back over the year and ahead to next year.

There's a cartoon from Dave, and finally, as nobody responded to my plea in the last newsletter for their experiences of "the Dream", I've drunk the bottle of bubbly myself. In fact, that's quite a good scheme - I think I'll offer a bottle in every issue and reluctantly have to drink it when there are no offerings. The prize for this issue goes to the best anecdote relating to your experiences of applying Stanislavski methods to walk-on parts in Compton productions.

'There's something inexpressibly bittersweet about the phrase "mixed reviews": it generally means "not wholly damning".'

Charles Shaar Murray, theatre critic, Guardian, 08/06/2001.

It's good to talk

Not quite so good to email, but it's a way of keeping in touch. I'm trying to set up a Compton Players emailer, so that you can send emails to all the wired (or should that be weird) members of CP without having to maintain a list of addresses in your address book. I've tried to do this using the CoolList facility - early days at present, but if you send me an email (paul@newburytheatre.co.uk) I'll add you to the list and we'll see how we get on.

'My dear chap! Good isn't the word!'

W. S. Gilbert, among others, speaking to an actor after he had given a poor performance. Attrib. Bloomsbury Thematic Dictionary of Quotations, 1991.

'Allo 'Allo - work in progress

Considering the rather reserved and staid nature of the English, it's odd that we've contributed so much to comedy theatre, like the concepts of farce and pantomime. And English weather no doubt has an influence on our need to have a good laugh from time to time. There are few of us who don't get a buzz out of telling our friends a good joke. Add to that the undoubted feeling of power whilst holding the attention of an audience for a few seconds and achieving a passable comedy voice, and you have the whole appeal of this play.

At Compton Players, we've always been aware of our rather restricted number of members, and like most organisations of this type, we're always on the look out for new faces. A new play always brings the spectre of "can we cast it?", and quite a few excellent subjects have been reluctantly turned down for precisely that problem.

I have been annoying the Committee for ages by maintaining that if we can't cast a play from the existing membership, then it presents an ideal opportunity to look a littler wider rather than effectively confess failure. I've had to put my theory very much on the line for this, my first foray into the heady world of the Director. Without the steadfast support of this wonderful gang of nutters that constitute Compton Players, and three very courageous new members, I would have had to be at home to Mr F myself, Timothy! [Who he? Ed]

When Louise (whom I do not know at all) first read Michelle, I felt I must offer her the part, and as General Schmelling was the only character that I really had no idea how to cast, it was a stroke of pure genius on the part of our beloved Chairman to suggest asking Stewart Petersen. Our third newcomer is Sheila, taking on the role of Edith, René's under-appreciated wife.

So we feel we've achieved our objective so far of not presenting a carbon copy of the TV show, but at the same time keeping very closely, as we are obliged to do, to the authors' original script. I hope that the Compton audience is preparing itself for all the subtle innuendo of a large sausage down at least two pairs of trousers and the prospect of a transvestite Gestapo officer and a blond black Nazi. Throw in an Englishman playing an Italian doing a gag about a French dwarf in a German accent, and a fading diva who insists on covering her face in green salad and curling her hair using bridge rolls, and I think farce, pantomime, music hall and circus must have all come to town on the same day.

We're well on the way towards April 10^th, but there is a lot left to achieve; such as a building a full-size provincial French café in our gorgeous village hall, and finding a working piano, to mention but two little challenges. Hey ho - that's life!

Ian

Learning Lines

It's one of those things you have to do if you're appearing on stage in anything other than a non-speaking part. Some find learning lines easy, some find it hard, almost everyone finds it tedious but everyone has to do it. Even the great and the good in the world of acting have to.

In a television programme on the subject Timothy West said that he learned most of his lines sitting in his study. Another professional actor taped his lines and then learned them walking along a canal towpath with his Walkman. Jean Lapotaire implied that she didn't need to do anything so mundane but simply learned them by reading the script and by picking them up at rehearsals. It may have been true; there are accounts from the 18th century onwards of professional actors capable of memorising lines extraordinarily quickly but such individuals are very rare and most of us have to spend more time and effort on the task.

There are various techniques for learning lines and people gradually find out which suits them best. Most people start learning a script by underlining or highlighting their lines. Highlighting them is quicker than underlining with a ruler and pen. I've used both techniques but for me underlining seems to work better, probably because it's what I'm used to. Not everyone does this. Some people simply put a mark in the margin showing where their particular piece of dialogue starts. Others mark only their cue-lines, that is the last few words of the previous character's lines, another way of indicating where you start. Some do none of this; others do all of it - or more. In addition to picking out his lines Gielgud would evidently mark words with the varying degrees of emphasis which he thought they would need.

Having marked up your script you can't stave things off any longer; you have to start learning it. It can seem daunting, especially if there's a lot to learn. Like most large enterprises, however, it's best tackled in manageable chunks, a bit at a time. If you have a lot of dialogue divide it up into short sections, if possible where there are 'natural' breaks such as when the action changes or a major character enters or leaves the scene. Or you can use each page of script as a separate section.

Learn one section at a time. Start by reading through it two or three times. Then take a postcard or a piece of plain paper and start learning the dialogue line by line, at the same time taking good note of your cue-lines. Make use of anything that might help you to memorise the line. In 'Allo 'Allo for example, I noticed after a while that when Mimi and Yvette are mentioned together in René's dialogue they are always in that order which is of course alphabetical. Similarly, whenever the Colonel and the Captain are mentioned they are almost always in that order - senior rank first. In It Could Be Any One of Us the crazed composer Charles at one stage had to reel off all the various works which he had composed. This caused some difficulty at first until I realised it followed a fairly simple mathematical pattern. Sometimes you feel sure the author has planted these markers to help the actors.

Using the postcard moving-down-the-page was a technique used by Noël Coward. Coward, in fact, claimed that he went back to the top of the page every time he made a mistake and started the page again. If you do this you'll find that the knowledge that you've got to go through the whole lot again if you make a mistake will certainly focus you attention on getting it right. It is very tedious, however, as Coward himself admitted. Coward was famous, or notorious, for turning up at the first rehearsal word-perfect and could be unforgiving to those who didn't learn their lines properly. One well-known actress who hadn't done her homework was the object of several cutting remarks from Coward until she finally said, 'if you carry on like this I shall throw something at you.' 'You might start with my cue-lines,' replied the Master.

Rather than using the postcard technique, or as a supplement to it, some people tape their lines, with the preceding cue-lines and learn them by listening to them, going back as many times as necessary. I've tried this technique and found that for me it simply didn't work. I realised then that I needed to see the lines as much, or more, than I needed to hear them. Others need to hear them rather than see them. Interestingly, anthropologists have found that in non-literate societies where reading is unknown people's auditory memory is astonishingly good and songs or poems can be repeated word for word after only two or three hearings.

Whichever technique you use try not to rush things. Short, intense sessions are better than long, lingering ones where your mind gets fogged and little is being taken in. Sessions of twenty to thirty minutes are enough for most people. And learn one section thoroughly before starting on another. If you know you've learned one section properly it gives you the confidence to know that you can learn another. If, on the other hand, you try and learn a long section sketchily in an attempt to have some vague idea of what it's all about that's what you'll have - a vague idea, leading to confusion and lack of confidence.

When you think you've learned a section of script go over it again within twenty-four hours and check that you have. Don't be surprised or disappointed if you find that you haven't. Go over it again and you'll find that you eventually get there. Whatever else you do make sure that you've got the last few lines exactly as they appear in the script because those words are somebody else's cue-line.

Finally, and this is where we get into acting rather than just learning scripts, try to think yourself into the part you're playing. That way, you'll find it easier to ad-lib if you have to. It doesn't happen very often but it does now and then - a late entrance, a missing vital prop - and if you've really got into the part you'll find it easier to ad-lib than you perhaps thought possible.

But learn the playwright's words as well as you can. Otherwise you might find yourself in the embarrassing position of the well-known but declining actor in a performance in 19th century New York, busily ad-libbing and relying overmuch on the increasingly harassed prompter. After an hour of this there was yet another awkward silence in which the actor looked towards the prompt corner and hissed, 'What line? What line!' At which the prompter burst onto the stage and screamed, 'What line? What line? Which play.?!?!'

Good luck.

R. B.

'I didn't enjoy it as much as "The Cherry Sisters".'

A member of the audience coming out of a production of Uncle Vanya, Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me, 1996.

Dave's cartoon

"Realism, which currently contaminates nearly all forms of dramatic representation, demands that the performer feign a lack of performance. ... What contents itself with representing the consensually agreed is incapable of showing what might be, of suggesting parallel possibilities. And as long as actors are valued for observational accuracy (as well as bland good looks and form in a soap), and as long as the dubious qualities of documentary 'realism' remain the norm, those possibilities will remain occluded."

Extract from an article by Jonathan Meades, The Times, 23/02/2002.

Chairman's message

As the AGM approaches for another year, I thought your 'acting' chairman should write a few lines for the Newsletter. I'm not going to bore your with details of what we have done or what your Committee's plans are for the future because you'll get all of that in the Chairman's Report very shortly; but what I would like to say is 'THANK YOU' to everyone who has supported me over the last twelve months.

Taking on the Chairmanship was not on my "To Be Achieved in 2001" list, I can assure you, but as you all know, due to circumstances beyond our control I took on the position of Chairman as well as Secretary in May of last year. And, you know what, I have actually enjoyed it!! I put that down to having a very strong and supportive Committee and I would like to thank them all: Mark, Paul, Ian, Brenda, Caroline and Jasmine for all their hard work!

I must also take this opportunity to thank Kate Layton for all her hard work over the years as Front of House. Unfortunately Kate has now decided to hang up her pinny, but I certainly hope that doesn't mean we won't see her again. As a result of this, if anyone would like to take on the role of Catering/Front of House, please let us know.

Now to the future: I am willing to stand again for Chairman, but I welcome any other nominations. If you would like to stand as Chairman, then please let a member of the Committee know.

I can confirm that we will be performing at the Wallingford Drama Festival this year! I have found a play and successfully convinced the right people, so rehearsals for that will start straight after 'Allo 'Allo.

Well, I think that's about it. I'll be writing to you about the AGM and the Voice Workshop (see the CP Calendar below) nearer the time. See you at the AGM.

Tracey Pearce

CP Calendar

Autumn production

I'm hoping that Eric will direct this. He has one or two ideas, but as Tracey is finding, it's often difficult matching up a play with the people available.

As always, we need volunteers to direct future shows. So give it some thought and start reading some plays.

Next newsletter

All offerings (and competition entries!) to me, by email to , or by post to Paul Shave, Windrush, The Ridge, Cold Ash, Thatcham, RG18 9HX, 01635 866800. By 1st May.

Final thought

I've managed to survive 55 years without seeing a ballet, but recently Marguerite twisted my arm - we went to The Nutcracker at the Hexagon. Someone once said, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, except incest and folk-dancing". With ballet, once is enough for me.

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