The Compton Players' NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2004

Contents

We love pantos
Oh yes we did!
The review of The Eighth Dwarf
What a picture
Spot the ball(s up)
So that's why it's called a ...
Situations vacant
News of members
Stanislavsky
Committee matters
Let's have your support
Wallingford
Autumn production
Next newsletter
CP Calendar

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We love pantos

We may have had a groan when the panto was suggested, but what a success it was! Well done, Tracey. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed it (and not just because I got to wear pretty frocks and a bra). This issue of the newsletter has the Newbury Weekly News review, and Tracey's post-production message. But it's not all self-congratulations - we're looking forward to Wallingford and the Autumn production, we've got some improvements to the Village Hall planned, and Rob concludes his mini-series on Stanislavsky.

Oh yes we will

Tracey's message after the panto.

We did it............ oh yes we did!!

Pheeeew!  It really didn't feel like 9 years since the last one did it?  I really hope you look on it as a good experience, but one not to be repeated too often!  Although, I think 9 years is a little too long!

Congratulations everybody for all your hard work during The Eighth Dwarf; especially to H, Nick, Phil and Mark who not only performed but also did the scene changes; and to Jackie for begging, borrowing, stealing and making the costumes, being there on the nights for any last minute costume hiccups and also for all her help backstage, from curtain pulling to bed making! Thanks too to our even-further-backstage crew of William and Robin; the complicated sound and lighting plot went smoothly as usual. Also a big thank you to Mr. Muddle; I've heard a lot of positive feedback so I hope he gets some work out of it! I also understand he has put his name down for the Autumn production, so let's all encourage him to become a member!!

Thank you all for your enthusiasm and energy throughout. Apparently (according to a comment written on my programme) I am a proper, fully-fledged Compton Player now that I have directed a pantomime!  So... What about the rest of you???!!  To those of you who are, no doubt, thinking about the next one,  I understand H is looking forward to pantomime 2006 (!!??!) ...... but only if he gets to wear the dress!

A final mention must go to Dave.  Well done and thank you for letting me run with it - an excellent and rewarding team effort!

Well done!
Tracey

The review of The Eighth Dwarf

It's from the Newbury Weekly News of 12/02/2004, and it's here.

'These days, my spirits tend to lift much more when the curtain or the light rises on an empty or near-empty stage than when brilliant designs cram the scene. It means that the director and the actors will be working far harder to paint pictures in our minds or, rather, that they will be using words and movement to encourage us to paint internal pictures for ourselves. It means that the performers will be the set and, in effect, we will be the designers. One might go further, and say that the theatre’s uniquely important task is to ensure that the human imagination is kept alive in a deadening era.'
Benedict Nightingale, The Times, 01/01/2004.

What a picture

Here you can see Tony's excellent collection of photos of The Eighth Dwarf - nearly 300 of them - with details of how to order prints. They are only available electronically.

And coming soon: The Eighth Dwarf - The Movie. Available from Paul on DVD, for £2.

'You'll like this bit. This is where I come on.'
Wilfred Lawson sitting in the audience with Richard Burton during a matinee in which he should have been on stage. Great Theatrical Disasters, Gyles Brandreth, 1982.

Spot the ball(s up)

Can you read this?

If you got the printed copy of the last issue, you wouldn't have been able to, because large bits of text got omitted during the printing process. (Did anybody notice???) It made Rob's bit about the leotard particularly opaque, so here it is again, in full. If you read the newsletter over the Internet, there weren't any problems.

So that's why it's called a ...

Rob explains where the leotard comes from.

The leotard, that garment beloved of gymnasts, rehearsing ballet dancers, keep-fit enthusiasts and anyone else who feels like wearing one, owes its name to Jules Leotard, 1838-1870, who popularised its use.

He was the son of a gymnastics instructor in Paris and from an early age showed great gymnastic ability. He became an aerialist in a circus and was the man who invented the flying trapeze upon which he was said to show amazing agility and grace.

He also, when appearing at the Alhambra Music Hall in London in 1861, provided the inspiration for the song entitled 'The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze'.

And if you thought the tutu was named after Bishop Desmond, my dictionary says:

French, perhaps alteration of cucu, baby-talk reduplication of cul, buttocks.

'Versatility is not easy to cast.'
Maureen Lipman, Stand-ups and Strumpets, Radio 4, 06/03/2001

Situations vacant

I can't cope with the Newsletter and the Compton Players web site, so any volunteers for either or both jobs? (This is a serious request!)

Alan Ayckbourn was walking along the promenade in Scarborough when a man came up to him.
'You're Alan Ayckbourn, aren't you?
'Yes I am,' said Sir Alan.
'You write plays, don't you?'
'Yes, I do.'
'And films are made of your plays.'
'Yes, they are.'
'You must have a fair bit of money, then?'
'Well, yes, I'm quite comfortable.'
'In that case, can I ask you one final question: with that sort of money, why don't you live in Bridlington?'
Laurie Taylor, 'Thinking Aloud', Radio 4, 14/03/01

Stanislavsky

Following his last article about Method acting, Rob tells us about the man behind it.

In December 1898 The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, was presented at the Moscow Art Theatre. There had already been a first production of the play in St. Petersburg where it had been a conspicuous failure. The production in Moscow, however, was a conspicuous success; it made Chekhov's name as a playwright and the financial success secured the theatre's future. To this day a seagull is used as the Moscow Art Theatre's emblem in commemoration of that production.

The director of that production was Konstantin Stanislavsky. Today, if he is remembered at all by most of the theatre-going public, it is as having some connection with Lee Strasberg's Method Studio in 1950s New York City and it is true that Strasberg's 'method' style of acting was based loosely on Stanislavsky's teachings. However, there was much more to Stanislavsky than that.

Konstantin Sergeyvich Alexeyev was born in Tsarist Russia in 1865. He replaced Alexeyev with Stanislavsky later in life to avoid embarrassing his family when, as a young man, he was appearing in risqué French farces. The family was a wealthy one of merchants and engineers. Stanislavsky started work in the family business but began to spend increasing amounts of his time acting and producing in various amateur companies in the Moscow area. He proved to be talented in both fields and came to the notice of leading figures in the movement and when the Society of Art and Literature was started in Moscow in 1888 he was an enthusiastic founder-member. His ability, combined with a substantial financial contribution from him, ensured that he became a leading member. He became responsible for all the society's productions and often took the leading roles as well.

Although highly successful during this period Stanislavsky began to feel increasingly dissatisfied with his work. The traditional Russian style of acting, as in most of Europe at the time, was formal and declamatory with little room for any subtlety. It was a style which to Stanislavsky appeared increasingly unnatural. He also thought it quite unsuited to the work of some of the newer playwrights who were beginning to appear at this time. In these new plays the surface dialogue often concealed subterranean streams of action or emotion. As in everyday life the characters did not usually speak openly about their feelings but covered them in trivial smalltalk. It was for this reason that Stanislavsky insisted that his actors fully immersed themselves in any character they were playing because he felt that it was only in this way that they could reach the inner core of a character and thus convey his true feelings and emotions. It was this aspect of his work that Strasberg seized upon in New York sixty years later and used to develop The Method.

It was in late 19th century Moscow also that Stanislavsky began to develop the concept of having a director or producer - choose your own word - in sole and total control of each production. Surprisingly, such a person was almost unknown in nineteenth century theatres and the ways in which productions were prepared were various and haphazard. For a start there were few rehearsals since the leading actors usually knew all the principal roles by heart. Minor roles were filled by lesser actors or whoever was available; they were expected to fit in around the principal actors and actresses and take direction from them. The principals, for their part, would simply give the same interpretation of the role as they always did. Costumes were either provided by the actors themselves or by the wardrobe mistress who would provide whatever she judged to be suitable. Any further direction that was thought necessary might be done by either the theatre manager or the stage manager but neither of them would concern themselves much with details about the set or the costumes.

Not all companies of the time conducted themselves in the way just described, however, and in 1885 and again in 1890 Stanislavsky saw the Duke of Meiningen's Company when it was touring in Russia. This remarkable company was German. Like Stanislavsky, the duke was a talented and enthusiastic amateur and, again like Stanislavsky, he had money; he used it to support the company. Unusually for his day he would oversee every aspect of a production and was a stickler for detail. Before every new production he would do a considerable amount of research and in a costume drama, for example, he would take pains to ensure that every detail of the costumes was historically accurate. He was also unusual in that every production was rehearsed at length until he was satisfied.

The Duke's method of directing, incidentally, was interesting: he would sit halfway back in the stalls or in the circle and convey his thoughts to his stage manager in front of the stage by handwritten notes. The stage manager would then translate His Grace's thoughts into action and instruct the actors accordingly.* Quaint or feudal as this might be the company had a very high reputation and Stanislavsky was strongly influenced by it. He too came to believe that the director should oversee and be responsible for every aspect of a production and thus we have the birth of the modern director.

In June, 1897, Stanislavsky was approached by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Danchenko was a teacher of drama at the Moscow Academy who found that he had a particularly talented group of students who were due to leave in the summer of 1898 and he wished to find a way of keeping them together. He and Stanislavsky arranged to meet at a well-known cafe, the Slavic Bazaar, to see what could be done. The meeting lasted an extraordinary seventeen hours, from ten o'clock one morning until three o'clock of the next, and the result was the decision to found the Moscow Art Theatre.

Premises were obtained and converted and the theatre opened its doors on 14th October, 1898 with a production of Tolstoy's Tsar Fyodor. Although the production was well-received the new theatre was in a delicate financial state and it was only with the production of The Seagull in September that the theatre's survival was assured. The saying in the Moscow Art Theatre was that 'The Seagull saved us and we saved The Seagull.'

The Moscow Art Theatre still exists as, of course, do the plays of Chekhov and other writers whom Stanislavsky brought to the world's attention. The use of a director or producer to oversee every aspect of a production as advocated by Stanislavsky, and others, is now standard practice. In his later years Stanislavsky turned to writing: his two best-known publications are My Life in Art (1924) and An Actor Prepares (1926). He died in 1938.
_________________________
* Any current or future producer in The Compton Players contemplating using this style of producing is earnestly advised not to try it - Ed

Committee matters

If you thought that committee meetings consisted of the committee sitting around drinking wine and gossiping, you're right. But we do occasionally do some work too.

At the committee meeting on 16/02, we set the date for the AGM (17th May, see the calendar below) and for the Autumn production (10th to 13th November). We also discussed improvements to the hall - part of Tracey's Grand Plan:

• Redo the wiring to the sound and lighting room, including running a proper video and audio link to the Welstead Room and replacing the hall's main speakers.

• Dismantle the proscenium and build a new one, including a false proscenium to stick on top, for everyday use, to be removed for our productions.

• Get the curtains dry cleaned and re-hang them so there's no gap at the bottom; replace the curtain pull rope with something better.

The panto has made our finances look quite healthy, so we are in a position to undertake some of these capital projects. We have earmarked three Sundays to do the work - 11th, 18th and 25th July - and we would like all members to come along on one or more of those days to help out. There's plenty to do - we'll be sending out details nearer the time, but put the dates in your diary now.

Let's have your support

Tracey provided a bra for the dame in the panto, but it's not that sort of support we want

There are two productions coming up and we'd like to take a Compton Players group to each of them. The first is Canterbury's Burning, about the life of Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury. It's on Wednesday 17th March on home ground at the Coronation Hall, Compton. The second is Sinodun Players' production of Shadowlands in which Mike Long plays CS Lewis's brother Warnie. It's at the Wallingford Corn Exchange from 31st March to 3rd April, and we're planning to get a party to go on Friday 2nd April.

Tracey is coordinating bookings for both of these, so please get your orders to her as soon as possible.

'An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.'
Marlon Brando, Vogue August 1974.

Wallingford

After our festival success with Bill and Bob last year...

We read H's play Rock Bottom on 19th February and, all being well, we shall be submitting this for the Wallingford Drama Festival in June (see the Calendar below for the dates).

Autumn production

It's play reading time again

Enid will be running play readings in the Scout Hut on Thursdays at 7:45 starting on 26th February. There will probably be three of them - please come along.

'I love acting. It is so much more real than life.'
Oscar Wilde.

Next newsletter

All offerings to me, by email to , or by post to Paul Shave, Windrush, The Ridge, Cold Ash, Thatcham, RG18 9HX, 01635 866800. By 17th May please.

CP Calendar

Clicking on the links brings up the Newbury Theatre web site page with more details.

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