Inquiry

I have been thinking carefully about some lines of inquiry that I might pursue later in the programme and I keep coming back to the same interesting question.

What effect have T.V talent shows had on musical theatre? Is it a good thing for professionally trained performers?

I am currently in a musical that has recently turned to celebrity to sell tickets, as have many other musicals in the west end, and it has definitely had an effect on the ticket sales. We are now attracting a whole new audience to musical theatre that simply would never have considered coming to see theatre before and I think this is to do with crossing genres. Very cleverly, producers have bought into the popularity of reality television and are employing its “stars” as headline acts in musicals.

I think there are a lot of professionals that would argue that they have trained and worked hard for years to get the opportunities that reality television personalities get handed to them on a plate and that producers are sacrificing the quality and credibility of the show to sell more tickets.

Conversely, I think there are many very strong arguments in favour of this new business model. For every new flash in the pan celebrity in a musical there are hundreds of professionals in employment that perhaps would have been out of work. This doesn’t just stop at performers, there are now lighting crew, LX technicians, stage managers, front of house staff, marketing professionals and countless other departments vital to running a large scale musical, in gainful employment due to the demand for such celebrity.

I suppose it depends on how you look at musical theatre, do you look at it as purely a business or do you see it as a credible art form? As a business, the west end has bucked all trends in the current recession and continues to thrive financially when many other industries have suffered. But are we giving up too much to gain such wealth? Does the quality of the show suffer? In my own experience I have met many extremely talented performers who are perfectly able and competent to perform in leading roles and yet have lost out to less experienced and less talented individuals to ensure a good return on investment for the producers.

I think there are very strong arguments either way and it has certainly sparked a lot of debate in recent years among my colleagues and peers. I think the attractive prospect of this enquiry is that I am undecided as to where I stand on the matter and I think an un-biased opinion is definitely a useful thing when trying to step back from being a professional performer and look at the situation from a wider angle.

I also think that on further investigation it would be a very easy subject to research as there will be no end of resources online and in newspapers and magazine articles due to the fact that this is very current and still in the public’s interest. I also think it would be very interesting to have a look at the society of London theatre’s annual financial report and look at the hard figures behind the opinions.

Campus session 10/11/10

Unfortunately I couldn't make the professional networking campus session because i was rehearsing for a performance on BBC children in need next Friday, i hope it was useful and i look forward to reading all about it via the blogs!

Reflective journal

A few weeks ago I had a very interesting day at work and I thought it would be the perfect day to write about in my reflective journal. I must say that I was a little bit sceptical about how useful a private journal would be to me but after having put down my thoughts and feelings using the frameworks of Reid and Moon, I have actually learned some things about how I learn and the effectiveness of trying out new ways to learn.

Normally in my line of work I have the same day over and over again and it’s sometimes very difficult to see what you’re learning about your profession when on the surface, doing the same thing at the same time every day would seem like a futile learning experience. Now and again though, you face a problem or experience that you’ve never had to face before and it’s at these vital points in my career that I feel I have learned the most, and what happened a few weeks ago was one of these crucial learning experiences.

It was on a Saturday morning that I received a phone call from my dance captain explaining that we were very badly short of boys due to illness, injury and holiday. She went on to explain that as things stood, the opening number of the show, which normally would have 4 dance couples, would be down to only 1 couple! She continued to explain that it was only a 2-minute piece and wouldn’t take me very long to learn and could I come in half an hour early to learn the new choreography.

I have to be honest, at this point it felt like all of those classic anxiety dreams that performers have were coming true, I was about to be shoved on stage in front of a paying audience without having a clue what I was to do.

I should also explain that by nature I am an extremely cautious person, I wouldn’t normally even sing at a Karaoke without having fully researched possible song choices, being sure of their chorus and verse structure and having had a 2 hour singing lesson to perfect them! Of course this is an overstatement but never the less, I like to know EXACTLY what I’m doing before I do it.

So a few short hours later and I was on a West end stage, wearing a costume I’d never worn, dancing with a partner I’d never danced with, doing choreography I had learned in a caffeine fuelled haze of panic!

Luckily, every thing went well, but it was after this experience that I started to think about what I should learn from it. I think my professional experience came in very handy in this situation, I had been a swing before so I was used to learning a lot of information quickly and accurately and I think my performance experience helped me put my nerves to rest and just concentrate on not dropping my partner.

I then Looked at Kolb's learning cycle:

 

Normally, I would put myself firmly in the bracket of “Active experimentation”. This Is where I feel most comfortable entering the learning cycle, somewhere I can analyse and perfect what is going to happen so that when it happens I am ready for any eventuality. However, on this occasion, at such short notice I was forced to enter the learning cycle at the very top “Concrete experience”. I think the main thing I will take from this experience is the fact that in certain situations, where there is no time for planning, you just have no option but to grab the bull by the horns and go head first into the unknown. I think I have to learn to trust the experience and knowledge I have gained to take me through difficult situations without forgetting to learn from what has happened, this is perhaps the most valuable thing I have learned so far in doing this course and I’m glad I have the opportunity to put it into practice in real life experiences.