Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Designing Love Never Dies

While audiences may not be unanimous in their praise of Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Love Never Dies, no-one is quibbling about its lack of spectacle. The person most responsible for this is Gabriela Tylesova, who designed costumes and set in just 6 months. Add to this the knowledge that the artist has two pre-school children and her achievement takes on gargantuan proportions.

My interview with Gabriela Tylesova, originally published in the July-August edition of Stage Whispers, can now be viewed online.

Read it here.

Other features and reviews.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Happy Rehearsal Campers at Ringwood - Production Camps - Why Bother?

Singing can be heard from the dirt track leading to Mt Evelyn Recreational Camp at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges. It’s not rehearsal, but the dinner queue in the pine-lined dining room.  More than 100 students from Ringwood Secondary College, a production team of 10 staff and two ex-students are into the second evening of a three-day camp. In three weeks Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate will open on the school stage for eight performances.

Director of Performing Arts, Benjamin Moody is munching on fish ‘n’ chips. While his first involvement was in 2000 as a ring-in, this is his sixth camp as a production team member, and the first as director.

‘Unless you come away for three days, you don’t get an uninterrupted run through. The rehearsal hours for the chorus [on camp] are as many as we can get over the entire Tuesday night rehearsal period,’ he explains. ‘From my point-of-view, the distance we’ve come in the last 24 hours is quite phenomenal, and we still have two full runs to go.’

Year 12 student Shaun Dickson agrees. ‘At school we get a few hours a week, but at camp we have three days straight. There are no distractions, and there’s no going home. You wake up and you just do it. There’s nothing else. Everyone is here to do production. Everyone has their head in the zone.’  Continue reading

You may also be interested in
Review: Sweet Charity (Ringwood Secondary College, 2012)
All the World's a Stage for Amazing Drama Teacher
More features, profiles and reviews.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Review: Charles Dickens presents A Christmas Carol

My review of the quite astonishing one man show by Phil Zachariah, Charles Dickens presents A Christmas Carol, is now published online by Stage Whispers.

More reviews and features.