Backstage
With the final performance of the show in the bag, I’ve now entered into the final phase of my Get a Life sabbatical: assessment, integration, contemplation and all the other “-ations” that will direct the future of this project post-award.
It’s now abundantly clear that writing and performing my own strange creations are the things I love to do most. And now I have a completed show, ready to roll, and stacks of spare material on the side to feed into future performances. What’s now required is simply to perform it, a lot, and that way it can only improve as I learn the business of how to work audiences, what material suits which venues, all the time honing and refining the material and my performance skills as I go.
Business planning has never been my forte, so this is the point in the sabbatical where I start to bring in people for whom it IS to advise me in the short and long term how to get the show literally on the road. (Am open to suggestions!)
Backtracking a little, the final few shows of the extended 2 hour version seemed to go down v well, although I had the scary experience in Surrey of an audience so polite that they showed their rapt enthusiasm (as I found out with relief later) with radiant silence. From this I learned that exactly the same show can be greeted by a London fringe theatre audience with noisy hysteria, and tumbleweed taciturnity 24 hours later.
As my show operates on a system of very tight sound (backing tracks) and light cues, audience reactions and noise have to be very carefully timed so as to allow numbers to flow easily and, most importantly, audibly. This was really a learning curve for me and my sound technician in terms of timing and delivery, especially as we were using a new sound cue software system to operate the show which needed careful pre-programming. With hindsight, we realised that we would now programme it differently to adapt to different audiences, and these are the kind of things that can only be learnt through hard experience.
There are already a few interested parties for future shows, and Revue Z makes its Aldeburgh Festival debut in june 2012, along with shows/workshops for students at the Pro Corda chamber music course, Purcell School, NYO and Surrey University. Contacts in Holland, Denmark and the US have expressed interest, so, with a bit of applied practical nouse, it looks as though Revue Z can start to pay its way in future. Which was precisely the goal of this heaven-sent Katherine McGillivray-assisted time.
Pics are from the september London run of the show. More YouTube snippets to follow.
Posted by zoemartlew on December 9th, 2011.
