John's postgrad blog: 6
After completing a BA Drama degree at the University of Bristol in 2002, John spent his time working as a university administrator until his interest in acting resurfaced. He is now on the MA Classical Theatre course at Kingston University. The last month has flown by in a blur. I mentioned at the end of my last post that there could be some exciting news on the horizon. Well, I can now reveal more.... Fame at last (sort of) Us MA Classical Theatre students have been given the chance to appear – albiet fairly briefly – in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the latest production at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, and alongside none other than Dame Judi Dench! As you can imagine this has been a huge deal for us and really exciting. It all came about through Peter Hall – barely a post goes by without me mentioning him it seems – who’s directing the show. He was keen to use us in the production in some way to give us some actual experience of appearing on stage in a professional production. Intially his idea was that we might play moving trees, giving a twist to the forest setting for the play, a concept he’d used successfully when directing the opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Glyndebourne. Having spent most of the last ten years trying to persuade friends and family that drama students didn’t spend all day pretending to be trees – and with concern about the state of my back by the end of the six week run – I was quite relieved when in the end this idea was dispensed with. So we are now playing attendants to Duke Theseus, appearing in three scenes and on stage for about 20 minutes in all. There are two ‘teams’ of us, five in each team, so we do alternate nights. Hands-on learning All this excitement has meant the start of term, already beginning on 1st February, was pushed back even further to allow us to attend rehearsals. Frankly though, and with all respect to our tutors, I think we’ve learnt more doing the play than we would have done in class. Having the chance to rehearse with and observe professional actors has been fantastic, and fascinating to see their different styles and how they rehearse. Even though we’re only students they’ve all been very friendly and welcoming, including Dame Judi herself, who is just as lovely as you would imagine her to be. They say ‘never meet your heroes,’ but in this case that’s definitely not true. There was also the chance to be there for the technical rehearsals, which was, again, an eye opener. These took just under three days, which apparently is not at all unusual. Very different from the amateur productions I’ve been involved with where the tech might take up an evening or two. And this production isn’t hugely heavy on fancy technical stuff – it’s easy to see why the techs for west end musicals can take a week or more! So here I am, just hitting the half way point of the course and already I’m on stage with Dame Judi Dench. Would I have believed this five months ago at the start of the course? No, of course not. Between now and 20th March when the run ends I intend to enjoy every second. After all, even if I manage to make a career of acting after graduation, something like this could be a once in a lifetime experience. Read my previous blogs
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