UPstageWA Review - An Insiders POV

Congrats Labrug! Let's hope future UpstageWA's are even more successful - more discussion is needed on our industry and how we can make it better. The Prompt Copy Networking emerging theatre professionals www.thepromptcopy.com Sticky Apple Legs http://stickyapplelegs.artsblogs.com Puppets in Melbourne www.freewebs.com/puppetsinmelbourne

Just a comment on your summary of what Stephen Lee had to say. It's all a matter of subjective judgement as to whether people are putting in their best efforts. Those with a foot in each camp (professional and community theatre) need to ensure they differentiate between those who can devote all their time and energy to the theatre and those who have jobs and lives that don't necessarily revolve around just theatre. I wasn't there so I must be careful what i say but I was concerned that some of the "marketing" for this venture inferred that as professional participants in theatre spend much time learning their craft then so should members of community theatre devote such time. I don't think that is realistic. Let the debate begin.

It sounds like it went pretty well Labrug. So congrats. :smile: Labrug said: "all off the particpants lead the double life of Community Thespian" We live like James Bond movies now do we? That could be fun. . .lol. It's true there is a difference obviously, between community and professional and time restraints is always going to be an issue. But hey in community theatre would you seriously put your hand up for something if you couldn't manage to find even a scrap of time. It's simply about being organised and having priorities. Thats it. ~ Tari The Writer is a child forever listening at the keyhole of the adult world.

G'day DS Your points are valid, but even though 'putting in a best effort' IS a subjective judgement, and quality is often in the eye of the beholder, there ARE key indicators in a performance which telegraph pretty clearly to all viewers whether or not the production is 'up to standard'. Nobody is inferring that community theatre ought to be competing on a professional level. This includes the fact that we don't expect amateur practitioners to invest as much time as a full-time professional can. What IS possible, however, is to make a far more EFFECTIVE use of the time you can spare. From an audience's point of view, their time is precious. For them to make their way to a performance, organising their dinner and transport and babysitters, and spending their hard-earned $....that's a huge investment of their time. If they are transported by your performance, to a place where they lose track of time and can forget the outside world for a few hours, then that is time well spent. But if they find themselves looking at their watch, wondering why the scenes are dragging on, and wishing they were home doing their tax returns...that's an inefficient use of their time which they will resent you for. It's pretty arrogant of us to expect to charge them money and time to see us put on a show if it's obvious that we've not put in our best efforts. And believe me, it's not hard to find examples where people are not displaying their best efforts. In general, audiences are more forgiving of community theatre...they understand that performers are often less skilled, budgets are tighter, everyone has other day jobs, and you're mainly there to enjoy the experience. You can generally see when people ARE putting in their best efforts, and while it may not be "perfect", it's usually enjoyable to watch. (Disclaimer: I'm not implying that community theatre is necessarily substandard, nor that professional is always good; but audiences DO view the two with a different mindset, which means that no one expects community theatre to have invested as much time as a professional production.) What I believe UpStage is trying to promote is not expending MORE time, but finding out how to be more EFFECTIVE in the time you CAN allocate...how to perform to the best of your efforts and ability, in the time that you can afford to spend. Now it's not entirely necessary to get this information from professionals, but surely we'd all agree it is valuable to learn from experts. If information and techniques for improvement can be made available, some of us owe it to our audiences to take advantage of the opportunity to improve. Most of the clubs putting on shows have a mixture of skilled and unskilled participants, and there is an element of skill-sharing and learning that goes on through the course of production. But it sometimes becomes apparent that there is little new being discovered, or that the same mistakes are unwittingly being made time and again because no one has the level of skill to observe and correct them. How many clubs actually conduct sessions intended to improve skills, apart from 'chucking you in the deep end' and learning by the experience of putting on a show? This is all very well, except that if the learning process is incomplete or haphazard, it's your audience that has to suffer the consequences. Upstage is intending to offer skills-sharing workshops in a variety of disciplines, from acting skills to directing skills to the audition process to effective rehearsal technique...etc. To answer your point about differentiation, I frequently find myself treading between 'camps' - working professionally, but often assisting student and/or community theatre groups...occasionally participating in community projects. I understand that anything I have to offer as a teacher is only useful from the student's point of view. If someone is having trouble delivering an effective performance, I could suggest they do what I did - devote 20 years to furthering my skills and learning on the job; or I could suggest a path followed by many of my contemporary professionals - study at a full-time intensive course like WAAPA. But neither of these suggestions is going to have the slightest bit of relevance to the student/amateur who doesn't want to dedicate a huge chunk of their life to professional-level theatre. But what I CAN often offer are relevant, practical suggestions and techniques which will immediately improve the task at hand. Usually it's easy to identify aspects of a performance that are NOT effective, things that are counter-productive or are holding you back from giving your best performance. Sometimes these are ingrained habits which WILL take time to improve, but at least they can be identified for you to work on at your convenience. Other times they can be small changes which take no time at all but immediately improve the standard of the performance. Acting for theatre is a weird thing. Some people may take years to register significant improvement, while others seem to naturally succeed and improve very readily. So it's the same with any training: three years at WAAPA will give you an enormous opportunity to practise and hone your craft under the watchful eye of skilled tutors...but essentially they are perfecting skills which many people can be introduced to in only a few performances. It's all a matter of degree...the professional-level training is really only practising the same skills any good actor should learn, but to a wider and more concentrated level of experience. If community theatre is your passion, I assume you allocate SOME time to it...the occasional rehearsal, a bit of homework, and then a short run of performances. If you could be shown techniques to make your work in each of those areas more effective - so that rehearsals are more productive, your private rehearsal time is well spent on gaining skill and insight, and your performances are lifted to the highest level you can achieve....wouldn't it make sense to re-allocate some of your time to improving your skills rather than wasting it repeating your old unproductive habits? You make the generalisation that professionals spend a lot of time learning their craft, and that amateurs don't ( - neither statement is necessarily a solid fact). I see acting on stage as something that involves many different skills, and can always be worked upon and improved...no matter your level of experience. The amount of time you are willing and able to commit to theatre actually has little bearing on two main things, true for everybody: 1) you are at a particular level; and 2) you have something you should learn. It's up to you how much time you wish to dedicate to this process. UpStage is trying to cater for people in community theatre like you, who are not prepared to allocate a 'professional' amount of time. It sounds like a tailor-made opportunity, not only realistic, but generous and...timely. It's about time. Use it wisely. Cheers, Craig ~<8>-/====\---------

Can you please eloborate about what upstage is? It's merely out of curiousity. Sounds as though you have some great members on that board. Is it in connection with the masters classes? Because Stuart Haluszkiewi was flogging that ever session at the ITA festival and it became extremely condescending, although I do like Stuart as a performer.

Ummm, a very comprehensive reply thanks Craig, but am I right in saying it could have been summarized in one sentence - "We understand participants in Community Theatre have limited available time so we hope to teach you skills to use that time most effeciently"? PS Nice portrait. Have you been at Jenny Craigs?

congrats all involved. necessary and timely. hopefully I will be able to be involved in future stuff. nev It's the simple things stupid...

I'm very happy and excited that it went well - I think this is a great idea. Hey Jeff, what is to be the next panel off the ranks?

But only from people who didn't attend. I did attend, paid my $10 and found the initial panel to be useful in terms of finding out what was going to happen in future and gaining a very small insight into looking at things in a different way, but as I said on the night, I find it difficult to take it all in so notes would have been great. And then I attended the first Master Class with Stephen Lee, he was awesome, worth every cent of $15 and why there wasn't 100 people there I don't know. This man is vibrant and oh so clever and for those of you who think you haven't anything to learn and you're good enough as you are, think again. For the price of 4 cups of coffee you'll get a much bigger hit and it'll last longer. But no notes, so if you have problems remembering stuff and you need to write it down you'll miss part of the action whilst you scribble, me I was too mesmerised to think about getting my pocket book out. So there you have it, a Yes vote from the paying public.

Glad to hear of your enthusiastic response. The topic of transcript notes came up on the panel night, but after later discussion it was decided it would not be fair on those who paid to attend, if the contents of the forum were then posted up for everyone to see for free. Also, some of what was said could be considered copyright material, hence no unauthorised publishing. (Some of us make a living out of giving this advice, which attendees got rather cheaply). And in a lot of teaching anyway, notes aren't the point of the exercise...you can always go to a good library for written materials...learning in drama is usually by doing and observing. Cheers, Craig ~<8>-/====\---------