Step and kick and summer's nearly over!

This is the final interview before we're back into the swing of rehearsal for our wonderful show. 

The lovely Kim, who agreed to speak to me last week, has been a member of BCOS since 2002. That was the point at which she discovered dancing. "I'd never done it before," she confesses, "but I really liked it!" Consequently, even before Kim went to see the show as performed in Abingdon, she wanted to be one of the Hot Box Girls. "Preferably Adelaide, but when there are seven people auditioning for one role, you know that six of them are going to be disappointed." Kim is pleased, however, with the alternate role she has been given, that of Mimi. "She has three lines," she beams. And has she learnt them? "I hadn't when we made the appointment for the interview, but I have now!"  Those who were wondering about talking to me, clearly interviews have their uses!

Kim is very much looking forward to being one of the Hot Box Girls, although she doesn't yet know who will be the Dance Captain. "There are a few adults this year, whereas last year there were more teenagers to keep up with."  She doesn't mind having all the teenagers to work with, she says it keeps her young.

So, the lines are learned, what about the singing and the dancing? "I've had singing lessons with Martin, and I've worked with him in his role as Chorus Master of Stowe Opera, so I know the songs will be fine," Kim says.  As for the dancing, so far she only has the steps that she learned for the audition, which form a large part of the dance for 'Take Back Your Mink', and Kim thinks she needs to practise them again.  She too uses driving time for rehearsal, though in Kim's case, she just  visualises the steps to the music in the car, which is probably just as well. "I'm also doing exercises with high kicks via an iPhone app." It is perhaps no surprise that Kim is using a hi-tech approach to learning her part, given her job as Development Editor for e-products with a medical electronic publishing company.  She may be resorting to eBay for help too; "Ali said before the auditions that we would be dancing in 3 inch heels so I need some size 2 shoes with high heels for practice purposes, in case anyone out there can help," Kim tells me.  I was going to offer her some of my high heels until she mentioned the size 2 angle.

Like Tim, Kim is really looking forward to the show itself, being on stage and showing off what she's been rehearsing all this time.  I asked if there was anything she wasn't looking forward to, thinking the costume might get a mention. "I was doing belly-dancing for Launton Village Players, so a bodice and fishnets won't be a problem - I shall probably be more covered up!" Kim laughs as she recalls her most recent stage appearance.  Nothing in this show holds any fears for her. And then - on to the next production!

Old Hand, Big Jule.

   After relative newcomer to BCOS Amanda, my next willing victim was Tim, who has been a member of BCOS since 1985.  He’d just got back from a few days away so, before he threw himself back into the world of credit insurance broking, he kindly gave up an hour of his time to chat to me. 
   Tim has played a wide range of characters in his 28 stage productions, with romantic leads initially, though those are harder to come by now.  “The advantage of Gilbert and Sullivan,” Tim said, “is that the characters are from all age groups, so I have more chance then.”  In previous years, Tim has played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and Mephistopheles in Faust, and this year he has the pleasure of playing the gangster/gambler Big Jule (I am assured it is pronounced like the girl’s name Julie, though anyone suggesting it’s a girl’s name to Big Jule might regret it).
  Tim has calculated that if he learns a page a day of his 54 lines, he should finish by the end of August, when we are supposed to be off-book for rehearsal.  He claimed to be less disciplined now that he has fewer lines to learn. “I’m delaying it to the last minute,” he laughed, though it sounds pretty organised to me.  He’s already learnt the first five pages.  Tim’s method is to record the scenes he’s in, reading all the lines but only doing his own in character.  “Then I listen to them over and over again in the car,” he said.  Part of the challenge is going to be maintaining the gravelly voice he has developed for his character.  “And I’m going to need a fat suit,” Tim told me.  “Big Jule needs to be Big.”
   I asked Tim what he was most looking forward to and for him, it’s very straightforward.  “The shows themselves.  It’s much better with an actual audience, much more fun than all the preamble of rehearsal.”  It’s part of Tim’s regular calendar now and he actually finds the whole experience very relaxing.
   Was there anything he wasn’t looking forward to?  Tim said not.  He doesn’t get stage-fright as such, just enough adrenalin to maintain the excitement.  And memorising all those lines?  “I’ve never forgotten my lines,” Tim told me, “never taken a prompt.” That’s quite an achievement for someone with so many shows on his CV.  And Tim doesn’t intend to let that change any time soon.

Adelaide, Adelaide!

   On Monday I had the pleasure of a lengthy chat with Amanda, our Adelaide, who very kindly dropped in on her way home from work.  I was surprised to learn that Amanda, who is a scientist in pursuit of the elusive cancer cure by day, has only been a member of BCOS since they did The Mikado, two autumn shows ago.  This is her second named role, funnily enough playing Adelaide in Calamity Jane last year, though that was a rather different character.  Amanda auditioned for both Adelaide and Sarah, but “I knew who else was auditioning so I didn’t really expect to get either of them.”
  But now that she’s got the role of Adelaide, how is she approaching it?  “My lib is full of Post-Its on each page,” Amanda told me, “with notes on what the purpose of that scene is.  Some of the scenes begin the same way, with ‘Hello, Nathan’,” she lapses into her Brooklyn accent briefly for the line, “but I need to remember whether I’m cross, or pleased, or whatever.”  Luckily, Amanda has always been quite good at accents, but she’s still thinking consciously about it as she learns the lines.  She’s discovered she’s talking to herself a lot, and singing along with the Broadway recording in the car, so that her daughter is also becoming very familiar with the songs.  Learning the cues is part of her strategy at the moment too, covering lines and trying to remember what comes next.  The lib will be joining her on holiday too!
   I asked her what she was most looking forward to in the role.  “Oh, all the brilliant lines!  She’s such a fun character,” Amanda said.  Her favourite line is probably when Adelaide says bitterly, ‘I didn’t get close enough to the church to get left at the altar.’  “It just shows how witty she is.”  Filling her with a little more concern is the dancing.  “I’m not a natural dancer,” Amanda told me, “so I asked Ali if that would be a problem, but fortunately she said she sees Adelaide more as a singer who does a bit of dancing than a dancer who also sings.”  Some of the costumes may be a bit of a challenge, particularly singing in them, but Amanda says the diet has already started.  “And I’m hoping for a nice wedding dress at the end,” she said wistfully, clearly thinking of some dresses that we’ve seen on tv recently.    Here’s hoping that Gillian the costume lady has found this blog!

Getting the word out

   You could easily be forgiven for thinking that during the summer break, Nothing Happens.  In fact, for some people, rather a lot happens, and I shall be talking to a few cast members next week about their preparation for the show.  In the meantime, I thought I'd tell you about one of the behind-the-scenes roles in which I seem to have got myself personally involved.
   No show is worthy of the name without an audience.  Frankly, the cast would doubtless find it hard to perform with no-one sitting in those oh-so-comfortable chairs and I did wonder last week at the National what it must have been like for the cast of the Ibsen play we went to, confronted with a half-empty house at the beginning of the play and an even emptier one by the time the interval was over.  So one of the key things, surprisingly, is not the singing, the dancing or even the acting, but getting those bums on those seats.  In other words, publicity.
   All members of BCOS are encouraged to sell tickets to their families, friends, neighbours and vague acquaintances, but we can't rely on that to fill the hall for the five performances, so yesterday Rina and I whiled away a cheery three hours in Wyevale's coffee shop (it was raining, so there was no chance of checking out the plants!) working out who and what to contact to best promote the show.  Rina has done this before and has a file full of lists and listings, but I'm a bit of a novice at it, which was probably why it took us such a long time to go through it all.
   The best kind of publicity is free publicity, so Rina has a list of a wide variety of websites relating to local events, usually free to post to, and another list of magazines and other media.  Some of them charge, so we've agreed it's time for another survey to find out where our audience has come from, in the hope that we can advertise the shows where people are most likely to see them.  No point spending money on ads that yield no additional audience figures.  Parish magazines are another good location, though they generally need ads in specific sizes and by specific dates, none of which are the same.  That may sound as though it saves a mad rush, but actually it requires planning with a military-style precision.  Trying to get word of the show into the local papers can be done, best of all with photos of cast-members in costume and make-up, but that will have to happen a little nearer the time.  Radio, TV? There's not much local TV coverage but we will send out press releases and keep our fingers crossed.
  The other kind of publicity that has usually worked well in the past is the posting of flyers through letter-boxes and stapling laminated sheets of A4 to telegraph poles.  Of course, the materials and the printing cost, so decisions need to be made *now* about how many to print of each size.  Some of the flyers can also be stuck up in windows or on village notice-boards and members are also encouraged to hand a few out at work (just in case you're not friends with your work colleagues but are quite happy to entertain them - for a fee).
  Previous audiences have said they knew about the show because of the roadside boards.  This is a tricky one because the council tends to remove boards that aren't advertising their own stuff and then the boards have to be reclaimed from Deddington, not always convenient.  But the boards do bring in audiences, so we're going to persist in placing them and hope the council don't notice too quickly.  A more expensive draw is the banner, partly because of the increased public liability insurance that would be needed.  Rina's going to find out just how cheaply she could get a banner in the hope that the combined banner+insurance cost is still roughly the same.  Banners are eye-catching!  Of course, we would then need to talk a couple of chaps (or chapesses) with ladders to put it in place for us, but we're pretty certain that the society will rise to that particular challenge.  They've mastered (almost) the rhythm at the end of 'Sit Down', after all!
  And then there are the emails.  I often mutter quietly to myself when asked to provide an email address somewhere because I just know it's going to be used for marketing at me, but having said that, it's really easy to delete an email if you don't want it.  So being on the other side of the fence any day now, I'm going to start being more willing to provide my email address for marketing purposes.  I have a pretty good spam filter, even if it does keep sticking emails from my Chinese friend in there.
  And yes, all that did take approximately three hours to get through.  I have a little bit of work to do - a couple of phone calls to make, a website to check out and a press release to work on - but in the meantime we think we know how we're going to be getting the word out about our show in November.  If you have any other ideas - magazines or websites we may have missed, contacts with skywriters or the like - please let me know in the comments.
  Of course, there's also Facebook, Twitter and the blog! Like, follow, retweet, invite all your Facebook friends to the event - spread the word.  We know it's going to be an excellent show so we have to have an audience.  Tickets will be on sale via the website or from SHJones from 1st October...