London

We had great opening nights at the Tron and today has brought us to our first performances at The Cockpit in London. The schedule is pretty intense but it's been great to return to the city that was home for the month of January.

The Bends and liberty equality fraternity got off to a flying start today at 2.00 and they have just started their second performances at 7.30 tonight. Tomorrow is the turn of Scavengers and Mother Maria.

Next week we head back to sunny Edinburgh for our final performances and, gulp, final week of the course.

Location:Marylebone Ln,Paddington,United Kingdom

Opening Night (Part 1)

Last night saw us open our New Works extravaganza at the Tron.  It was a fantastic night with a full house and two great performances from the 'Scavenger's and the 'Mother Maria' casts.

Pamela Reid in 'Mother Maria'

Tonight sees the opening of Pamela Carter's 'liberty equality fraternity' and Iain F Macleod's 'The Bends' and tickets are also sold out for this event!  We then have two more performances in the Tron before we pack our bags and head on down to the Cockpit in London.  Really exciting times, we hope you can join in London or, the week after that, the Traverse in Edinburgh.  Links to the booking sites for each theatre are on the right.

David Hooley, Rose McPhilemy, Charlie Hanson and Charlotte Purser in 'The Bends'

Today also  marks a big change in life at the Academy.  In that it's no longer called the Academy!  We are all now, however fleetingly, students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  It was a real privilege to be first group of students to perform under the new name.

Dress Rehearsals

Ohhhhh, it's been an exciting week.  We have been in tech rehearsals and, with the exception of Scavengers which is going on tomorrow, we have all had our first dress rehearsals.  The plays are shaping up great and it's been a fantastic experience to work with professional technicians and stage-crew.  All the shows are looking really slick with interesting design choices everywhere you look!

You can find out more about Mother Maria here and The Bends also has a blog here.

The plays open at the Tron next Wednesday, you can check-out 'Scavengers' and 'Mother Maria' on the 31st and 2nd and you can see 'The Bends' and 'liberty equality fraternity' on the 1st and 3rd.  Links to the ticket site are on the right-hand side of this page.  Hope to see you there...

Beijing Baby!!!

This is a photo of the much coveted 'Golden Hedgehog' that goes to the winner of the Beijing College Drama Festival.  Why is that of interest to us here in rainy Glasgow?  Because 5 of our actors (and one director) are in China right now participating in this prestigious event!

They have brought their new play 'Scavengers' by Davey Anderson to the festival and it made it's premier performance last night to wild acclaim.  We are really proud of the group and it's a huge honour for the RSAMD (almost the RCS now - name change coming in September) to be the only European representatives at the event.  The play is a fast=paced thriller with a whirlwind of characters and an edge-of-your-seat ending.

Below is one of the lucky actors, Francois Menard-Noens, posing by a large projected picture of the poster for the play.

You can catch Scavengers from the end of this month in the not quite as exotic locations of the Tron, the Traverse and The Cockpit - the link to their box office is on the right (the Traverse are still too busy with the Festival so haven't go tickets put yet, but they will soon - we promise) as well as 3 other brand-new plays written by some of Scotland's most exciting playwrights.

The Fringe

Over the past week, MACCT has been bussing it through to Edinburgh to experience the madness that is the Fringe. The Fringe, and the International Festival, Book Festival and Art Festival, mean that the usually quiet and reserved Edinburgh doubles in population, gives over every possible space into being a theatre venue, and generally turns into a 24 hour performance carnival for the month of August. 

Our part of the Fringe madness kicked off at the hub of new writing, the Traverse, at a Q&A with writers David Greig, Lynda Radley and Zinnie Harris. This fascinating discussion started us off appropriately on a week of exciting and varied theatre, racing around Edinburgh, in the characteristically grey downpour of rain, to make it to different venues dotted around both old and new town. So far, we’ve dodged tomato juice at Junction 25’s fantastic take on love as a teenager; seen war through the ages with National Theatre of Scotland’s epic examining of conflict and innocence, The Wheel; visited a gorgeous freakshow with the visually lush Futureproof; been lead through the University of Edinburgh’s anatomy department by Grid Iron’s terrifying mad musical maestro; cried over paper cranes with Catherine Wheels and been marveled by The TEAM’s incredible play/cabaret/story of American Frontierism, Mission Drift.

We’ve also had the pleasure of popping in to see the RSAMD/RCS’ Musical Theatre MAs performing in their own fringe shows, taking a tour of the Scottish Parliament as research for ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ and taking part in a workshop with Master Oh of the Korean Mokhwa Repertory Company as part of the International Festival.

For some of us, it’s our first experience of the Fringe whilst others have been many times before – regardless, it’s been brilliant so far, and we can’t wait to return next week for the Playwright Studio talks, David Greig’s Monster in the Hall and Poorboy’s Blood and Roses, before we start our tech week.  You can read a little bit more about a couple of the shows on one of actors, Charlotte Purser's, personal blog.

The Scavengers cast and crew left today for Beijing, we look forward to hearing from them soon, but back to rehearsals for now!

Scavengers

The second new play (out of four) under our spotlight is 'Scavengers' by Davey Anderson and directed by Claire Moyer.  The group have been selected to go to Beijing in a few weeks time to perform at a student theatre festival - very exciting!  Here's a little bit about the play:

The credit bubble has burst and Michael Findlater, property developer and entrepreneur, stands on the brink of financial ruin. Then one day he goes missing leaving his family behind. Sometime later, a group of scavengers climb through the window of an empty building and discover a lost man squatting among the debris.

Part absurd comedy, part mythical yarn, Scavengers tells the story of one man’s disappearance between the cracks of society, his attempt to survive off the scraps of the consumer economy, and his quest to rediscover who he is and where he belongs.

Tickets are now available from the venues for the new plays at the Tron and the Cockpit but not quite at The Traverse yet - they're too busy with festival stuff right now! We shall be looking at the two other new plays in the near future, but for a sneak preview of 'The Bends' by Iain F Macleod - just follow this link to their blog.

Mother Maria

We are now day 3 into rehearsals for our plays of new writing,  it has been really exciting to finally get started on them after such a long development process.  Over the next few days we shall be looking at each play and letting you know a little bit more about them.  To start us off we have 'Mother Maria', written by Ann Marie Di Mambro and directed by Andrew McGregor.

First of all, this has nothing to do with the Sound of Music, but it is about a nun!  An amazing nun. A nun who's story is so extraordinary that it sounds like the work of a hollywood script writer, but the story that we tell in this play is all based on the life and times of Maria Skobtsova (read her story here).  She is a fantastic character, not only in her achievements but also in her idiosyncrasies; she would regularly be spotted sitting outside Paris cafes smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer!

The play is set in France in the late 1930's and ends in 1944.  It follows a few individuals and their particular circumstances during the earth-shattering events of that troubled time. Di Mambro has mainly focused on the family life of Maria and the sacrifices that she makes.  She is an incredibly strong woman and will not allow anything to stop her following the path that she believes she has to go down, despite her husband, Daniel's best efforts.

The play features India Crawford as Mother Maria and Pola Anton as her care-free sister Sasha - there are some lovely scenes between the two sisters where it seems, just for a little moment, the troubles of the world are forgotten.  Andy Patterson plays Daniel Skobtsova and Kevin Leask plays his son Yuri as well as Mother Maria's confidant Father Demitri.  He's not the only actor who will have to portray two characters with Pamela Reid facing the challenge of playing the 16 year old Gaina, daughter of Maria and Daniel, as well as the constantly put-upon nun Sister Veronica.

'Mother Maria' is an exceptionally dramatic story and we can't wait to keep on working at it and discover more about this fantastic woman and those that surrounded her.  The group have been keeping their own blog which you can find here and you can see photos from their rehearsals here.