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.

From the Old to the New....

Last week saw us finally finishing our work on The Wars of The Roses project.  We performed the three plays in Glasgow's beautiful Botanic gardens, being in Scotland it was obviously rained off for two nights but we still got a great audience coming along and appreciating the plays on Saturday morning! 

Putting the plays back up again, in such a different setting,  was a great chance to revisit the work, build on what we had already been doing and to try some new things out, all in all it turned out to be a very successful remount as you can see from our beaming smiles!

Having lived in Shakespeare land for so long we are all really really really really excited about getting started on our new plays next week.  These have been in development since near the start of the course and saw each director being teamed up with a top Scottish playwright.  The plays to be performed are The Bends by Iain F Macleod, liberty equality fraternity by Pamela Carter, Mother Maria by Ann Marie Di Mambro and Scavengers by Davey Anderson.  

We will be showing the progress of these plays right here on the blog over the next month or so, you can catch the plays at the Tron in Glasgow from 31st August-3rd September, The Cockpit in London on  7th-8th September and then finally in Edinburgh's Traverse from the 14th-17th of September.  For more details of what is on when then checkout our website.

From On The Verge to Beijing

The 'On The Verge' festival is now over with all of the MACCT pieces getting great reviews.  There was a huge spread of genres and styles from one-on-one theatre to slapstick comedy via tribal rituals!  Check out the links on the right (Lethe, Sugar Factories and Lucas Petite) to read more about the shows.

We now are having a week off before heading back into the 'Wars of The Roses' with the Bard in the Botanics team.  This time, instead of the comfort of a nice theatre, we shall be performing these outside in Glasgow's botanic gardens.  Yes, that's right... outside... yes we are in Scotland ... and yes, it is a mad idea but we can't wait!

After that we start work on our new writing project, where we shall be performing brand new plays from 4 fantastic Scottish playwrights.  One of the groups, performing Davey Anderson's 'Scavengers', has been chosen to go to Beijing to take part in an international Student Festival!  Very exciting stuff, here's their welcome video - Claire seems to find something hilarious about it all... I'm not sure what though!

Full steam ahead...

We are all currently working flat-out on our new pieces for On The Verge, some people are involved in two different production and it's all getting a wee bit mad!  There are some nice pics here from Emily Reutlinger's piece 'If I...'.  It's an interesting wee show featuring brand new music with a live band as well as some great tunes from Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic musical 'Carousel'.

Tickets for the festival are available from the Arches box office, and for just £6 you get to see a number of exciting new works from the freshest talent based in Scotland.

More news from Stratford

More adventures in Stratford from Emily and Claire, sounds like they're having a great time...

New Lucas Petite video

Comic-book capers!

2 directors in Stratford....

Emily and Claire, 2 of the MACCT directors, arrived in Stratford today where they will be taking part in directing workshops with the RSC.  It's alright for some.  Check out their wee video here and try not to be too jealous...

Bot or Not?

Jessica, Charlie, Kimberley and Kevin have all been working away this week at their piece for On The Verge.  'Bot or Not' sounds like a whole lot of fun!  Check out Kim's blog to find out more about it and also have a look at this cheeky wee vid they have made for their dating site:



Kim explains: Jess, the director, is exploring how to produce science fiction on the stage and do it well. The concept behind the piece is a Turing Test - where a computer is pitted against a human being and through a series of questions it is determined which is the human and which is the computer. Imagine having to prove that you are human - how do you go about doing that? You can no longer use “I bleed” as a response…they can do wonderful things with synthetics now-a-days. 

Bot or Not? is a Turning Test turned game show with yours truly as the host. Two contestants: one a bot and one not. Through a series of questions the studio audience will determine which is which and who is chosen as the Bot will be given one final chance to prove they are not before the studio audience decides if they should be “squished”.

A dark comedy that explores the future of A.I.

And in other news, our wonderful teacher from the Globe, Tom Cornford, has finally entered the digital age and has got himself a website.  He's a director and teacher that is heavily influenced by the Michael Chekhov technique - check out his blog here.

The Sugar Factories

We are all getting firmly into the middle of rehearsals for our pieces at On The Verge this week - here's Debbie and Rose talking about their piece, 'The Sugar Factories'.




You can follow Debbie's blog here.

On The Verge begins....

There are lots of exciting projects on the go just now for our On The Verge festival at The Arches, running from the 20th-23rd of June.

MACCT actor Jayme Wojciechowski is working on a very interesting sounding piece entitled Lethe.  Check out his blog here.

One of the four directors on the course, Andrew McGregor, has been working on his comedy 'The Rise and Fall of Lucas Petite' over the last week.  His blog is here, there's an accompanying mockumentary to the piece that's definitely worth a look!

We'll keep you posted of more works in progress for this festival in the next few days as we really start to get stuck into rehearsals.

Another great event that a number of actors and directors have been involved in is the National Theatre of Scotland's 5 Minute Theatre. Check out actress Rose McPhilemy, directed by Claire Moyer, performing a short monologue by Tennessee Williams to an audience on the other side of the world via Skype.

Aaaand finally here's the 5 minute version of Lucas Petite, filmed today in the RSAMD.

Up and running...

With Parts 1 and 2 opening last weekend tonight will be the opening night for Part III of the MACCT's venture into the War of the Roses. There are some stunning photos for you to have a look at on the right hand side. 

One of the actors, Kimberley Miller writes about her experience of part 1 and 2 so far:
"Part 2 opened last night and I am proud to report that it went without a hitch. My friend Matthew (who has attended both Part 1 and Part 2 openings) told me he has enjoyed them greatly and loves the different styles of both shows. He is excited to see the final part and have “resolution” to the story.


Because Part 2 is the “battle play” - the director chose to represent the world in a more abstract sense. Having our battles be done through a series of movement sequences (don’t worry there are plenty of bloody stabbings and deaths) but since we couldn’t have all 21 actors do full on fights - the representations fit better with the scheme of things.

But another successful opening. I am very proud to be with this group!"

You can buy tickets for the War of the Roses from the RSAMD box office.

War of the Roses - Rehearsals

Trainee directors Claire Moyer and Deborah Hannan are currently assisting on The War of the Roses trilogy. Taking on everything from speech work to costume parades, physicalities to devising movement pieces, here are some details of their work so far.

Week 3 of rehearsals for the MACCT and Bard in the Botanics’ collaboration, The Wars of the Roses, has just finished and crunch time is upon us for this rather, well, epic project. With only another week of rehearsal before tech week, time is tight and we are at the peak of a rich and varied process for bringing this intense, complex trilogy to life. We’re taking Henry VI Parts 1, 2and 3 and Richard III and locating them in a 1940s/film noir/intrigue/Elizabethan warfare/politicized and violent world, mounting the productions in the Scottish Youth Theatre studio in the heart of the Merchant City, Glasgow, before transferring to actual “battlefields” in the city’s Botanic Gardens.

Taking on 3 shows at once is a massive challenge for the actors and directors involved, but try covering 75 years of turbulent British history through the eyes of the world’s greatest playwright and rehearsal exhaustion takes on a whole new meaning! 

Working in three different rehearsal rooms led by the Bard in the Botanics directing team, actors and assistant directors bounce back and forth from play, directing style, and era. More details on the nuances and working styles of each room will follow.

Significant points of development this week have included adding in movement sections and music to Part II.  While we have been laying the groundwork from day one, this week we lead two intensive sessions tackling how to represent war on the stage.  No mean feat!  As we can never approximate the atrocities of war onstage, or even in the way cinema does, our best option has been to make it as artistic and interpretive as possible.  Taking the framework of a rank and file band of soldiers, we then deconstructed the distinctly military image into a living breathing expressive response to modern warfare. 

Moving into our final week, we’re excited to see how things develop and solidify.  The pressure is high but the project is fun!

We’ll keep you posted with how things go, you can book tickets at the RSAMD box office and also check out more about our class at our own dedicated website!

Globe Rehearsal Room

RSAMD Globe Rehearsal Room, a set by rsamd on Flickr.

Here are some photos from our wonderful 4 week residential at Shakespeare's Globe.