Long Time No Play

So I haven't posted in while, mainly because I've been preoccupied with doing other work! I recently went to the Fine Art Grad show at Teesside University as a friend of mine was exhibiting, I'll have a post on that soon. But mostly I've been having a bit of a crisis. It seems to be a common crisis of finishing first year and being met with the reality of when you enrol next year you're done, there is no turning back or switching courses because you won't have the funding available to you. As I joined the course through clearing with a last minute change of career plan it's always been in the back of my head that it could have been the wrong decision. After realising that I would much rather read and analyse plays or watch musicals doubt started to set in, in fact I've never wished more that I could take DFSA as a 50/50 course alongside theatre, or even major in DFSA with a minor in Theatre.

Finding out that I did pretty well with my grades did nothing by solidify my confusion because it turns out I did make the right decision on results day and I love the course, so I have to find a way to make theatre and film mix. When I came home from Uni the first thing I did was take advantage of having my DVD collection within arms reach, I proceeded to watch every musical DVD I had. I started thinking how theatre and film aren't actually that different, the major differences 1) In film the director controls the audiences view point 2) In theatre the audience feels a human connection to the characters, in film you need to pander to more senses to create that connection.

With more and more broadway shows being picked for the big screen I looked at the difference
between successful adaptations and the not so successful. Those lacking in dance numbers seemed to get the theatre goers approval rather than those that have them, Sondheim shows coming out on top. Now I love Stephen Sondheim (Award Winning composer/lyricist, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George to name a few), growing up I was never aloud to perform his songs because they were simply too complicated for me as a singer and the poor accompanist. So how is that the most musically complicated and challenging pieces of theatre are those that cross over the easiest?

Whilst Sondheim shows aren't know for their big dance numbers everything is still meticulously choreographed, movement around the stage is so fluid all a camera man has to do is look at the stage version and mimic the movements they do. Simply putting a stage show on screen isn't the way it works.

Now that came out a lot longer than I expected but it is something I want to look into further. But in other news I bought a piano. When I was younger my Dad taught me piano very briefly before he passed away, but he taught me by ear meaning by the time I had professional lessons I was just really confused as to why people were reading music and why they couldn't remember what they just played. Now today I can read music to an extent and I can play piano to an extent, the goal is to play piano by reading music by the end of summer. Maybe even start learning to compose music properly, mix some music tech skills and become the one person orchestra I had to be at A Level, in other words I'm still working on different projects... I'm just taking a longer route than usual.

Also I found one of my old 'Listening Diaries' that I used during Music Tech, it was the first time I recognised the technique qualibet being used in Les Miserable, it's also the technique that insipired the end of our last short film.

 

That was really ramble-ly and not really that progressive but it's just a sum of everything that's going on right now, hopefully I'll have some more blog worthy things soon.