Voicing mice and dinosaurs!

This week I have had the pleasure of voicing some characters for the interactive version of a couple of English text books for schools here in Norway. These characters include a young dinosaur: Dino (pictured on the left of the book cover), a vague lizard character, a selection of monsters and a group of hysterical mice! There were one or two human characters too, but animals are always the most fun –and the most challenging too. Using both a very low register (for the monsters) and an extremely high register (for the mice) means that one has to be careful of one's voice, and proper warming up is essential. And -strange though it may seem- one has to imagine oneself being the character just as much with an imaginary or animal character as one does with a human one. Otherwise the freedom of creativity and imagination is wonderfully exhilerating ..for who really knows how a dinosaur would speak!

98th Annivesary of Titanic disaster, and project update

Today marks the 98th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic, so working on my labour of love (Project Titanic) has a special weight at this time. It's another two years before I plan to stage the play I am writing about Titanic, but I have been researching all aspects of the ship, the sinking, the people connected with it and the legacy of the whole disaster and started to set out the framework of the play. It started as being a one-man piece –with Bruce Ismay as the sole character. Then expanded to three, then to four characters, and now looks like ending up having five characters, one of whom I still have to determine the identity of. Apart from Ismay all the characters perished when the ship went down. The play will also include a sort of prequel that I am quite excited about ..this featuring Captain Smith and another famous captain from history!

So the business at the moment is jotting down ideas and trying out threads of storyline. The most important part of any playwriting is the construction, and the defining of the "shape" of the piece. This is progressing nicely, and I have a good idea now of what I want to say with my play. The rest is to follow.

On location in Bucharest

This week I am in Bucharest for five days in order to appear in a commercial for a Norwegian dairy! An exotic location indeed, and a city I have not visited before, so I look forward to seeing something of the place between shooting. Fortunately my schedule includes a whole "waiting" day, so I shall be able to explore some of the fine buildings and especially theatres that the city is famous for -such as The Odeon pictured above which is close to where I am staying. As for the acting I have to do: it involves me giving a speech to a crowd of people. For some odd reason I keep having visions of Nicolae Ceausescu's last attempt to give a speech to a crowd, and their reaction. I hope they treat me better!

This Week's Flashback -William Shakespeare in "Kings" 1997

It has been a good few years now since I last performed my one-man play about Shakespeare, but over Easter I have been looking through the scrapbook and remember this production with great affection, not least because I had total control of everything –the script, the direction, the production and not least the performance. Essentially it is a 70 minute monologue performed by Shakespeare a day or two before he dies. He sits going through his papers, and conjures up

vivid memories from his life and work, and the characters he created. I learned more from doing this piece than anything else I have done. I am rather tempted to revive it one day too.