Voicing for Ikea, WWF and The Tea Light Hunt!

It's always rewarding to be offered work that deals with a subject I find particularly important, and sustainability and recycling is something I am passionate about. So I was delighted to provide the voice today for a film concerning tea lights! In Norway everyone uses tea lights by the sackload –over 200 million every year. Ok, so it's dark for half the year, but even so, they are everywhere. And most people just throw away the empty aluminium cups –until a campaign instigated by Ikea and WWF got school classes involved in imaginative collecting, registering and recycling of these, with prizes for the school classes that collected the most empty cups or came up with the most creative ideas for recycling –it was called The tea light hunt", and has been a great success in Norway, building environmental awareness and increasing recycling. Highly commendable. I strongly support any projects that promote these goals, and urge everyone to really consider whether whatever they throw out can be re-used, recycled or revamped. The film is an international version, so hopefully it will be seen around the world –and yes, that's with my voice!

Currently recording

I am currently recording as an audiobook a pretty fascinating book about technology and its relationship with and effect on culture. It's the kind of book I would be attracted to anyway, so it's doubly gratifying to be working on, even though the style (very long sentences) is more challenging than I first thought.

Titanic Work in Halifax

I am currently visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia, as part of a five-week tour of Canada and the USA, and doing a spot of research for my Titanic project whilst here. Halifax has a close connection with the story of Titanic as it was here that boats set out from to recover bodies of those lost and where many of them are buried. The sea and shipping are a huge part of what makes this place what it is, and I have spent much of the day in the excellent Museum of the Atlantic, which houses some amazing Titanic artifacts recovered from the sea, including a deckchair and part of the grand staircase. All the other artifacts I have seen before have been recovered from the wreck, whereas what is displayed here seems quite new, having only been in the sea for a matter of days. A cabinet for instance. There are also touching items connected with the recovery of the bodies, like a canvas bag with a number on it, to contain personal possessions found on each body. It is clearly a popular place to visit, and I am thrilled that all the children who are visiting while I am there are as intrigued and captivated by the Titanic story as I am. Tomorrow I shall be visiting the graveyard where about 130 of those who perrished are burried. It promises to be a moving experience.

Current Recording

I am currently recording as an audiobook a great book called "Emerging Churches". It's one of the most "flowing" audiobooks I have ever done, and full of personal accounts and stories that are wonderful to breathe audio life into. It's also a very enganging subject and has frequently got me thinking deeply about spiritual issues of my own. And for once I feel really quite satsified with the result!

Returning to One's Roots

First of all apologies for not having posted so much recently. A resolution for 2012 is to be more frequent with my posting. I will also be starting a new PHOTOGRAPHY blog to display (show off!) some of the pictures I take, as I become more and more fascinated with the art of photography. On that note I must add a further apology as to the quality of the photograph accompanying this blog post. As I am in the photograph I obviously haven't taken it myself, and the unfocused, shakiness of the picture is the responsibility of someone in my family who shall remain unnamed! However, I wanted to post the picture because it marks for me a return to the place where I stepped onto a stage for the very first time when I was 9. Before this it was also the place where I went to the theatre for the first time, and where my love of performance, theatre, show-business and all that started. I had the chance to revisit this place –The Memorial Hall in Dereham, Norfolk– earlier this month, and to inspect the results of an exciting £3-million refurbishment. I was thrilled and delighted to discover that despite the revamp, the hall had the same atmosphere that I remember from my childhood, and the stage retained its magical allure. I was so excited to step on the stage again for the first time in 31 years –even in its bare, working-light lit state- and feel that same rush of energy and magic that drew me into acting in the first place. I would have loved to have performed something there again, but we were only on the briefest of visits. For me any stage is a temple of possibilities and magic, but revisiting this one was truly special. So perhaps I am the one shaking here, rather than the photographer!

Finding the elephant within me

When one gets a telephone call asking whether one is interested in recording a children's song for a successful interactive educational website one immediately says yes, and jumps at the opportunity to share with the world a bit of music. Of course one says yes –it is the default answer of any actor being offered a job. "We'd like you to sing the elephant's part..." I see..., wondering what one has done to be worthy of such typecasting. After all, I I have never played an elephant before –in any medium. I have voiced numerous other creatures over the years though, including dragons, snakes, birds, mice and bats -and the very first professional role I played in the theatre was a dog. But an elephant -that's something new and dare I say daunting. What sort of a voice does an elephant have? There's not much research material about. Dumbo is not right for the huge and clumsy pachyderm that I am to play, and John Hurt in "The Elephant Man" is the wrong road to go down completely. Method acting is called for -at least some kind of method! I look at pictures of elephants –their eyes always seem so sad somehow, I wonder why. I make some tentative elephant sounds and startle people around me –probably not a good idea to do this on the street. Somehow end up with a Yorkshire-sounding singing voice –a bit dour, a bit slow, but full of gruff modulation. In the recording studio however, after a couple of run-throughs, it becomes clear that more vocal energy is needed. "Find the elephant within you" says the producer. I dig deep, become heavy (but elephants are graceful too) use my imagination and .... find that elephant! Somehow in this delightful process of discovery the voice of the elephant moves south, and the final result is an elephant that sounds like a cross between Londoner Ian Drury and my granny from Kent! After 20 or so takes the song is in the can, and I can step out of the elephant shoes, comfortable though they now have become, and return to the real world. I cannot help feelling grateful. A performer after me has to sing the part of fish –a tiny, little blue goldfish, but he had prepared the voice of a sea bass!

Current work

Following a rather quiet period –the worrying demon of life as a freelancer– I now find myself with more than enough to do. Like buses, jobs seem to either all turn up together, or not at all. My current assignments are recording an audiobook on the media in Italy, doing voicework for a children's audiobook and now returning to the Norwegian opera to do some more coaching for Peter Grimes –which is being presented next month with quite a few changes of cast. It is especially nice to be back at the opera, and always good to go back and work on something for a second time –one brings so much more insight and knowledge to the piece. And as there are so many wonderful singers there who know Italian backwards I am craftily hoping I can get them to help me with some of the Italian pronunciation I I have to deal with in the audiobook!

Writing about "Titanic".. now and then

I have spent some time this summer working on Project Titanic, my play about ...Titanic. I have done most of the research I need to do, especially in the texts of the American and British hearings that were held shortly after the disaster. Part of the challenge has been to try to isolate exactly what story or stories I want to tell, because there are so many individual stories contained within the Titanic saga -from conception right through to today. The most intriguing thing I have found is that everyone who becomes involved in Titanic becomes part of its history. Titanic the ship may have sunk, but Titanic the legend -the idea, lives on. And it is this that makes Titanic truly unsinkable. Somehow this particular ship and its story caught people's imagination and continues to do so. Why? Well, that is really the question I pose in my play. It is the phenomonan of Titanic that I am concerned with rather than the historical, facts and events. These have been addressed admirably in so many other works, and I have read a great many of them. Ideally I think the only way one could do full justice to every story contained within the history of Titanic would be to have a monologue by each and every person who has in some or any way been connected with the ship. But this would run to thousands of people. One must make a choice. My play has one key figure (J. Bruce Ismay) who survived the disaster (or did he?) and a small number of characters who didn't, and whose lives have particularly intrigued me. People often ask where my interest in Titanic comes from. A very good question. I think it probably started when I saw "A Night to Remember" at a very early age and was transfixed. (I saw it again a couple of weeks ago and was still transfixed.)
It must have been just after seeing that film that I wrote the account of Titanic posted above. I was thrilled to discover it a few days ago in an old school book. I am intrigued by the inaccuracies, but the narrative and terse presentation of key facts is not bad for a 7-year old!

Peter Grimes - Work completed

Tonight is the dress rehearsal of Peter Grimes at the Norwegian National Opera –and my last day of work there for the time being. When it opens on Saturday, I shall be there as a member of the audience, and will be looking forward to seeing the opera –up until now I have primarily been listening to it, or "seeing with my ears" as I like to call it –and primarily the text. Having had the opportunity to work as language coach for the soloists has been a hugely rewarding experience, and I have felt extremely priveleged every time I have stepped into the magical world of this great opera house. I have learned as much as I have taught, both about opera, theatre, Britten, the human voice and the English language. There have been many challenges and some turbulence along the way, but I have heaps and heaps of respect for the people I have been lucky enough to work with and alongside. Opera is a demanding enterprise; a huge collaboration of musical, technical and artistic talents, all working towards the goal of making it as good as it possibly can be. I have played a very small part in this –text in opera will always be subservient to the music, but I would like to think my contribution has helped achieve that goal. Each performer has had different journeys to make in terms of their English –some have hardly needed any work whereas others have had to endure countless adjustments and notes from me -poor things. All have come up good. I am particularly happy to have been able to apply some of the princlples of diction and articulation I learned at drama school –my notes from that time have come in very handy. And the general conclusion we have all come to is that English is a very tricky language to sing!
Peter Grimes will be playing in the autumn too, with quite a few new performers, so somehow I feel I will return...

The website for Peter Grimes at the Norwegian National Opera: Peter Grimes

Current Recordings

Most of my time at present seems to be spent in a recording studio –not at all as glamerous as it might sound- recording two very different books. One is a history of the Comintern, full of worryingly difficult names and very long sentences, and the other is a gripping and rather mysterious novel by Ian McEwan called The Child of Time. Recording two so different books in tandem presents certain unique challenges, because the vocal quality required is very different in each case. For the history book the voice has to have a certain distance and certainly objectivity, whereas for the novel one has to –at times– live emotionally into the words –not so much playing the different characters, but suggesting them, sketching them like an artist on a canvas. The listener must be allowed to do the colouring in, for otherwise he or she has only a passive role in the storytelling, and I think that is fundamentally wrong. At other times one has more of a narrator function. So changing from one type of voice to another in the course of a recording session (which for me is usually about four hours) always takes a bit of time. But as I earlier this week have voiced amongst other things: a dragon, a bear, a moose, a lion, a little boy and a chameleon on another project, I think I can handle the transition from novel to non-fiction satisfactorily...

This Week’s Flashback -20th anniversary of my first play

Today, March 21st, it's twenty years since I first had a play produced and perfomed –two, in fact, as it was a double-bill consisting of two one-act plays I wrote for The Oslo Players under the umbrella title "Another Place". The two plays were "The Royal Box" –a light comedy about the panic created in a theatre when it is announced that they are to have a royal visit; and "Snail Street" -a tragi-comedy about people living in cardboard boxes on the street. I directed and appeared in the former. God only know show I found the energy and time for all this, because I was also studying full-time and working part-time too. It was a truly gargantuan adventure, and one of the most tiring times of my life, but utterly rewarding. It was also the first production of The Oslo Players –the English-speaking drama group at the university of Oslo, and the start of that whole adventure I later used the process of this production as part of my thesis in theatre studies. Of the two plays my greatest affection is for "The Royal Box", and on re-reading it today, I must say it holds up remarkably well, and is certainly very tightly written, and it is more like a full-length play than a one-acter. I am very fond of it.
Here's part of the prologue to the pair of plays..spoken by a cleaner in front of the stage:

THE CLEANER:
More dust! Don't you ever wonder where the hell it
all comes from? I do. ...Sometimes I wonder whether
there's not a huge cloud of dust, way up there; and
every room in every building in the entire world gets
like a ...a daily dose of dust. A daily dose of dust from
this gigantic cloud! I mean it's all the same isn't it...
dust I mean. The dust of a palace is just as ...dusty as
that of a prison or a church or your sleazy downtown
joint. Kings and housewives fight against it; painters
and surgeons hate it, and bakers and cooks fear it.
Yet it keeps me in a job (pause). Strange though, isn't
it, to think that when we, God forbid, die, we eventually
become dust ourselves. Sure it takes time, but sooner
or later you'll find yourself floating to the floor in a
thousand specks in places like this! That's why I stick
to my job -I come across so many interesting people!

Opera update

Sadly I have not been very good at updating this blog over the last couple of months, and you would be forgiven for thinking that this is due to not having done anything worth mentioning. However, the opposite is closer to the truth –I have had too much to do to find the time to write here. I shall from now on though try to post an update once a week, even it is only a few lines.
I am glad to say that the work I put into "The Rape of Lucretia" was well received and the opera itself a great success. I was very happy when I attended the last performance in Oslo and heard that all the coaching I had done with the soloists had worked so well, and I was very proud of them. The whole experience of working with the opera has been enormously educative and enlightening, and made my present work on the next opera much easier. "Peter Grimes" is a vast enterprise compared to the chamber intimacy of "Lucretia" –majestic, daunting and tremendous. My focus is primarily on the libretto by Montagu Slater, but I cannot help but be affected and moved by the magnificent music of Benjamin Britten –even when played in bits and pieces on a piano in a rehearsal room –it is constantly surprising, playful, alarming, rich and atmospheric –and above all exciting. I have had the great pleasure of giving some language instruction to the 50 or so strong opera chorus, and found that rather challenging, but mostly I am working with the soloists individually, ironing out any vocal anomalies when it comes to vowels or providing alternatives. Once you get down to very close analysis of the sounds of a language you discover all sorts of issues about how a particular word should sound in a particular context -and in many cases there is no one correct answer. The singers I am working with are however all so professional and quick at following suggestions that I feel confident everything will sound excellent when the opera opens –still a couple of months away!

The Rape of Lucretia - Ready to Go

Tonight is the dress rehearsal of Benjamin Britten's opera "The Rape of Lucretia" at the Norwegian National Opera, and the end of my work as vocal coach on that particular piece. Working on a opera for the first time has been one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences I have had in a long time, and over the last couple of months I have turned, gradually, into a total opera geek. Maybe it is the level of talent I have been priveleged enough to work with: singers who amaze me every day, musicians who have allowed me to learn about their world, and skillful people behind the scenes in the VAST maze of the opera house. Maybe it is the music –and Benjamin Britten now really rocks my world. Maybe it is something I have found in myself –opera really does reach you in ways that other forms of entertainment don't. IT is probably a combination of all these things, but also, for me, a renewal of love of and joy in the magical aspect of "theatre" –something I thing it is so important never, never ever to lose. Listening to an orchestra warming or tuning up before a performance, watching the lights change from sunset to night, feeling the expectation at a rehearsal, the excitement when something fresh happens, the hilarity when something goes absurdly wrong: all contribute to what makes being in performing space the best place I know. For this production my job has been to listen, to focus on the words, the sounds, the pronunciation, diction and articulation. That has been the work. All the rest has been pure joy.

"The Rape of Lucretia" opens on Thursday 27th January, and runs through February

Christmas performance and Wordsworth

Tomorrow, for the 16th time, I shall be performing at the British Embassy in Oslo for the Anglo-Norse Society's Christmas party. This occasion is always something I look forward to, and over the years I have be fortunate enough to perform all sorts of things from short stories, sketches, songs, even pantomine, along with skilled musicians, singers and other performers from every area of show business. My role has usually been that of a master-of-ceremonies, a narrator to the events and general deliverer of entertainment. By far the most enjoyable thing though, is the chance to perform and share poetry about Christmas. It has become a Christmas tradition in itself, and my only concern is that it becomes harder and harder each year to find something that hasn't been done before. But earlier this year, to my joy, I came across a wonderful poem by William Wordsworth –a poet I have always admired, and this will be shared with the audience as part of my performance, along with pieces by George Wither, Thackeray, Mary Howitt and the one line of Shakespeare tat specifically deals with Christmas! The musical part of the evening will be provided by a Norwegian vocal group called "Uhørt". In the meantime, here's the Wordsworth poem.

Minstrels by William Wordsworth

The minstrels played their Christmas tune 

To-night beneath my cottage-eaves; 

While, smitten by a lofty moon, 

The encircling laurels, thick with leaves, 

Gave back a rich and dazzling sheen, 

That overpowered their natural green. 



Through hill and valley every breeze 

Had sunk to rest with folded wings: 

Keen was the air, but could not freeze, 

Nor check, the music of the strings; 

So stout and hardy were the band 

That scraped the chords with strenuous hand. 


And who but listened?—till was paid 

Respect to every inmate’s claim, 

The greeting given, the music played 

In honour of each household name, 

Duly pronounced with lusty call, 

And “Merry Christmas” wished to all.

Standing in for Steven Van Zandt

This week I have had a rather interesting acting assignment -standing in for the American actor/performer Steven Van Zandt in the casting sessions for a major Norwegian television series he will be starring in. As Mr Van Zandt is an exceptionally busy man –even more than me!– he can't make it for the casting sessions where actors for the other parts are being considered, so I have been brushing up my New York accent and dived into the task of doing his scenes –again and again, with a succesion of actors. It is a fascinating and rewarding process, a bit like an acting lab., with improvisations and tests and stretching of scenes. The great thing about it is that unlike just about every audition I have attended, there is no pressure on me at all, apart from myself, as I am not the one being tested out. But we do the scenes for real, on camera, and it is fascinating doing the same scenes with very different actors -some of whom are people I have admired for a long time. I know the scripts pretty much backwards, having also had the task of translating them all into English, and I cannot deny that it is rather fun being a mafia thug for a week. Capice?

A new challenge -opera, and Benjamin Britten!

The other day I was saying to myself, I would like something new and challenging to come along, something I haven't tried before. Well, one must be very careful about what one asks for, because in my experience, one frequently gets it. However I could not have been more surprised than I was when the Norwegian National Opera called and asked whether I was interested in doing English vocal coaching for the cast of their upcoming production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes. As it will be sung in English they need somebody to work with the performers on correct pronunciation and understanding of the language in performance, and as it turns out I had been recommended by someone or other -and blessed indeed are those angels who recommend people for things!
So today I visited the vast white opera building that dips into the water by Oslo's harbour and instantly got lost in the maze of corridors, offices, performing spaces, rooms, stores and staircases, and met the artistic people and the head of the opera and the deputy head of the opera, and in a short time I had agreed to "meet the challenge" and laid a plan for how to go about it. A huge score was thrust into my hand, and the weekend will be spent listening to Britten, reading about Britten about Peter Grimes, and about opera in general. In many ways this very different from the theatre, but I am excited about the challenge because opera represents just about the only field of entertainment that I have not been involved in before; that and circus –though I am told that once things get underway this will be quite a circus too...

A wooden performance?

This week one of the things I have done has been recording the English version of a popular book for children about a rather curious character –a talking, walking piece of wood– called Block! (Block is pictured above). Block, along with a friend called Spruce, likes to collect things (a bit like me) and collects so many things in fact that he has no other choice but to make his own musuem –something I too have thought would be a good idea. To create the voice for Block I had to delve deep into the ideas behind method-acting and imagine myself to be a living, breathing piece of wood. Fortunately I have known one or two PEOPLE who fit that description, so I used tem as inspiration too! I think the book is rather fun, and it's certainly wonderfully illustrated by the writer. The book and audiobook will be accessible on Salaby later this autumn.

This Week’s Flashback -Sebastion in "Twelfth Night" 1992

I Have been going through old photographs the last few days –the wet weather has been perfect for that sort of thing– and came across this picture from a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night I performed in way back in 1992 with The Oslo Players. This particular photograph is from a special performance at the British Embassy in Oslo. Unfortunately no one had told the ambassador that there was a sword fight in the play, and he went quite white during the performance -the reason being the stage's proximity to the portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the background. He afterwards told us that the Princess Royal (Princess Anne) was staying at the embassy a day or two later. I couldn't help but wonder what she would have thought if she had arrived to find the picture of her mother slashed! Fortunately my fencing skills proved adequate enough to avoid disgrace! I'm not quite sure about that wig though...

The World of Salaby

One of the projects I am working on this summer is translating and preparing the English version of the educational website "Salaby" for the Norwegian publisher Gyldendal. Salaby is a really fun interactive world for children, consisting of games, exercises, little stories and poems.. For instance; every letter of the alphabet has a little poem attached to it, and one of the exercises is trying to locate the various letters - this is my version of one of the poems. Can you guess for which letter?

"Dozy Dina dreamed of dancing

All day long out by the sea,

Dancing like a disco diva,

Dear oh dear, she worries me!"

Yes, my creative buds are not being wasted as you can see!

Also on or in Salaby you can listen to some of my recordings, and if you search the website a bit you can even be able to find me singing "I'm a Little Teapot" !

web2.gyldendal.no/salaby/bokmal/default.asp

Commercial for BioQ milk

The commercial I appeared in for a Norwegian dairy, advertising a new type of biological fibre milk has hit the screens. You can check it out on the link below. It was first shown while I was on holiday in Greece, and when I got back the first thing I did was to go out and buys some milk (after all, I am English and I must have milk in my tea). Unfortunately the shop I went to didn't have the new brand so I was forced to buy the milk of a rival. I felt rather guilty clutching the carton of this rival brand as I walked home with it, and surreptitiously tried to conceal it, lest I be spotted by some sharp-eyed viewer of commercials and shatter their illusions. Anyway, the commercial (shot in Romania and directed by a brilliant young guy called Kristoffer Borgli) is

now appearing with alarming regularity on television in Norway. Click on the link to see it:

http://bioq.no/