A couple of days ago I featured a top Yank, Don LaFontaine … today it’s a top Brit, Mike Hurley. This little 14 minute video is from 1994, and my tech friends assure me the equipment and technology qualify as pure nostalgia. But there’s nothing creaky about the voice at work here. Great stuff.
Continue reading ...Occasionally a gem sparkles amongst the tailings of most journalism on the theatre. Such a piece was Kathleen Noonan’s All the World’s a Stage (Brisbane’s The Courier Mail 24-25 November). It was a very personal take on the power of theatre to move, shake, or soothe like ‘a warm cup of cocoa’ if that’s your
Continue reading ...Image: jgrantmac This is not the mulling that comes with spicy wine, the traditional Christmas drink in colder climes. It’s another kind of thoughtful musing that often fills the mind. During this season, we tend to go back over the past 12 months or so, sorting and sifting through the discoveries and shuddering perhaps at
Continue reading ...You’ve heard his voice so often in move trailers, now here’s the face of Don LaFontaine. I came across this little movie this morning. Apart from being a nice intro to the guy behind the microphone, the movie has something to say about how pervasive a great voice can be. He has set the style
Continue reading ...If there were $$s for every time this note were given in rehearsal, there’d be a pot o’ cash worth fighting for. Not being heard can relate to so many problems: insecurity over lines and their meaning, a lack of self-confidence, through to poor technique … breath support and sloppy articulation being two of the
Continue reading ...I’m often asked to comment on how I use Web 2.0 technologies, including blogs, iPods and podcasting in my teaching and learning projects. I presented on the topic a few times this year at conferences and a phone call this week from someone I met at the AUC Create World conference in Brisbane in late
Continue reading ...I was asked by some students recently how, or whether I exercised my own imagination. We had been talking about the ‘most important muscle’, and about keeping it limber. This conversation must have stuck with at least one of the class members, who emailed me a week back wanting to know how to keep working
Continue reading ...Image by Guy Fawkes via Flickr In this jargon-ridden acting business, the notion of ‘centre-ing’ is one that gets a daily work over in most classes and on the rehearsal room floor. I wonder what most actors make of this instruction by well-meaning directors, teachers, coaches? I’ve found it means different things to different people,
Continue reading ...If there’s one phrase that an actor can get tired of, it’s that old favourite ‘being in the moment.’ I count myself as one who finds it tedious. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t pay attention to it, or that it isn’t relevant … a lot of the notes I’ve given and received have been about
Continue reading ...An old friend in the clergy called last week and asked me if I would like to read a poem at the Carols and Lessons ceremony on Advent Sunday evening. I am always honoured when these requests come to me, and of course flattered that I have been asked. The wonderful Cicely Berry in her
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