September 2020 Newsletter edited by Lisa Colquhoun

Word from the Chair

Christina has now handed me back the reins and I will be continuing with our monthly newsletters

from now on. Thanks again to Christina for doing this over the last 4 months or so. Please keep

your articles coming in. It’s of even greater importance now more than ever that we all keep in

touch and up-to-date with what’s going on in the group.

We had a great brainstorming meeting on 24 August. Those who did turn up had some good

suggestions and ideas for other activities to do during lockdown restrictions.

David Maclean came up with an idea that we write our own short plays or monologues, so if

there are any budding playwrights out there, please email me your scripts! Obviously, short

2- or 3-handers so that social distancing can be practised. The SCDA performed some

monologues via Zoom so that might be a good starting point for some help in writing a

monologue. See David Maclean’s tips below too.

Paul has kindly offered to prepare quiz.

If members wish to lead any other play reading nights, there are royalty-free scripts

available online, so please, again, let me know if anyone has any suggestions.

Paul is going to lead Harold Pinter’s “Celebration” on 7 September and the link and script

have been emailed out already.

It may be that we can have a little drama recital night if we are able to get back into one of the

local halls when those are reopened. If we have our own original or royalty-free material to

perform, then so much the better.

I will arrange for another similar meeting in a few weeks’ time to see what members have come up

with so just let me know if you have any other suggestions.

Please remember, it is your group so we need members to be involved and come up with ideas.

Sense and Sensibility on hold until October 2021

Due to continued uncertainty and further to discussions at our all

members zoom meeting, I am aiming for an October 2021 (w/b

18 October) production of Sense and Sensibility subject to all

restrictions having been lifted and life is back to normal.

I shall get back to cast and crew in June next year if life is back to

normal and ask if they are able to commit to the October 2021

production of Sense.

This will give the group time now to concentrate on the new

activities suggested at the all members Zoom meeting and the

important aim of a relaunch night to find new members and plan

drama evenings perhaps at the Bearsden Hub.

The group still has a week booked at Kilmardinny House to do a

March 2021 production (w/b 15 March) although the Trust is now rebooking lockdown cancelled

weddings so it is not certain they will honour our booking having already now once changed the

week. Craig, our treasurer, has said that it would not be financially viable to stage a production at

Kilmardinny House unless restrictions have been lifted.

However, if all the restrictions have been lifted and life is back to normal by November this year

then a director can hold auditions for a March production with rehearsals from early January since

we are now leaving Sense and Sensibility until the Autumn 2021. I hope all this makes sense!

- Christina Dowers

Feedback from our August Zoom Playreading I lead us through the reading of “Thon Man Molière” by Liz Lochhead: on Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th August where we just had enough members to read the parts needed. It was a difficult play to read but most members reading seemed to enjoy this imaginary work about the famous French playwright and his illustrious theatre company. Some scenes involved rehearsing lines from the other translations of the playwright’s famous work by Liz Lochhead.

I have Liz Lochhead’s Tartuffe and Miseryguts plays if anyone wants to borrow

them to read. I also have a French film entitled Molière if anyone would like to

borrow it to watch. It is a superb 2007 film directed by Laurent Tirard and stars

Romain Duris as the famous playwright.

The film begins in 1658, when the French actor and

playwright returns to Paris with his theatrical troupe to

perform in the theatre that the king's brother has given him.

Most of the film is in the form of a flashback to 1645.

Following an unsuccessful run as a tragic actor, Molière is released from

debtor's prison by Monsieur Jourdain, a wealthy commoner with social

pretensions, who agrees to pay the young actor's debts if Molière teaches

him to act.

Jourdain, a married man with two daughters, hopes to use this talent to

ingratiate himself with Célimène, a recently widowed aristocrat with whom he has become

obsessed. He hopes to perform a short play he has written for the occasion.

Molière, however, has been presented to the family and staff of Monsieur Jourdain as Tartuffe, a

priest who is to serve as tutor for the Jourdains' younger daughter. As the story progresses

Molière proceeds to fall in love with Jourdain's neglected wife, Elmire. Sub-plots involve the love

life of the Jourdains' older daughter, and the intrigues of the penniless and cynical aristocrat

Dorante at the expense of the gullible Jourdain.

The story is mostly fictional and many scenes follow actual scenes and text in Molière's plays

including Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Le malade imaginaire and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, whose

principal character is also named Jourdain. It is implied that these "actual" events in his life

inspired the plays of his maturity.

Drop me an email if you want to borrow this DVD. Stunning film, great acting!

- Christina Dowers

The Technical Advice from Craig

At our recent all-members discussion it was suggested that we produce some copyright free

material for posting on FB and on our website. I said I would produce a few words regarding

some of the technical aspects of producing these items.

These should primarily be monologues or two handers to simplify

production.

If people want to record a monologue or two hander I would be happy to

bring my semi-pro equipment to do a recording, which I could then

subsequently edit.

For those who wish to do the recordings themselves, a monologue can be recorded either with a

webcam or on a mobile phone, but whichever method you are using please film it in landscape as

opposed to portrait.

If you are recording a two hander via zoom, you should also check the

option “record a separate audio file for each participant who speaks”.

This will allow me to edit a better quality audio in post-production.

It would also be possible for two people to record separate parts on their

phones and then I could edit them together, but this would be quite difficult for

the participants I think. If doing this, leave much longer pauses than you think

are needed – I can take them out in post-production.

Probably the best advice at present is to have your ideas, and then talk to me

to see what is possible, and what assistance I can offer. All recordings would come to me for

editing and uploading to Facebook, YouTube or our website.

-

Tips for Writing Short Stories

Below are several short ideas from my writers group I have dug up. Some are handwritten so I hope they are clear enough. This is for ideas and actual scripts for some of the story nights we have covered. Obviously, the writer will have to write dialogue between the described locations they will also have to invent. We could agree on several different scenarios for different people to write. These will give the reader a slight idea on how to start up a story from the presented scenarios. The piece from Raymond Carver (who of course is a professional well known short story writer) could be sent in several different directions, eg the inclusion of the gun could be used in a scenario where the gun is used either accidentally or on purpose to devastating effect. It could, on the other hand, be used as a red herring that has nothing to do with the action about to take place but will increase the tension amongst audiences. Perhaps the denouement will be more shocking than the use of a firearm and be delivered via dialogue or another unexpected action? The would-be writer can make up their own minds where to take this. I cannot remember the rest of Carver’s story and indeed could not find it in my collection so am in the dark as much as anyone else on where it goes. It does however serve a very good purpose, perhaps the most import in writing – an idea of a start point. The rest of it should flow relatively easily after this.

- David Maclean

The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd

What can be more familiar to amateur dramatics than stage bloopers which happen with such frequency, sometimes in a single performance of a play, that they live in your mind forever? Sometimes, they turn into the stuff of nightmares and cringing embarrassment. More usually, they are the source of laughter, part of the shared reminiscences of a theatrical group during post -production celebrations.

Props

Props are notorious for causing mayhem in a production and not only amateur ones. During a professional performance of Tosca the lead soprano had to leap to her death from battlements. Mattresses were placed beneath her jump so that she could land without harming herself. However, after several performances, she insisted that two more mattresses be added as she feared that she might injure herself. Consequently, when she landed on the extra mattresses, she bounced into the air and back on to the stage. Alan Ayckbourn could not have choreographed a better farce. Improvisation is an essential part of stagecraft, as the actor playing Brutus in a performance of Julius Caesar demonstrated. When a phone rang backstage, with the dead body of Caesar lying at his feet, he inquired conspiratorially, ‘what if it’s for Caesar?’ Kilmardinny performances have been bedevilled by props failing to function, falling apart or taking on a life of their own. Alan Cowan remembers that whilst playing Canon Pennefather in Murder on the Nile, in the last Act (spoiler alert), he was to confront the murderer and divest her of the murder weapon, a revolver. During the struggle, the gun fell to the floor. Alan picked it up and placed it in his pocket and later in the scene, he had to hand it to her as the play reached its climax. As he placed his hand in his pocket, he realised that the revolver had broken in two. Nothing for it but to hand her one part of the gun, followed, a few moments later, by the other half. There was no reaction from the Bearsden audience who one assumes were without experience in criminal matters and presumably thought that was how guns functioned. Colin Price remembers in a performance of Deathtrap someone had to be shot with a crossbow. The plan was for the bow to be used on stage but the person shot to be off stage and then to stagger on with the bolt being held to their chest. All went well two nights but on the third the bolt fell from the bow onto the stage, was kicked aside by the actor whereupon the other actor walked on clutching the bolt to their chest. Another tragedy, turning to farce. His other anecdote is of a spoof murder mystery where someone is meant to be shot by a gun. One night the sound effect failed to happen at the allotted time, and showing initiative, the actor fell to the floor dead. To be followed a few seconds later by the belated gun shot. There was a more successful improvisation in the same play, when a doorbell that prompted the next line failed to ring. When the silence seemed interminable, one of the more relaxed and experienced members of the cast took the initiative, stayed in character, and loudly proclaimed, ‘I think I can hear them knocking’. Brian Hayward, the co-founder of Kilmardinny Players, must have witnessed innumerable disasters during his time at Kilmardinny. Fortunately, he has spared our blushes and chose to remember a college production of the World War 1 drama, ‘Journey’s End’. Brian recounts: according to the programme I was stage manager, but the director liked to do everything himself

and, come the opening night, we stage crew (and some of the cast) turned up with as much curiosity as sense of purpose. The scenery he’d designed was a parapet across the stage and, half-way through Act I, we were intrigued to see him crouching behind it. We watched as he clicked his cigarette-lighter and crawled across the stage, igniting something in a half-dozen stage weights he had spaced out. That done, he looked back. Nothing. The things hadn’t ignited. No problem. He had a reserve set, and he crawled back, igniting them in turn. As he lit the last of the reserves, the first lot began to smoulder – it dawned on us they were smoke-bombs – and minutes later all twelve were furiously spewing smoke that rose like a wall, spilled over the parapet and filled the stage with a dense fog. The actors could barely see their arm’s length. We stage crew now had work. We shouted instructions to the actors, pulled off those looking for an exit and rushed them to open windows in the dressing rooms. The prompter actually entered d.s.l. to drag back an actor dangerously near the edge of the stage. The electrician turned up all the lights, but it was like driving in a fog, and all the audience could see was a luminous cloud. Then the fog began to flood into the auditorium like some grey tsunami. Rows A-E were mostly for the college dignitaries and friends and family of the cast, and there was a dignified clearing of throats and light, apologetic coughs. That wasn’t the case when the smoke reached K, L, and M,

where people had paid good money for their seats; the coughing was raucous and uninhibited, with audible comments about the health risk. When the interval came, we opened all the stage doors and windows and when the audience came back there was only a light mist around the ceiling lights. The play had to go on, and it did, until an unforgettable moment when an actor had to stand on

the parapet and say his line, ‘The fog has lifted now’. It was the cue and the release the audience needed. They guffawed, cheered and some even applauded. Some months later, I spoke with a student who had been to London and seen the play, in its first professional revival for some decades. I asked him what he thought of it. “It was strange,” he said. “You know, that line never got a laugh in London”.

- Eleanor Gordon

To be continued. The second instalment will appear in the next newsletter…..