Music Monday - The use of popular music in adaptations of classic plays.

On Saturday evening we attended a performance of Checkov’s The Cherry Orchard, presented by Black Swan State Theatre Company. The performance took place in one of the buildings and in the grounds of the Sunset Precinct, a heritage site in Dalkeith in Perth.

This is not a review of the play as such but some observations about the extensive use of pop music from the 1980s in this production, which was modernised and set in that decade in Manjimup, WA - the Western Australian cherry-growing district. (Ironically, the food and drinks served at interval remained distinctly Russian.)

Music was used to create context, develop a sense of character and to create a sense of place and time. The audience responded positively to the music and often seemed eager to tap, clap and even sing along. The choices of songs were recognisable, enhancing the audience’s identification and enjoyment. There were some terrible songs written in the 1980s – did we need to be reminded?!

In music theatre, music advances character and situations. Does it work the same way in a straight play? It is a fine balance. Get the balance wrong and music could be seen as just filling time. There were a few times on Saturday when I felt this was the case.

Music can also create mood and atmosphere. It was interesting in this performance, that the final act was without music. In a film there would have been underscoring throughout this scene. However, strangely, I found this final act the most satisfying of the performance.

I guess the challenge for a director is to know when to pull back.

Drama Thinking - Part 1

When you’ve done something for a long time, you overlook the processes that have become second nature or habit. I was reminded of this by a question from a student: how do you go from a story to a drama lesson based on that story? 

Underpinning this question is about the whole drama planning process. What are the intermediate steps between the source material and the detailed planning that we take into our drama workshop?

In overview to get from story to plan we use some Drama Thinking (a term I gladly borrow from Norah Morgan and Juliana Saxton(1989) linked with specific Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies.

What do I mean by Drama Thinking?

Drama Thinking are the processes where you take apart a story or drama stimulus idea to see how it can work for a drama lesson. Which pieces of the story have drama potential? Which will be useful for generating the drama learning that you hope for?

It is about how you think as a drama teacher. I am reminded of Peter Duffy’s book A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or – What Was I thinking? (2015) – (my emphasis).

What are some of the processes that I use for this drama thinking? 

Narrative Chain

First, understand the story. Look at the narrative chain in terms of  who, when, where and what happens.

In particular, look for the moments in the story that have potential dramatic action – where something happens or where someone or something changes. Consider why these changes happen, the complications faced by the people in the story and the meaning or purpose of the story. 

Narrative Structure

There is another  consideration in looking at the story: see the story in terms of a dramatic frame. Gustav Freytag, a German novelist and critic of the nineteenth century, drawing on the ideas of Aristotle, identified  an image to explain how drama worked.

Using Freytag’s  pyramid, look at the story in terms of Introduction and Exposition; inciting incident to get the action started; rising action and tension; climax; falling action; resolution and denouement  (where the  threads of the story are drawn together).. This is not a one-size-firs-all way of looking at drama, but it is useful when considering a story as having potential for use in your drama class.

Now the work of planning can begin.

Brainstorming Thematic Networking

Brainstorm all the possibilities for drama in your story.  sometimes called thematic networking, look for possibilities for drama from the story.  

For example, in a story about a shipwreck of a group of immigrants, your first idea might be to show them on board the ship as it is about to sail away from their home. 

This might link to dramatic action based on one of the travellers, saying goodbye to her mother knowing that they might never see each other again. 

And it might also suggest a scene where there is a different kind of farewell – where someone is glad to be leaving their family and cannot wait until they can escape. 

A different thread to this story might be why the journey is being made: to find new worlds or to find treasure or to conquer territory – the political reasons for the journey. The point of this brainstorming is to find as many different points of entering the drama.

In this way, we build a collection of possible moments of dramatic action. 

We have started to consider Elements of Drama such as roles, characters and relationships. The action is put in terms of situation. We can start to see the possible development of dramatic tension. 

This is a starting point. 

There are other drama thinking approaches to explore. 

This is the first of as series of posts on this topic. 

Bibliography

Duffy, P. (2015). Introduction. In P. Duffy (Ed.), A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or – What Was I thinking? (pp. 3-10). Bristol, UK: Intellect.

Morgan, N., & Saxton, J. (1989). Drama: A Mind of Many Wonders: Nelson Thornes.

Music Monday - Music’s healing power and cultural foundations

On Saturday I listened to The Science Show with Robyn Williams on ABC Radio. It was a fascinating discussion about the effect of music on the brain and on emotion  - very apt for Valentine’s Day.

The speakers were:

Psyche Loui, Associate Professor and Director MIND Lab, Northeastern University, MA, USA

Elizabeth Margulis, Professor of Music, Princeton University, NJ, USA

Daniel Levitin, Dean of Arts and Humanities at the Minerva Schools, San Francisco, USA

At Stagepage we have often referred to the benefits of music to brain development in children, in particular the wonderful work at Bigger Better Brains.

This was more of a look at music affects the brain overall.

I would urge you to have a listen to the whole show – it’s less than 30 minutes. 

Here, in points form, is what resonated most with me:

1. Musical anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure from music, and the difference in the brains of those who have it – estimated less than 5% of humans. They are not ‘tone deaf’ or ‘worse at music’ – they simply don’t like it.

2. The rewards in the brain from experiencing music is linked to social bonding.

3. Our perception of music is strongly linked to culture and context. The famous Washington Post experiment (where a concert violinist busked in the subway and the majority of passers-by did not recognise his talent) was quoted, as was the perception of atonal music by western cultures with a tradition of tonal centres as opposed to people in say, rural China.

4. The variability in timing and amplitude that musicians use naturally, strongly affect the perception of the listener.

5. The entire brain is involved in music. Recent research seems to indicate that music uses older pathways in the brain – more resistant to transmission difficulty. 

6. Music is a unique stimulus to the brain; different parts of the brain are used for rhythm, melody, harmony, form and expression and different parts again bring them all together.

7. Point 6 may explain the effect of music in Alzheimers patients. Even after the pathways that affect speech and facial recognition have failed, the effect of familiar music can be a way to get at the brain of Alzheimers patients and help them recognise themselves.

8. The as yet underexplored area of the possible effect of music on health. For the past 2 decades there has been research but not empirical or rigorous. That is apparently changing.

9. The systemic interplay between prediction and reward when you listen to music that you enjoy.

10. Preliminary research into how music could help wounds heal faster. Music enhances mood. We have about 100 neurochemicals in our brains but scientists know only 8 of them so far. One of the famous ones – serotonin – is activated by music. Boosting levels of serotonin increases the T and K cells, the ‘James Bond’ of the immune system. Inflammation is a significant issue in wound healing and in some situations music can reduce inflammation.

I could go on, but you really need to listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Like all music lovers, I have from a very young age, found certain pieces of music so achingly beautiful that they are almost too painfully beautiful. Many piano concerto slow movements fall into that category for me. I think I was drawn to this podcast because it explains some of this addiction to music.

Drama Thursday - Undecided

Undecided

Fringe Show 27 January 2021

We are so used to the message to turn off your mobile phones being intoned as we enter the theatre, it is refreshing to enter the Rehearsal Room at the State Theatre Centre, to be told Turn on your phones and login to the address on the screen. 

Undecided polls the audience with questions throughout the 60 minutes of the show and the audience “decides” what happens next (well, within the imposed limits, they decide!). 

This is a cute premise on which to stage a Fringe show. 

The audience (after a preliminary warm up about voting for mint or gum) decide whether the deliberately ambiguously named Jamie and Sam are to be played by male or female actors. And so the action unfolds. 

The plot is thin though clothed in a smear of existential angst.

Of course, there are precedents for audience deciding the outcome of a play. The Mystery of Edwin Drood uses this device – though there there are really only three possibilities and endings in that show. And given the unfinished nature of Dickens’ last work, the sense of unfinished business and different possibilities works – kind of. This had more risk to it. 

Whether this theatrical device could be sustained in this play beyond the 60 minutes playing time is worth considering. Probably  and possibly not. 

The performances are lively and energetic. Imagine the task of carrying in your head the different alternative texts for the Sam and Jamie roles. The ensemble of four are well matched. The voices are clear and the sense of style is spot on appropriate. They work hard and are animated, giving the audience a good sense of fun. 

Note to Jamie (male) watch tendency to subconscious hair flicking. You need an eagle eye and terrifying director (I am reminded of Ruth Osborne from CDC and the Youth Theatre Company in her notes about this issue. Hair flicking that carries you out of role and character is just plain distracting for audiences)

The music moves along at a fair clip and has plenty of bounce and oomph. If you have the vague sense of recognising musical memes, don’t be surprised. There is a skill in writing musical parodies. 

One of my pet hates in theatre are poor sight lines. We all know how difficult it is to find venues during Fringe (even in COVID times). But, I really don’t like it when the action disappears amongst the shoulders of the people in the seats in front of me. The problem is easy to fix – if the audience can’t see, why don’t you fix it. 

The world of drama is changing faster than we might recognise.

For example, we are used to being told to silence our phones in theatres (and not to take calls during the show). Of course, this reverential atmosphere has not always been the case. According to reports from the past, the audiences in theatres were often boisterous and disrespectful – or even paying attention to the action on the stage.

What else is changing?

Are our definitions of drama and theatre and performance changing?

Is that useful or helpful?

Fringe shows open doors to many different forms of drama and theatre and performance. 

It is healthy that there is an open-ended and inclusive approach. Yet, the old saying anything goes may not be helpful. 

Innovation drives practice. 

What are the innovations in drama practice that we should be paying attention to?

How is technology changing our understanding of drama and theatre?

It is not just the current pandemic that is causing re-thinking of our perceptions of drama and theatre. 

There are changed expectations about the type of performance, the role of cause and effect narratives, relationships between audience and actors.The title of the Fringe show was Undecided and this is perhaps indicative of a need to rethink our previously held assumptions. 

About this event

We've all been there: you're watching a musical and it's not going the way you want. Maybe a character is annoying you, or a plot line seems unnecessary. Well, now the power is in your hands! UNDECIDED is a choose-your-own-adventure musical where the audience vote on which direction the story takes next!

A live pianist and eager cast will be faced with the challenge of creating a totally different experience every night, starting with a big decision; will the first character - Jaime - be played by a woman or a man? Could this be the ultimate in audience satisfaction? The choice (and the blame) is yours!

UNDECIDED is a new musical adventure written and directed by John McPherson (Lawyers and Other Communicable Diseases, Greenwicks!) and co-written by James Palm (Threshold).

Music Monday - Masked Music Teaching

In Western Australia, teachers and students returned to school today after a snap lockdown of the Perth and South-West for the week before – the week which should have been the first week of term. 

For this past week, Western Australians have been very diligent about mask wearing. After 10 months of not needing to wear masks, it was almost as if we as a community thought, “Right, let’s put these masks on and make sure we don’t have further community spread”. And this was based on one case of Covid-19. 

The strategy warranted an article in the New York Times last week.

At the end of the week, after no further cases emerging, the South-West region had all restrictions lifted and the Perth region had lockdown lifted, but with some restrictions – masks to be worn in all public places, 4 square metres distancing between people in any venue and the maintenance of 1.5 metres between people elsewhere.

And so, I returned to my secondary school singing teacher position today.

Music teachers of wind and voice had been given permission to have their students out of masks during lessons. I found that a challenge, given the ongoing research into the aerosol transmission of Covid-19 and the heightened level of aerosol involved in singing. I elected for my students to remain masked.

Each lesson started with an acknowledgement that our masked situation was a good reminder of what life has been like for most of the rest of the world for nearly a year. The students got it. I got it. Masks are incredibly annoying.

Because it was week one, I was able to avoid a certain amount of singing by talking through the course outlines and assessment procedures. I recorded backing tracks on piano for those students who needed it. We sang some muffled scales through our masks. One group tackled their first set song. The lessons were not significantly different from what I would usually do in week one.

One aspect of mask wearing that I hadn’t thought of is how little you see of a person’s features in a mask. I met a new class of year 8 students and really would not recognise them again next week – masked or unmasked.

It is highly likely that we will all remove our masks in WA at 12.01am on Sunday the 14th February. If so we remain incredibly fortunate and should not forget it.

But what if we had to do many weeks of music teaching in masks? Class music is fine. Many instruments are fine. I guess I’m asking my voice and wind instrument colleagues from elsewhere about strategies they are using. What do you do?

Drama Tuesday - Recipes for making drama teachers

Making a drama teacher is not constructing a robot – the mechanical bolting together of components bought off the shelf or from mail order catalogues. Though maybe, we need some AI learning emerging from that worldview. 

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-recipe/ 

A more organic metaphor is needed. 

From nature we might see the seed, sprouting seedlings, searching out shoots toward the light; nurturing rain, soil and  seasons; budding, fruiting, maturing; cycles of growth, decay, dormancy and rebirth.

From our need for nourishment, we might settle on a kitchen metaphor. What are the ingredients you need for a drama teacher?

Introduction

There are many ways to make a drama teacher. This is one of the most useful I have developed through my years of working as a drama educator.

Ingredients

Interest and desire – copious amounts

• The inclination and desire to teach drama (rather than teaching something else)

• A disposition for experiential learning – where priority is given to embodied learning

• The vision to see the potential of drama for learning and teaching

Knowledge, understanding and experiences in the art form of drama and theatre – dollops

• How drama grows from and extends play

• How drama works through taking on role – mimesis and identification

• How drama tells stories

• How drama enables us to express and share with others explores, ideas, emotions and experiences

• How drama uses the Elements of Drama – role, character, relationships, situation, focus, tension, space and time, voice and movement, language, contrast, symbol, mood, atmosphere and audience

• How drama uses skills and processes to make and share meaning

• How drama uses forms and styles

• How drama stays the same and changes across time and place

Knowledge and understanding and experiences of teaching drama – spoonfuls

• How we learn about, through and with drama

• How drama curriculum is structured and used

• How we draw on a range of drama teaching and learning strategies so students learn drama

• How we we shape and plan drama learning experiences

• How we co-construct meaning with student

• How we shape learning and teaching environments and contexts responding to the emotional, social and physical needs of students

• How we learn from others making and teaching drama

• How we reflect on, assess and report student learning in drama and our effectiveness as drama teachers

• How, as drama teachers, we have a number of related but distinctive roles: teacher, curriculum designer, director, role model, mentor, resource and facilities manager

Directions

None of these ingredients on their own make a drama teacher. 

It is how you bring them all together. It’s the sifting, blending, creaming, combining, folding, together. 

Remember: The process is never fully completed. It continues to happen even as we add more and more ingredients.

We taste test as we cook. The eyes, ears, taste buds of the cook are in play at every moment. Is this the right mix? Does it need more time? Are my directions clear and focused? Am I moving too fast? Too slow? Am I sustaining the tension, focus, sills and processes, mix of Elements of Drama?

We reflect. We learn. We sometimes fail. But we always keep trying and learning. 

We ask questions. We belong to guilds of drama teachers who openly share discoveries and learn from each other. 

Finishing the Cake

The drama cake is never quite finished. It is always in the process of being made.

And, one final essential for this recipe: in the end, as a drama teacher I am the sum of all that I know and do. Each time i step into the drama kitchen I bring with me knowledge and experience that i share with others in that specific place and moment, with that distinct group of people. It is not mechanical. It is not even following someone else’s recipe. It is creating our own recipe. As a teacher I am the sum of all that I am – combined with the people in the learning space with me. 

It is not so much what we do as much as who we are.

By the way, there are academic and theorised names for this stuff and researched realities to call on. 

There are links between disciplinary or content knowledge of drama and pedagogical content knowledge (Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005).

In learning to teach drama we do so by:

• Engaging in a activities like the ones we use to teach drama

• Having a specific knowledge base about the content of drama

• Knowing and being able to use specific drama teaching strategies

• Belonging to a community of drama teachers

• Having resources

In addition to these points we also need capacity to be reflective and reflexive about drama teaching.

From Learning Drama | Teaching Drama Robin Pascoe and Hannah Pascoe

From Learning Drama | Teaching Drama Robin Pascoe and Hannah Pascoe

Bibliography

Darling-Hammond, L., Hammerness, K., Grossman, P., Rust, F., & Shulman, L. (2005). The Design of Teacher Education Programs. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Music Monday - WA Covid lockdown

And in the blink of an eyelid,  parts of my home state of Western Australia is in a 5 day lockdown. We had gone 10 months with no community transmission of Covid-19,  schools were about to start today, and in many ways Western Australians had been lulled into a comfortable state of living as though the pandemic didn’t exist for us. Perhaps this (hopefully) short lockdown is the wakeup call we all needed?

My social media feed this morning highlighted two main camps when dealing with the new lockdown. In the first, and more active camp, are friends, colleagues and students who had already this morning, started a frenzy of at home activity - sorting teaching notes, organising clothes closets, meal preparation for the term, and so on. In the second camp were those who turned over in bed and went back to sleep this morning. I confess that I was in the latter camp today. Instead of leaving the house at 7am for my first scheduled lesson at 8am, I stayed in bed later than I had for the entire summer holiday.

Now I have four lockdown days to get something done and catch up with those in camp one!

On my shelf are three books on singing teaching that I have been reading and reviewing over the summer.

 As a teacher of many years now, I still find it fascinating to read other teachers’  and experts’ accounts of how they organise and deliver their teaching. Like so many, teachers,  I am eager to learn about new research in voice science. I like the challenge of new approaches -  and the comfort that comes when I  having my own approaches endorsed.

 Maybe as singing voice teachers, we are all looking for the safety-net of a definitive text to support our teaching?

Perhaps this is the holy grail searched for! The definitive text for the teaching of singing!

I had a lively discussion with Robin Pascoe about this. What follows is a summary of our thoughts and his distilling of the same onto the page:

There are so many sources of information to support our teaching, and none more so than those that we can find on the Internet. Rather than looking for the perfect text, we should be thinking more about the kinds of knowledge that we should be ensuring in the learning of all of our students.

Whatever the form, the information we base our teaching on needs to develop in our students the following kinds of knowing and understanding.

There are different texts for this complex bundle of learning. But the above are useful checkpoints to seeing how well a text suits our needs. 

Ultimately, our own teaching needs to be our own set of strategies to meet an agreed goal.

Your thoughts?

Drama Tuesday - What is drama education?

I am responding to a question from drama educators in China: How to determine the appropriate form of teaching (for example, DIE or TIE, or the ordinary form of drama education? 

It echoes a question I had once in a conference plenary session in Beijing where a confused drama educator asked what was the difference between creative dramatics and drama in education and theatre in education and Applied Theatre and … the list continued.

It seems that there are many different names for the broad field of drama education (See the list at the end). It must be confusing for many people particularly if they are trawling through the literature of the field in translation. Despite the efforts of many writers and researchers to clarify confusion, it is clear that the claims and counterclaims for defining the field of drama education still bedevil easy resolution. 

Writing in 1984, O’Hara observed, “drama is marked by diversity of practice, with those involved in the area appearing "unable or unwilling to speak for themselves with authority and unity in both academic and practical terms" (Norman, 1971)”. In 2007 Gavin Bolton in the International Handbook of Research in Arts Education titled his contribution A History of Drama Education: A Search for Substance. In 2016 Mages wrote  an overview of a number of prominent forms of educational drama and theatre designed to introduce educators, who are not drama or theatre specialists, to the paradigms and merits of educational drama and theatre. 

Towards resolving this issue

There is a need for our field of drama education to acknowledge the issue and to find a useful yet clear definition and explanation that works for teachers. Putting the problem in context:

• Drama education is the term for the broad field.

• Within drama education there are different terms with histories, traditions and practitioner points of view.

• These different terms can be confusing (particularly in translation)

To help address this confusion I begin by establishing some principles:  

1. There is a continuum and relationships between Play / Drama / Theatre.

Play is the broad field term for activities that are pleasurable and intrinsically motivated. Neuroscience research shows the role of play in human development particularly in imagination, language, visual and symbolic expression. Drama is a specific form of play based on symbolic representation of people and situations. Drama occurs within the broad field of Play. Within Drama there is Theatre, the specific forms of Drama focused on presentation to audiences.

The relationships show how Theatre is nested within Drama and Drama is nested within Play. The boundaries between Play, Drama and Theatre are porous and often there is overlap and blending.

2. Within the many differently named approaches to drama education there is a commonality of purpose: engaging people with the embodied experience of taking on role and acting out dramatic action. In doing so they learn, understand and work with identified Elements of Drama, Principles of Story, Forms and Types of Drama and use the Skills and Processes of Drama

3. It is helpful to think about three overarching categories of drama education (which can be used to group the many different approaches.

Terms for creative drama and similar or related constructs (Mages, 2008) 

Acting-out stories Paley, 1978 Child drama Davis and Behm, 1978, 1987 

Creative drama Cooper and Collins, 1992; Davis and Behm, 1978, 1987; Kardash and Wright, 1987; McCaslin, 1996; Vitz, 1984; Wagner, 1998 

Creative dramatics Cullinan, Jaggar, and Strickland, 1974; Strickland, 1973 Drama Brown, 1992; Conlan, 1995; Cooper and Collins, 1992 

Drama in education Brown, 1992 

Dramatic play Galda, 1984; Smilansky, 1968 

Dramatics Niedermeyer and Oliver, 1972; Paley, 1978 

Dramatization Fein, Ardila-Rey, and Groth, 2000; Kirk, 1998; McNamee, 1987; McNamee, McLane, Cooper, and Kerwin, 1985; Warash and Workman, 1993 

Educational drama Wagner, 1998 

Fantasy play Saltz, Dixon, and Johnson, 1977; Smith, Dalgleish, and Herzmark, 1981; Smith and Syddall, 1978 

Fantasy reenactment Pellegrini, 1984 

Group-dramatic play Christie, 1987 

Guided drama Davis and Behm, 1978, 1987 

Imaginative drama Paley, 1978 

Imaginative play Marbach and Yawkey, 1980; Saltz and Johnson, 1974 

Improvisation Brown, 1992; Conlan, 1995; Niedermeyer and Oliver, 1972 

Informal classroom drama Wagner, 1998 

Let’s pretend play Yawkey, 1979 

Make-believe Christie, 1983; Singer, 1973; Smilansky, 1968; Yawkey, 1979 

Play Fein, 1981; Galda, 1982; Silvern, 1980; Yawkey, 1979 

Play enactment Saltz et al., 1977 

Play tutoring Christie, 1983; Smith et al., 1981 

Pretend play Fein, 1981; Harris, 2000; Nicolopoulou, 2002 

Pretense Fein, 1981; Leslie, 1987 

Process drama Montgomerie and Ferguson, 1999 

Reenactment Nielsen, 1993 

Role enactment Fein, 1981 

Role play or role playing Brown, 1992; Cullinan et al., 1974; Fein, 1981; Strickland, 1973 

Role-taking Levy, Wolfgang, and Koorland, 1992

Shared enactment Fein et al., 2000 

Social role enactment Fein, 1981 Sociodramatic play Saltz et al., 1977; Saltz and Johnson, 1974; Smilansky, 1968; Smilansky and Shefatya, 1990; Smith et al., 1981; Smith and Syddall, 1978; Warash and Workman, 1993; Wolf, 1985 

Story dramatization Brown, 1992; Cooper and Collins, 1992; Levy et al., 1992; McNamee et al., 1985; Vitz, 1984 

Story-acting Nicolopoulou, 1996; Richner and Nicolopoulou, 2001 

Symbolic play Marbach and Yawkey, 1980; Saltz and Johnson, 1974; Silvern, Taylor, Williamson, Surbeck, and Kelley, 1986 

Thematic-fantasy play Pellegrini, 1984; Pellegrini and Galda, 1982; Saltz et al., 1977; Saltz and Johnson, 1974; Silvern et al., 1986; Williamson, 1993

To this list you might add role drama, applied theatre, theatre in education, story drama. 

The list goes on.

Is it any wonder that teachers in classrooms are confused?

Bibliography

Bolton, G. (2007). A History of Drama Education: A Search for Substance. In L. Bresler (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (Vol. 1, pp. 45-62). Dordrecht: Springer.

Mages, W. K. (2008). Does Creative Drama Promote Language Development in Early Childhood? A Review of the Methods and Measures Employed in the Empirical Literature. Review of Educational Research, 78, 124–152. doi:10.3102/0034654307313401

Mages, W. K. (2016). Educational Drama and Theatre Paradigms for Understanding and Engagement. R&E-SOURCE http://journal.ph-noe.ac.at Open Online Journal for Research and Education(Special Issue #5, September 2016, ISSN: 2313-1640). 

O'Hara, M. (1984). Drama in Education: A Curriculum Dilemma. Theory Into Practice, 22(4 Teaching the Arts), 314-320. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1476387

Music Monday - Mismatched

This evening, Robin and I, with friends, attended the final performance of Mismatched in the Perth Fringe World Festival. The photo, taken after the show, is of me with the show’s pianist, Tommaso Pollio, who makes a reasonably average electric keyboard sound almost as good as when he (more often) plays the Fazioli grand piano at WAAPA. The final note on piano in tonight’s Maria, (more important in the score than the final sung note in my opinion), was every bit as evocative as you’d expect to hear in the Bernstein orchestration. Bravo Tommaso!

Mismatched describes itself as ‘a musical celebration of unlikely couples, starring cabaret veterans: Penny Shaw, Robert Hofmann and Tommaso Pollio’. It’s a slick and musically satisfying hour. The singing is top shelf from both singers, with just the right amount of operatic tone to please the audience. It is suggestive without being sleazy. It is middle of the road rather than edgy. The audience loved it, as did we. 

One line in the show particularly resonated with me. Penny Shaw talks of leaving a UK season of Phantom of the Opera to follow a relationship to Perth, Western Australia. She talked of being happily married here now for 20 years and asks the audience, “Who would have believed me twenty years ago, if I’d said that in 2021 there would be more work for singers in Perth, than on Broadway, the West End and the rest of the world combined?” 

Strange times indeed. 

Perth, one of the most isolated capital cities in the world (and to a large extent because of that) feels almost normal during this Fringe.

And so, we must remind ourselves again, that the rest of the world is far from normal.  As far as we can, we must work to support our fellow artists, not only here, but across the world. Otherwise, they may not be there when the pandemic ends.

We arts workers are not ‘essential workers’ but (again quoting from the show), we are where essential workers seek escape when they finish work.

Music Monday - Happy New Year, Happy New Anthem?

Happy New Year to all music teachers. May this be a year which slowly improves on 2020 and may we all resume choir singing and directing without fear of spreading Covid-19.

Over the past few days in Australia, discussion has again started on our Australian national anthem, Advance Australia Fair. It’s a bit of a dirge musically and the words have long been seen as inappropriate to Indigenous Australians as well as those who have come here from all over the world. Our conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced that as of 1st January 2021, one word of the anthem would be changed – from ‘For we are young and free’ to ‘For we are one and free’. Almost as though this simple change will solve the many other issues with the text of the song. And to be honest, in a crowd singing the changed line, who would really know? 

I took another look at the complete verses of Advance Australia Fair, written by Peter Dodds McCormick in the 1870s. Verse 2 is particularly irksome, especially to Aboriginal Australians, the original custodians of this land:

When gallant Cook from Albion sail’d,

To trace wide oceans o’er,

True British courage bore him on,

Til he landed on our shore.

Then here he raised old England’s flag,

The standard of the brave;

“With all her faults we love her still

Britannia rules the wave.”

In joyful strains then let us sing

Advance Australia fair.

Surely we can do better than this? 

Personally, I think an obvious time to change the anthem would be at the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign – when I hope we will finally become a republic. In the meantime though – is a one word change enough?