Over the half term holiday, almost 500 drama teachers from across the UK gave up their half-term to attend the National’s first-ever digital Drama Teacher Conference. As this was the first time the conference was held online, the benefit was that they were able to welcome more than triple the number of teachers they can normally host at the NT.
Attendees were able to join over 30 masterclasses led by leading theatre makers including director Marianne Elliott (Angels in America), actor Maxine Peake, and theatre critic Lyn Gardner.
During the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, drama teachers have faced significantly more than their fair share of disruption, with drama being such a practical subject, and so the flexibility, ingenuity and sheer dedication of drama teachers across the UK is to be applauded. On top of that, how amazing that so many dedicated teachers voluntarily gave up their own half term break!
It’s teachers who inspire the next generation of theatre-makers, and I am sure that we are all grateful for their dedication and love for not only their subject, but also for their students.
With the pandemic curtailing most theatre as we have previously experienced it, producers and entrepreneurs have been spurred into creative overdrive in considering new and unusual forms of theatre spaces.
Brilliant independent producer Katy Lipson is part of a consortium engaged in design and construction of Vertical Theatre, a space for a variety of theatre forms in an in-the-round configuration with a majority of the audience seated in vertically tiered boxes. This space is designed to be portable so that it can be constructed, run and then struck and toured around the country, rather in the way we are used to seeing circuses sweep across the country’s parks and green spaces. Its an interesting idea.
Then there is the group who are planning drive-in theatre at one of the big London exhibition centres. Not sure how this one will rate, especially with all those emisssions (from the cars!).
In all of this creative flurry, one recent innovation sprang to mind whose time has perhaps finally come.
Of what do I speak, dear reader?
The Solotoria, of course!
What do you mean you’ve never heard of it!
As described on its website, Solotoria is ” a spectacular theatrical experience……one person at a time.”
Created by LIPA graduates Ashley Shairp and Sam Heath, Solotoria offers one person a 3-minute show in the plush surroundings that we have all missed this last year.
Audients can choose from attending the “Mini Blackpool Grand Theatre” for a comedy or a magic show. Those with higher-brow tastes can attend the “Mini Royal Opera House, Covent Garden” for a programme of either ballet or opera.
As the website describes, “the individual (solo) audience member wears a pair of headphones and places their head inside the space – the experience is immersive: each show has its own soundscape, the auditorium lights dim and the show begins…
The Solotoria toured the UK in 2014/5 to great interest and public acclaim for its ingenuity and care in its detailing of both auditoria models, as well as the mini-shows themselves.
You can watch a video of audients at a Mini Royal Opera House preview show here
And you can view the Solotoria at their website here
And here, at last, is the view of the Solotoria’s Mini Royal Opera House. Just for you!
(With thanks to Dr Maria Barrett for reminding me of this item)
On the evening of Monday March 1st, the Streatham Society hosted a very interesting online talk by Professor Rohan McWilliams entitled “London’s West End: Creating the Pleasure District, 1800-1914”
Detailing the evolution of the area as a shopping and entertainment destination, there were a number of fascinating changes which the area went through in the nineteenth century to become an early version of what we still recognise today as the West End.
I was surprised to hear that one of the most important developments were the provision of ladies’ lavatories. Something that the West End theatres could certainly still do with a lot more of, over a century later!
We also learned where the colonnades which originally lined Regent Street were removed to – and why they had to be removed in the first place!
Fascinating glimpses of an evolution which embraced panoramas, music halls, and so much more, this was an enlightening way to spend an hour.
You can enjoy a recording of the talk which is now available here
Thanks to the Streatham Society for yet another interesting talk.
