Robert Hyman

As a working Musical Director I regularly sit on audition panels. So often an actor or actress walks in who on first sight looks perfect for a role and I sit there willing them to show themselves off to the their best but so often their audition song doesn’t give me or the rest of the panel what we want to hear. It’s at that point that I ask the question…”What’s in your folder?”

If you like to sing, perform either as a professional or amateur or just for fun, it’s so important to have the right song: The right song for the moment, the show, the part and the right song for your voice. This week we’re going to look at the content of people’s folders and help them make some good decisions for the future and hopefully fill some gaps in that folder.

For a good folder needs more than one song in it. A singer’s repertoire needs choice to show variety and ability, to show both the best of the voice both in tone and range and also that most important and elusive skill – portrayal. Do you inhabit a character when you sing? Do you connect with the emotions of the song? Do you just enjoy singing? Does that come across when you perform?

This week we are going to look at repertoire and that most daunting of experiences – the audition and to do that we’re going to sing a lot of songs that help us fill the compartments of our folder and help us present ourselves as singers in the best light.

Our week will be divided up into a series of themed topic days. We’ll be enjoying a ‘Musical Theatre’ day, a ‘Pop’ day, a ‘Variety’ day and a ‘Jazz and Blues’ day and more. Each day will be spent learning repertoire and how we can use it, perform it and enjoy it. Course participants are asked to bring ‘all black’ clothing to perform in later in the week, their ‘folder’ if they own one, an open mind, a love of singing and a willingness to join in and go with the flow. For some the week will just be about the joy of singing, for others a gaining of repertoire and audition experience to carry forward into their singing lives. And for everyone a chance to improve ‘what’s in your folder’!

Eastern philosophy tells us that the two primary forces animating the universe and animating every human being are the forces of ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ – the power of the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’.  It tells us that our physical, mental and emotional health of each one of us depends on the healthy and balanced relationship between these two basic principles within us.

In the course of my twenty-five years of teaching and directing it has become increasingly clear to me that just as every aspect of life can be distilled to the interplay between these two principles so can every aspect of theatre be distilled.   The guidelines for a good life are the same as the guidelines for good acting and good directing.  An understanding of this brings us into an exciting contact with the nitty- gritty, the basic building blocks, the ‘DNA’ of what drama and of acting is ultimately all about.

In this course I will be exploring and demonstrating how this simple way of viewing life and theatre can be used as a powerful tool:  in the analysis and understanding of a play’s essence:  in identifying the living ‘core’ of a scene:  in touching the dynamic ‘centre’ of a character:  in coming to know what might be limiting one’s own potential as an actor.

Other insights inevitably reveal themselves through such explorations; insights that can act as a healthy counter balance to some excesses and misconceptions grown up around Stanislavsky and The Method.   One comes to realise, for  example,  that one’s performance is less about one’s self and always much more about ‘the other’  – ‘other’ in terms of one’s fellow characters in the play and the audience;  that the energy that fuels a performance comes from ’without one’s self’ rather than from ‘within one’s self’

The ideas will be investigated through some initial discussion and practical exercises but primarily through our intensive ‘on the floor’ work on a wide variety of scenes ranging from Shakespeare  and Chekov to Tennessee Williams and O’Casey.

I’m looking forward to it.