Monday 26 March 2012
Thursday 22 March 2012
Interview's reflection
I finally managed to interview Andrea Bassani, an Italian musician (pianist), composer and more recently the founder of its own theatrical cultural association where he runs workshops and small productions.
As he lives in Italy I re-used the form of email for my interview, so I tried to make sure not to fall into the same problems I encountered with my first email interview ( previous post 1- post 2 ).
Skype was my first attempt, but he wasn't enough prepared for that (nor skype account nor mic or webcam).
I tried to be as clear as possible not too waste time (reading) and his time (writing about non-related topics).
I firstly briefed him on what my inquiry is about them moved onto a very informal approach on the interview, explaining to him how his answering should have been as free as possible, not feeling restricted and leading towards whatever he felt the need to perfuse on.
Why did I interview him? What's the link with my inquiry?
I was interested to see how an Italian professional perceive the artistic business nowadays and especially compare the differences between the Italian panorama and the British one. (one I come from, one I want to work on now).
His knowledge on Musical and the American/English culture of it made sense to interview him as he had a good view of the origins of Musical in particular and its landing in Italy effects.
How I managed the data re-collection?
I thought of re-writing on my diary all the points that were of most interest and that linked with my inquiry, also description of him that makes more clarity when reading (gives an idea of where he comes from and how knowledgeable he is); then organized them in sections in order to reproduced them on my blog as clearly as possible for the reader (tip I got from the last Writing Workshop I attended).
Findings:
He starts his passion for Musical after the production of Cats reaches Italy years ago. He applauds the 'Stanislavsky system' that proclaims the emotions and its realism (Bassani, 2012) and is a progression of techniques used to train actors to draw believable emotions to their performances (Wikipedia, 2012) and rejects the so far mostly used Brechtian method, where a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage (Wikipedia, 2012).
Based on this belief he also starts running small productions of Musicals and Theatrical concerts.
When I asked him what is/are the characteristic/s that a performer should have nowadays for him, he answered a natural gift and talent for sure, technic, the skill to choose who teaches us and what (not to waste time and energy in the wrong training), the awareness of our limits (strengths and weaknesses) and, most of all a strong sensibility and the ability of get moved and dream to be able to "touch" the audience.
On singing and acting the talent can prevail the technic but on dance he believes that a strong technicality is essential.
He stressed on how in Italy is missing the teaching of "how to live the character" on stage, which is missing from the teachers in the first place.
He links this un-preparation to the large unsuccessful productions that are happening in Italy, due to the standardized preparation that the performers have. Good singers and dancers but that cannot portray the character and act within the song/movements.
So far I understood that more or less the same features and characteristics are asked in Italy as well as here in the Uk. Probably the stress he has on "what teacher to pick and to learn what" has more to do with the limits that training in Italy has; here (UK) you can take a single class and decide where to keep up with your training, in Italy this concept is still not largely available and we return on the factor of being lucky enough to get trained where there are 'good teachers', a subject that I already discussed with in a previous Focus Group with 3 professionals (2 of them where Italian).
He carries on stressing how getting trained in different methodologies creates a better performer to be able to have more knowledge and tools to use in an artistic life.
Italy is developed in Opera, Commedia, Prose, etc..all styles inappropriate to Musical, that's why the artistic professional outlook is still poor.
There are full productions that are based only on singing/ acting rather than dancing and here is where Italy is weak.
Here is where I can see how strongly difficult the introduction of the Musical culture in Italy can be compromised until the training doesn't change methodology. Also the existing little culture of it keeps pushing famous TV figures into the shows to make audience. This has been used in the UK too though, for the past 10 years or so CHICAGO the Musical in London has starred famous UK and American actresses/actors for the principal roles of Roxie Hart, Billy, Velma and 'Mama'...to name few, Ugly Betty's star America Ferrera recently in the show, Ashlee Simpson, Denise Van Outen, American actress's Brooke Shield and Bonnie Langford among others. So this isn't only happening in Italy, although we should analyze on what scale and how often this is happening here compared to Italy...
On my question What he suggest as skills to keep up as an artist and what he expects to see in a performer auditioning for one of his shows, he answered EMOTIONS, so for sure the natural talent that he can see coming put. Although, this is a very romantic and objective first answer, he then added that in Italy he sees very talented singers that would be great for a record labels but not for a live show as emotions are rarely portrayed. He prefers the America/English structuring of a musical show, where the Stanislavsky method is favorite, where the voice expresses what the character feels on that moment (A good performer delivers what feels whitin the character and not to show off its vocal abilities).
Another skill he recommends is to be up to date with the latest productions and the teams that put them up. Having a personal opinion on what works and what doesn't and why, gives you a good preparation and knowledge on the business.
Also, for him, working on how to express themselves in every discipline, whether it is singing acting or dancing is fundamental.
Constantly train memory and speed of reaction and learning. Performers with these skills are strongly preferred from casting directors nowadays as long rehearsals can be time consuming as well as a waste of money, two things not much available in the business these days.
Be available to be part of minor productions to keep in touch with reality, as long as they have something you can take home, it's not worth to dis-learn something.
When I asked him to describe for him the differences between the Italian's situations in Musicals compared to the UK, obviously I didn't mean if Italy is at the same level, we all know that it's not part of the culture and that here is an extremely important facet of the art. What I was curious to know was how the introduction of the musical culture in Italy has been welcomed. How it is seen by the Italian audience and what are the problems that may not leave the shows to become more and more happening.
He strongly affirmed that in the first place we have the TV programs and reality that inject the wrong idea of the musical. A stereotype that bases everything on competition, which os obviously and important aspect of the business but it should be lead by showing who is the strongest but should be lead by the willpower of showing a talent, a passion rather than "winning on someone else". Another problem in Italy is that unless you have a big production and funds to put up a show, the minor productions don't have space of development. Italy also fears the coming of foreign productions and these can arise real interests and passion in the Italians's hearts.
He then admits that lighting, sound and live orchestras are the only sectors in which Italy can be equivalent to the UK.
These last informations weren't very clear to me but most of all didn't have a real connection with my inquiry, they could help to give me a overall picture but I have to admit this was the case where email interviewing creates problems leading the interviewee towards un-related topics.
When I asked him to describe for him the differences between the Italian's situations in Musicals compared to the UK, obviously I didn't mean if Italy is at the same level, we all know that it's not part of the culture and that here is an extremely important facet of the art. What I was curious to know was how the introduction of the musical culture in Italy has been welcomed. How it is seen by the Italian audience and what are the problems that may not leave the shows to become more and more happening.
He strongly affirmed that in the first place we have the TV programs and reality that inject the wrong idea of the musical. A stereotype that bases everything on competition, which os obviously and important aspect of the business but it should be lead by showing who is the strongest but should be lead by the willpower of showing a talent, a passion rather than "winning on someone else". Another problem in Italy is that unless you have a big production and funds to put up a show, the minor productions don't have space of development. Italy also fears the coming of foreign productions and these can arise real interests and passion in the Italians's hearts.
He then admits that lighting, sound and live orchestras are the only sectors in which Italy can be equivalent to the UK.
These last informations weren't very clear to me but most of all didn't have a real connection with my inquiry, they could help to give me a overall picture but I have to admit this was the case where email interviewing creates problems leading the interviewee towards un-related topics.
I decided after this interview to re-interview the same person via Skype (he managed to create an account) so that I can focus more on the matters that he touched that were of most relevance for my inquiry.
Overall I did receive a good amount of qualitative data which I can evaluate in my findings and add them into my reflection; it was interesting for me to understand how the "performer" is perceived abroad and especially in the country I'm originally from.
Overall I did receive a good amount of qualitative data which I can evaluate in my findings and add them into my reflection; it was interesting for me to understand how the "performer" is perceived abroad and especially in the country I'm originally from.
Tuesday 20 March 2012
Saturday 17 March 2012
Writing Workshop 08.03.12
Here's my experience on this very productive and enlightening workshop, after this experience I understood how I can improve my academic writing.
It was held by Peter Thomas from the Middlesex University Learning Development Unit.
It was very good that few of us participated and form all the 3 modules.
A lot as been said but I'm going to point out the most important learnings, at least the ones I found were most important and of value for me.
First of all it was very interesting to understand how writing should be approached.
Peter explained how at a first stage we generate ideas, research material, find info.
This is the internal and personal factor.
Then secondly we have to organise all these data in order to make it valuable for our piece of writing selecting the ones that relate to one another. Then as a final result we have to present the essay/piece of writing, we need to find a good order to talk about the findings. At this point it helps starting thinking towards the final presentation, the external factor.
Peter explained that these is a "stage" process that not necessarily goes from one onto another, but for an effective writing we can generate, then organise, than go back on generate more, organise again, try a first presentation that may need further organisation before we can develop a final draft. I thought it was a great way of approaching writing not to feel completely lost, this process can be a mess but it can give us a logicality in mind towards it...we can (and should) revisit things before they make sense to us and for the reader.
1.Generate (you/internal)
2.Organise
3.Present (reader/external)
We did an exercise of writing on the question "What is expected in our writings at this level" without interruptions for 5 minutes, we then discussed what we felt while doing it and most of us found it hard to concentrate on the topic. I personally did focus on it but found myself repeating the same message.
We then narrowed down the same piece of writing as Peter asked us to review it finding and underling the main key points we thought were more important.
One at the time we had to explained what these points were and share ideas. I personally had English as a concern for my academic writing, and the importance of explaining technical words in my academic piece of writing.
We then moved onto writing with the same flow and no interruptions about those few key points.
The final stage of this exercise was to write a paragraph regarding the words/sentences we found most important.
Before doing this Thomas introduced us on HOW to write a paragraph. It should be structured this way:
-An initial sentence that summarize and introduces what we are about to talk about.
-Additional information on the main topic
-A conclusion
With this in mind we wrote our paragraphs and in small groups we helped each other out to make it clear and understandable for us, the readers.
We shared our "final products" with the group as that's the stage when, after revisiting few times, our piece goes "public"; we noticed how more detailed and clear our writings were compared to the very original piece.
This exercise was very useful to understand how what we generate in the first place needs to be revisited to achieve a good level of writing that can be understood clearly by everyone.
The whole experience gave us a more relaxed attitude towards writing (and re-writing) as the reader is only going to read the final product and is not going to bother on HOW we got there.
It's ok to be messy!
Here are few important points that Peter touched and shared with during the day that may be useful when starting writing:
:)
It was held by Peter Thomas from the Middlesex University Learning Development Unit.
It was very good that few of us participated and form all the 3 modules.
A lot as been said but I'm going to point out the most important learnings, at least the ones I found were most important and of value for me.
First of all it was very interesting to understand how writing should be approached.
Peter explained how at a first stage we generate ideas, research material, find info.
This is the internal and personal factor.
Then secondly we have to organise all these data in order to make it valuable for our piece of writing selecting the ones that relate to one another. Then as a final result we have to present the essay/piece of writing, we need to find a good order to talk about the findings. At this point it helps starting thinking towards the final presentation, the external factor.
Peter explained that these is a "stage" process that not necessarily goes from one onto another, but for an effective writing we can generate, then organise, than go back on generate more, organise again, try a first presentation that may need further organisation before we can develop a final draft. I thought it was a great way of approaching writing not to feel completely lost, this process can be a mess but it can give us a logicality in mind towards it...we can (and should) revisit things before they make sense to us and for the reader.
1.Generate (you/internal)
2.Organise
3.Present (reader/external)
We did an exercise of writing on the question "What is expected in our writings at this level" without interruptions for 5 minutes, we then discussed what we felt while doing it and most of us found it hard to concentrate on the topic. I personally did focus on it but found myself repeating the same message.
We then narrowed down the same piece of writing as Peter asked us to review it finding and underling the main key points we thought were more important.
One at the time we had to explained what these points were and share ideas. I personally had English as a concern for my academic writing, and the importance of explaining technical words in my academic piece of writing.
We then moved onto writing with the same flow and no interruptions about those few key points.
The final stage of this exercise was to write a paragraph regarding the words/sentences we found most important.
Before doing this Thomas introduced us on HOW to write a paragraph. It should be structured this way:
-An initial sentence that summarize and introduces what we are about to talk about.
-Additional information on the main topic
-A conclusion
With this in mind we wrote our paragraphs and in small groups we helped each other out to make it clear and understandable for us, the readers.
We shared our "final products" with the group as that's the stage when, after revisiting few times, our piece goes "public"; we noticed how more detailed and clear our writings were compared to the very original piece.
This exercise was very useful to understand how what we generate in the first place needs to be revisited to achieve a good level of writing that can be understood clearly by everyone.
The whole experience gave us a more relaxed attitude towards writing (and re-writing) as the reader is only going to read the final product and is not going to bother on HOW we got there.
It's ok to be messy!
 |
| Topic |
Here are few important points that Peter touched and shared with during the day that may be useful when starting writing:
- The order of things is important. How we decide to talk about things. (immagine a funnel shaped piece of writing, we start with general info, then we get down more onto specifics, to finally generate out main topic)
- The main body of the essay should be organized in paragraphs (half an A4 page as a guideline)
- One main point/idea per paragraph
- Contain topic sentences (usually at the beginning of a paragraph)
Hope this helps those who couldn't attend the session, I'm sure you can find valuable information from others who attended so look up everyone's blog and feel free to ask me something that wasn't clear... in the end the important thing is what the readers gets out from a piece of writing!
:)
Wednesday 14 March 2012
Social Media Workshop
I attended a workshop run by the Federation of Entertainment Union (FEU) on "LinkedIn
and meeting up. How to leave a good impression in a digital world”. (The Abbey Centre, 13 March 2011). The workshop run by the trainer David Thomas, a highly experienced broadcaster, trainer and manager, with a special interest in communication and organizational skills (David Thomas Media website, 2012), focused on the use of social medias and the networking side of a self-managed business. David explained how connections have always been made face to face, but most recently a good relevance has been taken over the internet
The business of theatre and dance has reached a high level of technological evolution. Now most of the castings start from a viral form rather than the old cover letter + CV way. Thanks to artists's websites provided by social networks and arts bodies such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Spotlight, the artist can have a better visibility and an easier access into the casting directors' offices and can create a professional reputation over the internet and can create a positive comeback on his/her career development.
It was interesting to learn how differently we can introduce ourselves face-to-face depending who we are talking to. We can tell who we are (I'm a musician), what we do (I play the piano) or what benefits we give to others (I make people happy). The benefit is not what we actually do but it makes people more interested and leave a memorable impression and it helps us distinguish ourselves from the mass. So it's also important to built a good credibility for our business (ourselves) and discover what people value about us.
This introduced the discussion towards LinkedIn, how to get recommendation on it and how to network over the internet. Networking means learning, engaging and recommending (Thomas, 2012) This last one specifically important in order to built trust among people that can leave us recommendations, helping develop our own “digital reputation” and making our profile strong, not only having what we believe about ourselves, but with the support of people we have worked with.
I found very amusing this description of the different social networks:
LinkedIn = workspace
Twitter = water cooler (gossiping)
Google + (not well known yet) = the canteen
Facebook = the bar
It is important to leave the right impression on the right social network and sometimes create two
different profiles, a personal and a professional one, so that the two things don't get mixed up in the net. I learned that on the social networks your profile description is one of the most important parts of your digital world, it's the message that should reinforce the impression you want to make, to leave a taste of who you are without having you in person.
Also things as simple as you email address gives an idea of what you do and who you are.
Yahoo, Hotmail and now even Gmail are the domains that are mostly used, it's worth considering
buying you own domain (as cheap as £3 a year for a .co.uk domain, or £10 for a .com which is
better for International work) so that you can present yourself as a professional and give a better
idea of how reliable your business may be.
To make your web image stronger, you should be constant with your photos (always the same ones for every profile), make it personal, focused and engaging. (Thomas, 2012)
References:
- Thomas, D., LinkedIn and meeting up. How to leave a good impression in a digital world, The Abbey Centre, 13 March 2011.
Monday 5 March 2012
2nd Campus Session
I attended the second campus meeting and I have to say it really helped me clear few things I was sure of to get ahead with my work. It was nice to meet Verity Evans for the first time, she helped a lot during the session with her participation and also has a very interesting inquiry on TIE work and the National Curriculum.( http://verityevans.blogspot.com/ )
We were given the schedule for the day by Paula and went through :
-The deadlines
-Help from advisers
-How to write up the Critical Review (Title, Introduction, Evaluation, Analysis, Critical Reflection)
-Artefact
We also did a group exercise on how to read and scan a piece of literature; we read a short piece from The Stage and tried to find the key points and its message. It was very useful as I personally had a frustration about finding the right literature without wasting time on long written pieces and books that actually don't have much to do with my inquiry.
I guess we have to develop a sort of method on how to find literature and spot the ones that interests us.
One at the time we spoke out our inquiry question to talked with the others about points of view and to check if the inquiry was clear to everyone and not just ourselves, this was very interesting as something that may be very clear for us, may not be explained properly and so it gave us and idea of where to correct ourselves. Paula asked one at the time the same questions, who where what and how; answering these questions gives us the basics to structure the Introduction for our Critical Review; we need to know well our sector and explain simply why our question was created in the first place and how it came about.
Then we went onto the artefact, Paula asked us to draw on a blank piece of paper a drawing of who our audience/s is/are, having that clearly in mind focuses you on what could be the most reachable and useful artefact for you audience. She also suggested to attach and explanation with our artefact as, again, it could be something very clear to us but it has to be understandable also if we are not there to explain it (an example I thought of was an installation/piece of art who always has a written explanation next to it).
I left the session feeling very confident and knowing what to do next, every time a campus session makes me so much more relaxed and confident on the module, that I suggested to have an extra session (maybe after Easter) after our 3rd one, not sure if this will happen but I think everyone was positive on this as we could all benefit so much more with an extra meeting.
We were given the schedule for the day by Paula and went through :
-The deadlines
-Help from advisers
-How to write up the Critical Review (Title, Introduction, Evaluation, Analysis, Critical Reflection)
-Artefact
We also did a group exercise on how to read and scan a piece of literature; we read a short piece from The Stage and tried to find the key points and its message. It was very useful as I personally had a frustration about finding the right literature without wasting time on long written pieces and books that actually don't have much to do with my inquiry.
I guess we have to develop a sort of method on how to find literature and spot the ones that interests us.
One at the time we spoke out our inquiry question to talked with the others about points of view and to check if the inquiry was clear to everyone and not just ourselves, this was very interesting as something that may be very clear for us, may not be explained properly and so it gave us and idea of where to correct ourselves. Paula asked one at the time the same questions, who where what and how; answering these questions gives us the basics to structure the Introduction for our Critical Review; we need to know well our sector and explain simply why our question was created in the first place and how it came about.
Then we went onto the artefact, Paula asked us to draw on a blank piece of paper a drawing of who our audience/s is/are, having that clearly in mind focuses you on what could be the most reachable and useful artefact for you audience. She also suggested to attach and explanation with our artefact as, again, it could be something very clear to us but it has to be understandable also if we are not there to explain it (an example I thought of was an installation/piece of art who always has a written explanation next to it).
I left the session feeling very confident and knowing what to do next, every time a campus session makes me so much more relaxed and confident on the module, that I suggested to have an extra session (maybe after Easter) after our 3rd one, not sure if this will happen but I think everyone was positive on this as we could all benefit so much more with an extra meeting.
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