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How to Succeed in the Chorus Without Really
Trying - Part 1
20th August 2008
By Ms
Cassandra Trumpington
How to Succeed
in the Chorus Without Really Trying
Or
A Guide for
the Amateur and Professional Chorister, with special reference to
The Chorister’s Code
Contents
1. Foreword –
A policeman’s lot…
2. The
Rehearsal Period – How to work it baby
·
The 1st Music Call – How to prepare
·
The 3rd Music Call
·
Conductors’ Tantrums, Tarantara!
·
Special notes on The Look
·
Stage Managers – and other dictators you have known and loved
·
How to rehearse on Sunday mornings after a big night out
1. Foreword - A policeman’s lot…
….is not a
happy one.
While
Gilbert’s Sergeant of Police was no doubt spot on in this
rather gloomy self-assessment, he could well have added – “an’
Choristers’ lots neither!” without being too wide of the mark.
Singing in the
chorus of a musical, or an operetta, or even (or perhaps especially)
in an opera, is no easy task. Faced with laborious hours of
rehearsal in arctic or volcanic rehearsal rooms as the season
dictates, along with deranged directors, cantankerous choreographers
and conductors with fuses shorter than the run of the latest Eddie
Maguire show, your Chorister has what can only be considered a
somewhat thankless task – all the sweat and the toil with nary a
whiff of the glory.
However, dear
Chorister, don’t be discouraged! You can have a
marvellously
fulfilling time in the Chorus, with very little effort, in amateur
shows or all the way through to the Metropolitan Opera, if you have
just a few crucial survival techniques under your belt.
It’s my
privilege to share with you now a handful of these techniques, along
with tips on how to avoid some of the more common hazards of Chorus
life, learned the hard way through some years of experience as a
professional Chorister, combined with a Director’s perspective.
Just follow
these simple guidelines and your experience in the rehearsal room
and on the stage, be you Jolly Villager, Townsfolk, Wench, Bumpkin
or Fop, will be forever changed for the better.
Let’s take it
from the top, with the rehearsal period, which the wise Chorister
will approach as if ‘twere a minefield.
2. The Rehearsal Period - how to work it baby
The 1st Music Call – How to prepare
Prepare?!
Please, get a grip! You’ll learn the music through exhaustive
repetition in music calls with your Chorus Master or Conductor. It
won’t matter whether you’ve spent hours at home studying the score
and listening to recordings, your conductor will for no apparent
reason assign the tenors to the bass line (“to add bravura”) and the
basses to the tenor line (“to add gravitas”), and will have a
refreshingly experimental approach to the generally recognized
tempi. As for the text, the Director will probably want to move
your production of Anything Goes to a bowling alley in
Northcote, 1978, so that all the rhymes, and character and place
names, will naturally be changed anyway. So you’re doomed to hours
of agonizing note-bashing no matter what you do. Far better to show
up to the first music call, and announce that you’ve left your score
at home, and have no pencil, nor eraser neither. You might at least
then begin by having the satisfaction of watching the music staff
scurry around for a bit, while you put your feet up and prepare the
vocal cords for action with a nice cup of tea and a cream biscuit.
Footnote:
depending on the company concerned, you may only score a plain tea
biscuit. Don’t work with these companies again, obviously.
The 3rd Music Call
Okay, this
call requires a different approach. Now you’ve done some rehearsing
and might be expected to remember something. Of course, you don’t
remember anything, and haven’t so much as glanced at the dots
between calls (studying between rehearsals is regarded as a serious
transgression of The Choristers’ Code, by the way). To avoid
any unpleasantness arising from this, you must hone your “Conductor
Interaction” skills. In summary, while having your nose completely
buried in the music at all times whilst singing, be sure to sit up
straight and look the conductor right in the eye just as you
sing the final note in the phrase, giving him/her a bright-eyed,
switched on, I’m right here with you kind-of-a-look. This
should pretty much cover it. If not, you may find it necessary to
role your eyes in irritation at the person beside you and pointedly
tap along rhythmically as you sing, as if to suggest that you’d be
fine if the idiot beside you would only sing the right notes/in
time/the right text/in the right language. Don’t worry that this is
some sort of betrayal of your fellow Chorister; they’ll be doing the
same thing to you, the idea being to leave the conductor with a
thick head and a confused notion that while each individual knows
their music perfectly, collectively the Chorus doesn’t know a single
bar of it.
Footnote:
Forgot to mention that I’ve skipped straight to the 3rd
Music Call because you shouldn’t show up for the second - it’s
generally considered poor form to attend 2nd Music calls.
Conductors’ Tantrums, Tarantara!
It’s
comforting to know that all conductors, without exception,
will scream hysterically at the Chorus at least once per
production. They learn this technique in the first year of their
training. You may find it amusing to lay bets on the timing and
style of the tantrum, however, it can be tricky preventing
race-fixing, given that an individual Chorister is more than
capable of falsely triggering the tantrum at any time.
The true conductor’s tantrum occurs naturally, and the best ones are
those that involve a baton fling, score toss and, ideally, a walk
out. That this is an expected event and cause for celebration for
those with winnings to collect, on no account means that the
Chorus should take it in good part. On the contrary, the tantrum
offers the Chorus a valuable opportunity to employ The Look.
Equally applicable to conductors, directors, choreographers and
stage managers alike, The Look is an essential skill for any
Chorister and should be utilised as and when - judiciously of
course.
Special Notes on “The Look”
The Look,
is a frosty, blank-faced expression of utter intractability,
relieved by an admixture of mild disappointment and bruised esteem.
It is more effective when accompanied by suitable body language i.e.
arms folded tightly across the chest, shoulders slumped, head at an
insolent angle, eyes staring dully into the distance, plus any
subtle variations the Chorister may care to add. Having utilised
The Look, the Chorus should then continue to rehearse, but
with about a 40% reduction in enthusiasm, spirit and accuracy.
Footnote:
Ensure that standards set in previous rehearsals mean that the
recipient of The Look can easily tell the difference in the
reduced level of effort, and so feel suitably rebuffed.
Further
Footnote: The Look works best when employed in exquisite
unison. Ironic, given that it was very likely a complete absence of
unison that induced the tantrum in the first place. Which is
neither here nor there.
Stage Managers - and other dictators you have known and loved
“As some day it may happen that a victim must be found
I've got a little list--I've got a little list…” (The Mikado, G & S)
IIf
you are new to Chorus life, you may be labouring under the
misapprehension that the Director is the most important person in
the rehearsal room. Should you choose to cling to this foolhardy
delusion, the Stage Manager will without delay happily enlighten
you, for indeed it is he or she (it generally is a She) who
is La Grande Fromage.
Any Stage
Manager worthy of the title, can, and probably will, make your life
a living hell. If you think of them as a kind of sweaty,
permanently enraged, purple-faced psychotic Sergeant Major, things
will go better for you.
Stage
Managers run the rehearsal room!
They will seize the opportunity to bellow ferociously if you: are
late; leave early; forget to sign-on; talk above a whisper; whisper;
eat or drink; chew gum; leave your mobile on; forget your prop;
break your prop; use your prop suggestively; bluetooth the basses
with harmless obscenities and so on.
The reason for
this uncanny likeness to great dictators you have known and loved,
is that Stage Managers bear the crushing responsibility of “calling”
each performance from Prompt
Corner. This
means ensuring that every performer and musician has turned up (more
or less sober), that every lighting state and set change happens,
that every prop is in the right place at the right time and that
every performer enters on cue. Her cue…that is…! That’s
right, dear Chorister, if you lose favour with your SM, you may end
up being deliberately mis-cued for every entrance and so be torn to
shreds nightly by the Director.
Fortunately,
since SMs usually feel that performers “ain’t got no respeck” and
live in some kind of fool’s paradise, it’s possible to work around
this little irritation with a modest investment during the first few
production calls. Buying the SM a soy mocha latté and muffin or two,
assisting with re-setting the room at the end of rehearsal (x 2) and
dropping a few compliments on the extraordinary neatness and
precision of their Production Book should do it. You will have
established that you are not one of these flighty, irresponsible
performers who consider SMs a lower life form, but rather that you
are a good egg, a mate even, who fully appreciates that without
them, the whole show would fall over (which is actually pretty close
to the truth.)
Having done
this, you’ll find that you can get away with any amount of talking,
lateness etc with nothing more than a long-suffering eye-roll and
fond tsk tsk, while your fellows are still quivering from the
vicious tongue-lashing delivered at last week’s matinée.
How to rehearse on Sunday mornings after a big night out
Don’t!
If you are really feeling like Mikey Robbins (before) has been
jumping up and down on your head all night and a carpet company has
felt compelled to lay wall-to-wall shag pile on your tongue, then
just be a no-show** for the 10am start. Time your
arrival, after a good fry-up and a few stiff espressos, for about
11.30am (just before morning tea). As you arrive, and all eyes in
the room are upon you, assume a tragic air and a shattered
expression. If someone even looks like they are going to ask where
you were, cut them off abruptly with a terse, “Don’t ask”. Being
imaginative folk, they will do the rest and will assume that you
have courageously come to rehearsal despite some sort of atrocious
family drama. You can gradually cheer up after morning tea and
participate as usual for the rest of the day. The Director will, if
anything, go easy on you and give you a sympathetic smile and little
back rub along with each piece of direction.
** An
acquaintance of mine who sang in the chorus of The Merry Widow,
also performing the minor role of “Lo Lo”, was nicknamed “No Show”
by the production team for her tendency to show up for only about 1
in 3 rehearsals. We are all very proud.
Next week:
Props to you! Parasols, porridge and pitfalls and Chorus
Acting – An ancient tradition… |