City gem keeps the word alive
Mentioned in Despatches:
Enchanted Entertainment and
Princess Storytime – Browsers Bookshop is one of our mid-city gems, and not just for its stock. Every now and then they turn up with literary soirees, and events like this storytelling occasion for kids. I quote from their newsletter at info@browsersbooks.co.nz about the latest, in which members of the Hamilton-based performance and entertainment group, Enchanted Entertainment, dressed up, like the kids, in smashingly fantastic outfits, and read and talked to the littlies.
Held one Saturday morning, the shop filled to overflowing with all these miniature princesses. It was wonderful seeing the delight on their faces. We do not have enough opportunities to hear the well read word. We need to.
In the Arts especially, Beware the Algorithm:
If for no other reason, the word is seriously suspicious because we spell ‘‘rithm’’ rhythm and something suggesting txtmsg langwdg is the last thing we need polluting our orthographic universe. Neither is it a neologism for an ecofriendly dance invented by Al Gore. The term algorithm has come to be the label for a process which uses the accumulated numerical results of a series of questions for which responses can be made using numerals. Is this a good idea? A=Excellent or
1, B=Very Good or 2, C= Good or
3, D=Not Really or 4, E=No or 5. The results to a series of questions can then be collated and believers will design towns, choose target audiences, approve a medical process, or market their goods and services according to the algorithmic information, just as actuarial insurance calculations do with our lives and belongings. The problem is that results are of the same order as actuarial designations. Such information determines different premiums for car insurance or health according to age groupings. It has nothing to do with the individuals in those groupings, or their health, or driving experience and skill. A worse problem arises, however, when promoters match audiences to performances in the arts. The result is, that they give audiences what the algorithms tell them the audiences want, but the point of art is that audiences have new, stimulating, challenging experiences that do not match their ‘‘profile’’, as well as revisiting familiar and previously enjoyed territory. Next time you receive a questionnaire, from census papers to a city council survey of the value of a city library in Hamilton, try writing a verbal response to the questions so that you give a real opinion.
Review
What: Broadway Hitme
Who: The Clarence Street Theatre Trust
When: 18–21 October
Where: The Clarence Street Theatre
Works by: Cole Poreter and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Director: Kyle Chuen;
Musical Director: Victoria Trenwith; Choreographer: Leona Lenora Robinson;
Repetiteur: David Hall
Packed theatre. The usual first few minutes of interruptions while latecomers found seats and others did the goss. They distracted only slightly from the overture, Cole Porter’s Can Can, where the orchestra set its stylistic sound stamp on the evening.
That style employed the traditional orchestral ingredients of string, woodwind, brass, and percussion with keyboards and guitar. It was an ambitious, even heavyweight, backing for the vocals selected from the musical theatre of Porter and Lloyd Webber, and could have been a superb support for the singers. Clearly the audience thought it was. As the night went on, the applause which followed each song was, well, tumultuous. One has to wonder at the way in which audiences are being conditioned to deafening aural spectacle rather than the subtle aural range which carries emotion as well as supplying an involving, entertaining, experience. Edwards on yet again about electronically mediated sound? Yes he is. There was an unscripted moment when a soloist sang a line before her mic came alive. The voice was magic. Soft, but audible, and beautiful to hear. Then the system mediated the sound and it became a strident call to attention rather then the tender moment it could have been. Did the audience want the volume? Edwards spoke to several. They said they were used to it, that it did not bother them too much, but it might have been nicer a little softer … but, yeah, nah, they were not really aware of a problem. I went to the list of performers. Players such as Kerry Langdon on violin, Matt Gough on viola, Sergio Marshall on horn and Maria Colvin on flute understand subtlety. With players of that calibre and sensitivity, this orchestra did not need enhanced sound. Repetiteur David Hall may have welcomed it for his singers because the excellent choir/ chorus was right under the fly tower, so against the power of the orchestra we rarely heard it at its best.
Soloists deserved their crowd support, but we would have been in tears with Kirsty Young’s superb Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, and Oliver Neil and Jane Tankersley’s classic Pie Jesu if the balance had been sympathetic. Scott Hall’s powerful baritone actually managed the sound in Gethsemane, in one of the most memorable performances of the night, and that doyen of choreographers, Leona Lenora Robinson, worked the tight stage and her company with a lightness and creative interest which lifted the whole performance.
It was a great night, but there were lessons to be learned.