Curtain Call Podcast

This week, I thought I would sit down with the Casting Directors Guild and find out just what it means to be a casting director. What it means to have those three little letters (CDG) following your name, and the path one takes to become a casting director in today's industry

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's podcast is all about gender, a hot topic both in the news headlines and the arts world currently. It features a conversation with Camden People's Theatre (CPT) artistic director Brian Logan and acclaimed writer/director Lucy J Skilbeck. CPT is about to launch its festival Come As You Are, which features 'a host of gender-anarchists with more questions than answers'. Theo Bosanquet went along to find out more about it, and Skilbeck's new play Bullish, which is headlining the festival.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reece Shearsmith celebrated a birthday this past weekend, and I thought we’d help him celebrate by bringing you a little chat we had with him when he was appearing in Hangmen at The Royal Court. Reece played the character of Syd, the stammering ex-assistant to David Morrissey’s ex-hangman Harry, both of whom are coming to terms with the abolition of capital punishment in Britain.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bat Out of Hell The Musical starts just like it’s title, and doesn’t stop all evening. I have rarely been to a musical that kicks the door down with a wall of sound as big as it does here, and then carries on. Big props to the sound department on the show. And HUGE props to the entire company of Bat Out of Hell for a belting sound you produce. The singing on this show is off the charts. And we look forward to bringing you another podcast soon about how professionals keep themselves fit, both physically and vocally, when doing such a big sing. But this week, I wanted to bring you a conversation that we haven’t had the privilege of bringing you to date, and that is from a follow spot operator. That technician that sits, not just in the gods, but above the gods, and makes sure that special is turned on so that your star is basking in glorious floodlight. It’s a proper skill and the best follow spot operators are well known within the industry. Guy Aldridge has been at the ENO for 30 years working on hundreds and hundreds of shows. I talked to him about his early career and how he got to the ENO.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There have been two American Michaels roaming the streets of the UK over the past few weeks. We last saw them on the stage, but now they have stepped from the boards in front of the cameras proving that it’s not only the bright lights of the theatre scene that are a big draw for Hollywood talent.

Michael C Hall and Michael Esper appeared on stage together last year in the musical Lazarus, which played to sold out audiences at the temporary space King’s Cross Theatre. Michael C Hall is busy in Manchester filming Safe for Netflix, and Michael Esper has been spotted in and around London filming the Getty’s family saga, Trust for the FX network. It’s great to see them return to the UK in any capacity, cementing that the UK’s entertainment industry is thriving, and vital to the country. I sat down and talked to both Michael’s about their experience in Lazarus when we visited the show on the anniversary of Bowie’s death, and it was clear that one thing that the musical did was remind us how prolific David Bowie was with his songwriting - and how influential an artist he was to whatever he chose to turn his hand to.

Robert Icke has a great track record here in the UK, having had an Olivier Award nomination for 1984 back in 2014 for Best New Play (where he also picked up the Best Director gong at the UK Theatre Awards), but today I want to bring you a little chat we had during the warm up of the play where he won the Olivier Award for Best Director. Oresteia, which showed at Trafalgar Studios a little less than two years ago, also brought a classic story, this time a Greek tragedy, to the stage. And, once again, cameras were a feature of this production. Less CCTV cameras of Big Brother, but broadcast cameras so that the killing of a child could be witnessed by the population as a leader’s sacrifice to help win a war. It was harrowing stuff, and extremely hard to watch, but was riveting theatre – something in which Robert Icke has made a name for himself.

And now, for something completely different. What I thought I would do this week is set a little quiz. The first Curtain Call Theatre Podcast Quiz: “Guess the Warm Up”.

You are going to hear a series of warm ups in the podcast, and we are going to give a book to the person that can guess which show up goes with which warm up.

Sounds easy, but there are definitely some tricky ones in there. But hopefully you’ll have a lot of fun guessing. The trick is to listen to the acoustics of the sound, recognizable names or characters names, and I may just give you a hint or two.

And there you have it. The very first Curtain Call Theatre Podcast Quiz. Send your answers as to which shows you heard to [email protected], or send us messages via Twitter or Facebook, and the person that guesses the most correctly will win a copy of Curtain Call: A Year Backstage in London Theatre. If there is a tie, we will draw a name from a hat.