This week’s podcast interview is two brilliant creatives for the price of one as they are currently working on their next project together, a musical version of “Made In Dagenham’. Aletta Collins, choreographer and Richard Thomas, lyricist and composer of such shows as Jerry Springer the Opera consented to be interviewed on Aletta’s terrace

Just press the right facing arrow above to hear the podcast.

Aletta Collins is an award winning choreographer, Associate Artist at the Royal Opera House and choreographs operas, musical theatre, film and dance. Her work includes His Dark Materials, Anna Nicole the Opera and Awakenings. She is a Guinness World Record for the largest ever online taught dance for Dance 2008, where they had nearly 40,000 people dancing in Trafalgar Square. She also organised and choreographed the amazing Paralympic Piccadilly Circus celebrations with acrobats, a giant blow up Eros and over a tonne of white feathers, most of which I think ended up in my bra. She won Best Choreography in a Video, UK Music Video Award for ‘Losing Myself’ by Will Young in 2012

My video of the Circus Ceremony in Piccadilly Circus

Richard Thomas is an ex comedian who then wrote music for TV and then started pitching shows. He wrote Jerry Springer the Opera for which he won an Olivier award in 2004 and the equally controversial & brilliant Anna Nicole the Opera which Aletta also worked on at the Royal Opera House. He has also written half hour operas for BBC2, Shoes at Sadlers Wells and also paired up with the fabulous David Hoyle (whose shows have to be seen to be believed) on an alternative take on Christmas.

These are some of the highlights of the interview, please be aware this is not a full transcript.

Aletta Collins

Sometimes ideas come from very site specific ones such as when she approached Somerset House about doing a dance on the fountains. However when she had an idea for a dance based on the film The Red Balloons, she then successfully pitched that to the Royal Opera House,

Everything starts with an idea but that idea may change.

As a freelancer she used to working and starting projects in very different ways, she also works with opera and musical theatre companies so then the process differs, she loves the scope of what she can do with Musical theatre and Opera in terms of budget and possibilities.

Richard Thomas

In the case of Made in Dagenham he has been brought on board but he is used to having to take an idea and pitch his lungs off and try to sell it. That takes practice, he once wrote a very bad script (his words not mine!) and took it to Los Angeles, there he learnt how to pitch, to talk with passion and enthusiasm for an hour.

‘In the UK if they like it will be just a short 15-20 mins interview, in LA they can say they love it after an hour and then you never hear from them again.’

He wrote Jerry Springer the Opera with five sixths of the credit, Anna Nicole the Opera he did the libretto so did both the book and lyrics. For the musical version of

Made in Dagenham he is doing the lyrics, David Arnold the music and Richard Bean the book (writer of Toast to One Man Two Guvnors).

Aletta Collins was always massively encouraged as a young person by her dance teachers, her first teacher still performs at the Royal Opera House, but even when she was teaching in a little village hall ballet class. she encouraged us all to make out own dances for exams. London Contemporary Dance School also she was encouraged to make dance pieces, it never seemed to be a big deal, you were expected to create and make something.

Whilst at college, a piece she created at just 18 years of age got bought and toured round the world and then she got commissions from then on.

However she has moved into big scale productions as well, she likes choreographing operas – she loves the scale and working with a director, designer, lighting designer, the whole team – she loved the team making work. so she started doing m[...]

This week “ Seven Life Lessons from Sookie Stackhouse” plus our weekly creative tracking This is the weekly Love Your Creativity Podcast newsletter to keep myself and you focused on creativity whether you are an artist, actor, musician, playwright or film director. To listen to the podcast just press the arrow above, or go to […]

This week “ Seven Life Lessons from Sookie Stackhouse” plus our weekly creative tracking

This is the weekly Love Your Creativity Podcast newsletter to keep myself and you focused on creativity whether you are an artist, actor, musician, playwright or film director. To listen to the podcast just press the arrow above, or go to here to a link on iTunes.

The  highlights of the podcast are as follows (well they are highlights in my mind ;-)!)

I have just finished reading ‘Dead Ever After’ by Charlaine Harris, the last of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, on which the amazing HBO True Blood series is based. (their amazing website is here)

I loved the novel ending where she knew that ..they  (no plot spoilers!!) .. would be together maybe for always but even if he left she would be alright, she would survive.

Lesson One – Acknowledge you have survived

Sookie  knows that she has gone through crazy, death, blood, loss and she has survived… and she will come what may

In our reality people go through terrible  things and somehow survive; pain, loss of love & death hurts but you will survive.Recognise that you won through (or crawled through) and you are still here.

Acknowledge the battles you have survived.

Also she (and probably you) have loved and lost men, some you will love forever but you need to let go. You will survive on your own, you have to

Lesson Two – Live In the Moment

Sookie lives in the moment – there are so many moments where she lies in the sun, the heat, the flowers.. even despite the crazy around her. She has a place to go and relax, in this moment I am OK. I have started walking/jogging daily again as it makes me happy. Find what always cheers you and reminds you of the good things in life and go do that as often as you can

Lesson Three – Family and friends, some you love, others just let them go.

Sookie’s family and friends are important, she has learnt to accept their differences, know she cannot change them.  Some people you will love always, some people you need to let go off if they are not positive in your life.

Lesson Four – Keep your Heart Open

Despite her crazy relationships  Sookie Stackhouse keeps her heart open for new love. Maybe it is easier for a fictional character!

Lesson Five – Some lovers  are very selfish

Some lovers  are very selfish, not necessarily in bed.. when their ego or life is more important than you all the time it is time to leave.

Season 6 Clip Preview

Lesson Six- Acknowledge where what you want and what HE wants in a relationship differs

You need to acknowledge what you want in life and relationships and check that that matches the men you date. If u want kids why date a vampire? If you like the sun why date a night owl?

Its fine when you are not ready to settle down but dating a man clearly not ready to settle down when you want a relationship s a disaster in the long term. Its fine to have casual flings but be clear if thats is what it is and whether you actually want more. Look at your relationships and see the patterns. Make peace with your choices and stop nagging or move on

Lesson Seven – Insist on having really great sex

Have really great sex.  If you aren’t then  go and get it, or get some help with your current lover.

Most Importantly

The most admired capacity in  human is not beauty or intelligence or even the capacity to love… but the ability to get up after being beaten down and then fight forward in their own way, living the life they chose. Think of  Helen Keller, The Shawshank Redemption, Rocky, Nelson Mandela.

Think also of Marlon Brando in The Waterfront ‘ i could have been a contender,” – Don’t get to the end of your life and say this.

 

13 minute task of the day

Replace the lyrics to’ I will Survive’ with a situation or name of someone you survived. Dance and sing around the kitchen

(I have done a Sookie Stackhouse version of this at 15 mins 44 seconds)

AiTunes rating would rea[...]

PODCAST  – This is my Weekly Love Your Creativity Newsletter Podcast to keep myself and you focused on creativity. Just click on the right facing arrow above to hear or go here on iTunes This week “Smile, create and carry on”.  It’s about persistence with a project. Believing there is a beauty hidden high behind […]

PODCAST  – This is my Weekly Love Your Creativity Newsletter Podcast to keep myself and you focused on creativity. Just click on the right facing arrow above to hear or go here on iTunes

This week “Smile, create and carry on”.  It’s about persistence with a project. Believing there is a beauty hidden high behind the brambles, walls and painful thorns.

The story of the 9 year writing marathon  of The Fantasticks, the world’s longest running musical, is of two writers who kept leaving it, coming back, then throwing most of the script away and just keeping a few songs such as” Try To Remember”. It was just a chance that a colleague took over a summer theatre 9 years after they started and suggested putting it on that they finally put the effort together to finally finish it for stage.

London with snippet of a Fantasticks tune

— Marysia Trembecka (@MarysiaT) May 20, 2013

 

So what project have you started and then left? Maybe you have got a first draft, a half finished painting, a song that needs a better chorus and then recorded? We all have these part-finished projects so your task this week is to get the one that niggles you the most out and spend 13 minutes looking at what it will take to get it finished and out of the door. Once you have finished it and then focus on getting out there, be it on your Youtube channel, iTunes, sent off to a competition, a reading or a gallery then doors always open and weird synchronicities can start to happen. However if your painting or poem is hidden in the drawer then unlike Sleeping Beauty noone will be coming to find it and kiss it awake to really live.

Sorry re the metaphor but you get the point, noone is climbing through vines, dust and your ‘ideas’ file to find beauty or great art when there is so much stuff out there to looK at already. You have to be your own prince climbing up the walls, getting scratched in the process, sneezing at the dust

I suggest that you do a vision board on the specific unfinished project to get fired up about the possibilities, my first and second posts on using vision board’s are linked up.

I am just on the tail end of finishing a remix of my track Londontown. It is over a decade since I wrote it and this current remix reincarnation I love, but even with this remix we have gone through two other sets of lyrics til we have come back to the very first ones I wrote.  You can hear a snippet as it’s the music for the podcast.

Also in this podcast, I encourage you to do an end of week think back on what has been done, produced, worked on, booked and paid for creatively.

Whether you are a full time painter or a 40 hours a week office administrator who sings on the side, this is to encourage you to keep creating and make the world a better place, one song, poem, play, short film, piece of art at a time.

The following is what we need to track each week as a look back in brief, full explanations are in the podcast.

How many CV’s and emails did you send out for creative work?

How many creative jobs did you actually do, whether 8 shows a week, a gallery opening or a song in a children hospice?

How many auditions and meetings for creative projects?

How many classes and workshops did you do?

How much practise done that week, how much each day?

How much money made through your creative pursuits?

What marketing of your creative output did you do and what revenue generation plans put in place?

Did you learn or see anything new or worth exploring creatively?

If it is zero then dont feel guilty, just look at the coming week and endeavour to do better. Each week track these statistics and review the same day every week. Your creativity and bank balance will thank you for it!

I also have written a mini tracking tune for you to sing along to while you track your weekly progress    Time To Track by Marysia Trembecka

Love Your Creativity.com is dedicated to all creatives trying to make great work and make a living from it.

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