Tips for actors

Just a quick drop in today with an article that appeared in The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday 28th November 2012.

here is the link : click here

An interesting look at what professional actors think that amateurs need to know. A follow up to the programme on Sky Arts which features a competition to find the best amateur company.

Nation's Best Am Dram continues on Sky Arts 1 on 5 December at 9pm.

Are you watching it? What do you think of the programme?Please add a comment.

Annie Get Your Gun - (3)

Gifts for Annie Get your Gun

There are some similarities with Oklahoma! for gifts for this show, although there is more emphasis on the cowboys and indians aspect of the Wild West Show of the time.

Cowboys : toy guns, rope lariats, western shoelace ties with decorative fasteners, cowboy hats, boots etc., Native American beaded jewellery, tomahawks and peace pipes.

from The Drama Queen's Drawers you can get pin badges and keyrings in the shape of guns and boots.

Drama mask badges, keyrings, etc, to represent Show Business

Love tokens such as can be found in our “Themes” “love” category

And funny greetings cards to add to your gift 

cartoon card

 

Annie Get Your Gun - 2

One of our range of cartoon cards

One of the fun things (and perhaps also the most awkward from a health and safety point of view) is that doing this show is like playing cowboys and indians, with lots of gunplay and dressing up. Depending on your wardrobe capability you can include full native American chieftain head dresses, medicine man costumes, squaws and braves etc as well as cowboys with chaps, buckskins, and six shooters with gunbelts and holsters. 

Gunshot sound effects and sharp shooter targets, trick knife throwing targets, all things to give your stage crew nightmares or lots of fun depending on their mindset! How to shoot the bird from Dolly Tate's hat without being able to actually shoot it? To make it look real? Or perhaps for her to exit into the wings in order to react as though it has happened.....how inventive can you be?

There are also many opportunites for tricks to be played (a last night tradition in some companies, and one that can be great fun as long as they don't interfere with the action or detract from the audience's enjoyment)

Annie Get Your Gun

The story of Frank Butler and Annie Oakley, how they met and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. This musical features the songs “There's No Business Like Show Business”, “ Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” and “ You Can't Get A Man With A Gun” among others.

The Wild West Show gives opportunities for demonstrations of sharp shooting, rodeo lassoing and ropework, and knife throwing. Whatever skills your cast can muster can become part of the “Show Business” juggling, balancing, dancing girls; the Wild West Show made the most of all kinds of spectacle, almost like a circus with added gunfire.

Set in the latter part of the 19th Century the costumes range from the backwoods of the American West to the European court balls when Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show goes on tour and Annie Oakley is feted by the aristocracy of Europe.