8.

‘I want you to enter the stage like a vomit’

Directing a chorus

It is a privilege to be in a rehearsal room. It is a place of discovery, creation, fear, insecurity, vulnerability, risk taking, mistake making, experimentation, raw emotions, frustrations, revelations and, most importantly, respect. I love walking into a rehearsal room on the first day of a production call to meet the director and their team for the first time. There’s an air of excitement when the chorus walk through the door, generally because we are a rather large group, and fitting us into the production is always an exciting time for everyone involved. On this first day, the director explains the time in history in which the opera is set, the overarching ideas and background to their choice of setting, their interpretation of each scene, and the role the chorus will be playing in the opera.

There are many directors whose productions I have thoroughly enjoyed. These are the directors who guide and incorporate the chorus into the opera, respecting us not only as individuals but as a group of well-rounded artists who can do anything that is asked of us. I enjoy the experience so much more when we are valued not just as singers but as professionals who can act, engage, move, react, contribute to a scene in a way that tells a story, supporting the soloists with power and intention. Many of us have been in the industry for many years. We know how to make it work.

Every time I start this creative process, I want to become a better actor, learn a new skill, be challenged or be asked to do something outside of my comfort zone. I love trying new things and allowing myself to take risks. Sometimes we get opportunities to take on a character or react to a situation in a way that I could never do in real life. I love feeling like I’ve really worked, that my contribution means something and that it might have an impact on the audience. These experiences may not always be in operas that I have grown to love, or operas with music that has moved me. If I feel I have been a part of a great piece of theatre, then this brings with it an incredible sense of achievement for every single member of the company who has been involved in getting it to opening night.

Neil Armfield, a prolific Australian director across theatre, film and opera in Australia and overseas, is one who can achieve these moments. He sets no boundaries in the creation of a piece, and I know I will always be asked to do something interesting and challenging. He looks upon us not just as singers but as actors. Every collaboration with Neil is a work of art, with Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes in 2009 being no exception. Co-produced with West Australian Opera and Houston Grand Opera, this production was set in the confines of a community hall with glimpses of life beyond its many doors, and Ralph Myers’ set was simple yet incredibly effective in the telling of this tragic tale. There were many scenes during which I would literally weep, moved by the music that had seeped into every fibre of my being. It’s an incredible feeling when every person onstage is telling the same story and experiencing the same emotion, with the tension hanging in the air like an elastic band ready to snap. It is moments like this in the theatre that make all the hard work worth it. Even now, if any of us talk about our experience when performing Grimes all those years ago, we have the same reaction. It has stayed with us all. Hopefully one day we’ll dust off the cobwebs and bring it back to life.

Another great piece of Neil’s work was Wagner’s Ring Cycle. It comprises four individual operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. If the female chorus had only entered the stage when we were required to sing, we would have been seen only in the final opera, and for a total of eleven bars of music – probably not even a full minute. Instead, Neil incorporated us into the story and we appeared in three of the four operas, which certainly made for a more interesting theatrical experience. Along with 25 dancers, five of us from the chorus were selected to be showgirls, or ‘rainbow girls’, for the final scene in Das Rheingold when Wotan leads the gods across the ‘rainbow bridge’ to the castle he has named Valhalla. Wearing Marilyn Monroe-inspired wigs, silver leotards, beige dance tights and silver dance shoes, we each danced with two large fans of feathers in all colours of the rainbow. I felt like I’d been transported to Paris. I could never have imagined I’d end up playing a showgirl one day, taking part in a beautiful piece of choreography with 25 other dancers! Yes, I can move well, but a ‘dancer’ I am not.

This is what I love about Neil. He wanted a few more dancers, and he had the vision to look beyond our roles as choristers. He could see the potential in us to accept a challenge. But we didn’t just appear at the end of Das Rheingold; we also opened the opera. As soon as the curtain rose on that first whispered note from the orchestra, and every member of the chorus – plus many dancers and volunteers – lay motionless on the stage floor, creating ‘a sea of humanity’, he gifted us all the opportunity to help bring his inventive vision to life and be part of something very special, without singing a note.

Acclaimed theatre director Simon Phillips, a New Zealander who has worked in Australia since the 1980s, is someone I love to work with. He directed me in my very first opera in New Zealand, Don Giovanni, back in 1996, but little did I know I’d get to work with him as a principal, and soloist and chorister at Opera Australia. I have played the female lead roles of Adina and Giannetta in Simon’s production of The Elixir of Love, as well as performed in the chorus, and I’ve had a huge amount of fun every time. Again, like Neil, Simon allows us to develop individual characters who have a story to tell. Our staging is always interesting and engaging: there’s nothing like starting a chorus number locked in a chicken coop made entirely out of corrugated iron – including corrugated-iron chickens – with every female chorister trying to win the affections of the leading man. The opera Il turco in Italia, set in a seaside town near Naples in the 1950s, had the female chorus adorned in a variety of vintage-inspired swimsuits, sunning ourselves on deckchairs outside a neon beachside bar, dipping our toes in the water, applying suntan lotion and engrossed in the latest gossip magazines. Fast-forward to Act Two, and you have a stage full of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe impersonators recreating the ‘masked ball’ effect with a twist. Reimagining opera in this way is refreshing, and it challenges the audience too. Some traditionalists might find fault in a new interpretation, but this is what theatre is all about: changing the landscape so it becomes more accessible to new and emerging audiences and, in doing so, allowing more people to see themselves represented in these stories. This doesn’t mean throwing out time-honoured productions; it’s more about mixing it up and discovering new ways to tell these stories.

But it’s not all about dancing around wearing swimwear or hanging out in chicken coops. Sometimes satisfaction can come from the simplest stage movements and scenes, even for the briefest of moments. A great example of this is in John Bell’s epic production of Tosca, set in Nazi-occupied Rome, with sets and costumes designed by Michael Scott-Mitchell and Teresa Negroponte. It is an opera that is both a visual feast and heartbreakingly tragic. Even though the chorus is only onstage for a little over ten minutes, it is a very fulfilling ten minutes. The Act One set is a recreation of the Sant’Andrea della Valle basilica in Rome, and it is where the entire company sings the famous ‘Te Deum’, which ends in an unaccompanied passage so powerful and visceral that it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The direction we received was crucial to the scene’s success, and John’s ability to combine so many individual reactions and emotions within a congregation was evident from the response we received every night from the audience.

Gale Edwards’ production of La bohème, with set and costumes designed by Brian Thomson and Julie Lynch, is set amid the social upheaval of the last months of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s, and has become a regular production in the Opera Australia calendar. Since first performing it in 2011, I have always portrayed a ‘gold prostitute’. I adore playing this character, one who has certainly developed over the years (and is perhaps a little wider), and I know when we do put this production to bed, it will be like saying goodbye to a dear friend. That is the beauty of revisiting a production so often: I can learn what works and what doesn’t, what angles will look more flattering, who I decide to engage with in the rest of the scene, and how my character is going to react to the principals and the music. This means no two performances are the same.

When Gale created this production in 2011, it became a wonderful process of discovery. With every member of the chorus being given an individual look, we slowly developed our own journeys in each scene. I would love to sit in the audience and watch this production because there is so much going on in the Act Two scene in Café Momus – with the full chorus, actors, children and principals – that it must be a dream for a theatre lover.

Neil, Simon, John and Gale have directed productions across several platforms within the arts industry, and I think they each bring with them a different approach to a score and to storytelling. I often wonder what grabs them first – is it the story or the music? Do they study the libretto and story away from the orchestral, or do they allow themselves to be moved by the music, listening intently to the rise and fall of the score, the climaxes, heartbreak, passion and tension? Whatever their approach, the two elements come together perfectly in their productions, like a partnership.

Whenever we have the chance to work with Australian choreographer Graeme Murphy, we find that he brings a completely different element to a production. With Graeme’s successful career as a dancer working with esteemed companies such as the Australian Ballet and the Sydney Dance Company, you can be guaranteed that an element of dance will feature heavily onstage in any project he undertakes. A fine example of this is in Puccini’s Turandot. Even when we are standing still, as we do at times during Act Two, he has such a seamless ability to incorporate movement into our reactions, vocal responses and gestures through his direction. When dressed in our exquisite flowing costumes designed by Kristian Fredrikson, it can even appear that we are floating above the stage. This production premiered in 1990, and the fact that it is still being presented today is a testament to Graeme’s genius in storytelling.

Opera Australia engages several resident and revival directors, as well as engaging guest directors from other opera companies in Australia and overseas. Some of these directors are inspiring. One Italian director we worked with recently on Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Rosetta Cucchi, was everything you could want in a director. She explained the opera’s arc over the four acts, individual scenes and our contribution with incredible insight and understanding. You’d rarely see her sitting at the front of the rehearsal room. Rosetta preferred to be among the action, singing, breathing and acting out nearly every single word. She gifted us individual characters, responses, gestures and intentions, allowing us to unearth other elements to bring to our performances. Even when we moved to the theatre, she’d be on the stage walking among us all. I don’t think I have ever experienced such a hands-on director and I loved every minute of it.

Sometimes a collaboration comes along that turns opera on its head, quite literally, and this became evident in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. Guided and directed by Australian Yaron Lifschitz, this production melded two independent art forms – opera and circus – in a partnership with the fantastically talented performers of Brisbane’s Circa Contemporary Circus. Both principals embraced the retelling of this story by placing their trust in their Circa colleagues and engaging with the physical elements of the production while still delivering the most exquisite vocal passages. I was thrilled to be a part of something so revolutionary and unique. We performed only eight shows, but I could have done many, many more. It certainly left a huge impression on me.

Every director is unique in the way they convey their vision for a particular scene – and sometimes they are extremely entertaining. During one rehearsal for Aida, our Italian director, Davide Livermore, told us, ‘I want you to enter the stage like a vomit’ – meaning that he wanted us to explode onto the stage from the wings. With English not being his native language, he came up with an alternative way to express exactly what he required. It made us laugh and, as we entered the stage every night, we made sure we executed his direction perfectly. So even though the language barrier exists at times, there is always a way to express the intention behind every direction.

To work on a production of an opera with its original director can be a gift. But if the show is programmed more than once over many seasons, the original director very rarely returns, and the responsibility is given to a revival or resident director in Australia. This can be a tough assignment, especially if the revival director hasn’t had the advantage of working alongside the original director on their production. Yes, they may receive a score that has been written up with all the stage directions and cues, and if they’re lucky they can study this alongside an archival recording of the production. But they still need to put in hours and hours of study to make sure they are so familiar with the piece that they feel like the original director. They have the responsibility to stage it as near to the blueprint as possible and adhere to the original instructions.

I’ve worked with a good number of revival directors over the years. They all approach the work differently, and I take my hat off to every single one of them. Most are directors in their own right, so it takes a very special set of skills to honour a production’s original staging but also take the opportunity to breathe fresh air into a piece. Often, the cast will be different, so this alone will naturally alter a production, and a soloist may not agree with the original staging of a scene. Revival directors need to be flexible and patient, in control yet sympathetic. I’d hate the job. Rather them than me!

***

As much as I’d love for every single night in the theatre to be a magical experience, where I exit stage door fuelled with adrenaline, this just doesn’t happen – well, not for me, anyway. Throughout my career, I’ve realised it might be because it’s an opera that I just don’t like (and believe me, there are a few of those); a particular production or interpretation I can’t seem to connect with, musically or dramatically; or I’m ‘just not feeling it’ that night. Thankfully, the music nearly always sees me through. I can pinpoint orchestral passages in an opera that have removed me from the mundane and soul-destroying feeling of having to stand still in the background of a scene, and transported me to a place where I experience such musical perfection that I’m reduced to tears.

In some productions, the chorus can appear to be nothing more than ‘singing wallpaper’ standing in the background, ‘dressing the set’ and creating a wall of sound. Don’t get me wrong – at times this can be an extremely powerful experience for performer and audience alike. But when I hear that our role will be limited to stagnant acting or being ‘up the back’, my heart does sink a little. This infamous direction is called ‘park and bark’.

It all depends on how the director works with the chorus as a whole, and the information we are given when building the scene in the rehearsal room. The instructions and intentions we receive in those times when we find ourselves immobile are even more important than the instructions when moving around and interacting with our colleagues onstage. Standing still requires even more focus to tell a story. We need to know why we’re there, how we’re delivering the text through singing and how we are moving the story forward. I don’t want to feel as though the chorus has been herded into a corner because the director doesn’t know what to do with us but knows that we need to be somewhere on the stage. Sometimes I’m reminded of the New Zealand TV programme Country Calendar, in which sheepdogs run around different sheep farms up and down the country, herding sheep into clumps and eventually, though not always successfully, directing them into their pens.

There have been numerous times I have found myself in this situation and wanted to yell, ‘Is it over yet? Because I’m slowly losing the will to live back here’, as I stand there listening to aria after aria after bloody aria!

Throughout my years on the professional circuit, I’ve experienced extremes when it comes to directors. As a chorus in a repertory company, we are always working on multiple operas in any one season, so each director may only get us for a short amount of time. Every minute in a rehearsal room is precious, and that clock is ticking. My dream director will know exactly what they want to achieve within every scene, while at the other end of the spectrum there are directors who appear to be making it up on the spot. I’m sure they’re not, but at times it really does feel like it. I am aware that both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, and that I must be patient and trust in the process (not always easy when my patience seems to be slowly decreasing, thanks to my ever-decreasing hormones!). In one of my productions overseas, the creative team called the cast onto the stage to change a direction just before the curtain rose on opening night! Believe me, this can be a very terrifying place to be. There are enough nerves pulsing through a theatre at a premiere without adding an extra level of ‘Are you having a laugh?’.

As much as I hate to admit it, there are times when I have felt undervalued, not only as a performer but as a professional. My colleagues and I are happy to do 99 per cent of what is asked of us by any director, and we are willing to give practically anything a go in order to fulfil the director’s vision. But when I feel like I have had my professionalism insulted, or the role of the chorister has been disregarded, I have been known to lose a little bit of respect for the person standing up the front of a rehearsal room. But, in the end, there is a production that needs to be staged and an opening night fast approaching, so whatever situation I find myself in, I need to make it work. I am known for speaking up if something doesn’t feel right or if I don’t understand a direction. I know it can be annoying when I challenge an idea that has been presented. But do you know what? I do it because I care greatly for every production I am involved in, and I want it to be the best it can be, and I want to be the best I can be in it.

I remember one colleague, years ago, in the dressing room saying, ‘I’d really like to see what this production actually looks like from the front, because it feels like shit to be in.’ Harsh but fair. Another returning to the dressing room during a break in a stage rehearsal said, ‘Wow, I didn’t think that scene could get any worse, but it just has.’ At these times, it is up to the chorus to fill in the gaps, to tell the story and to find our own intentions, purely from our years of experience.

I’m happy to say that the vast majority of the directors I have worked with since entering the professional circuit have been very inspiring, and these are the experiences that I focus on and remember when I feel others fall short. I’ve come to realise that some possess a natural ability to work with a larger group of people, whereas others are better suited to focusing on a smaller number of principal artists. Whatever the situation, it challenges me, forcing me to become a better performer – and, as we all know, there is always a lesson to be learnt. At the end of the day, my colleagues and I want to be able to walk into a rehearsal room and be seen, respected and valued as a group of individuals who bring with them endless possibilities if the director is willing to guide and place their trust in us.