It'd be an honour...

As I mentioned in my last blog posting, epic as it was, I am applying for Honours in Music Education commencing next year. Basically what this involves, I am just now discovering, is that I need to put the rest of my life on hold.

Honours in Music, as part of a Bachelor of Music at the Con, involves studying your regular BMus subjects as well as conducting Honours simultaneously. For the Bachelor of Music (Music Education) Honours course, this commences in the third year of the degree and runs over Semesters 5, 6 and 7. To spare you all the boring and very confusing details... what this translates to is that I am going to have to sign a contract promising to discontinue my work with one of the two societies I am in and considerably lessen the input I have to the one I choose to continue with. As you'll see when you read my proposal below, the choice is a rather obvious one. Technically what this means will happen I am at this stage unsure, but it seems I will only be allowed to be a part of one production over the whole of my Honours study, and that I will need to be involved in it in a way that is beneficial to the research I will be conducting. Tricky stuff...

So, much as it pains me, I really do want to do Honours, and it seems I will have to make some very large sacrifices for this to happen.

Nonetheless... the point of this particular blog posting is to provide you all with a copy of the 'this is where you write a rough idea of what you think you'd like to research' part of my Honours application. I'm going to put it below this post.

Please let me know if it makes sense, if you think it's a good idea or not, any ideas you have for other avenues of research or ideas you might have in general. Any feedback at all would be so very much appreciated and you might just get a mention in the acknowledgements section of an internationally published thesis!

If you have trouble posting feedback please email it to me at patt.howard@gmail.com. I plan to submit my application this Wednesday, 18th November, so don't hesitate to jump in. Thanks guys! It'd be an honour to have your input on something I am so excited about and value so much (I am disgusted with myself for making such an obvious and terrible joke).

Part of My Application:

Outline of Initial Ideas for a Research Topic

The ideas I have for a research topic revolve around the place of musical theatre within secondary schools – in music education, the culture of the school / learning environment and the lives of students.

Below I have provided a list of raw ideas that I have considered to be relevant to my own interests which could be researched as part of this general idea of ‘musical theatre within the secondary school’.

• The role of the student within a school production; a comparative study could be conducted between schools which only allow students to play in the orchestra or perform on stage and those who also allow students to take on production roles such as choreographer, director, etc. Furthermore, seeing how these opportunities benefit both students and a production.
• The marriage of the three performing arts subject areas; are school productions the only time that music, dance and drama should intertwine... could there possibly be benefits from using techniques and material from dance and drama in a music classroom, perhaps in context of a school production the students are involved in at the time?
• How are the ‘Theatre Music’ areas of study in both the Stage 4 and 5 NSW Board of Studies Music Syllabi taught? To what extent does the practical experience of being in a school production assist learning in this subject area, and to what extent is this experience utilised by teachers in the classroom?
• The personal and individual benefits of being in a school production for secondary school music students – musical, social and otherwise. This can be looked at with reference to the ‘Life Skills’ elements of the Syllabi.
• The school production as an extra-curricular school activity...
  - the inability of teachers to provide the experience to students without their electing to partake in the production or to use the production as a compulsory educational initiative,
  - the workload a production entails for teachers and students out of school hours and
  - the availability of funding for productions (which tend to be expensive) and how this affects the experience that can be provided for students. This can be looked at in relation to the value placed on performing arts / school production by a school.

I have a great deal of personal interest in musical theatre and a great deal of experience in both school productions I was involved in during my time in primary and secondary school and in my role in the Sydney University Musical Theatre Ensemble (MUSE) – both on the executive of the society and as a performer and part of the production personnel within its productions. These experiences have lead to my having an increased amount of contacts within the relevant field of study for this research topic, both in Sydney and in regional areas of NSW, as well as an ever-growing passion for musical theatre within an educational context.

I plan to study MUSC2674 – ‘History of the Musical’ and GENS2002 – ‘Practical Stagecraft’ during the course of the third year of my degree and believe these subjects will benefit my research into this subject matter.

Life Behind / Through the Fourth Wall

I have had many wonderful life and artistic experiences since the last substantial post I made on this blog, and after being prodded by Kenny, I thought I should finally make the epic post that has been building for the last month.

Sure as hell beats attempting to learn this atonal melody off by heart for my solfège exam...


Not having the most wonderful time with Uni work at the moment. Just so excited for next year... but that and more is to come in the following epic post. Ahem...

Best place to begin, I believe, is with The Mystery of Edwin Drood, where this musical has taken me and all the events that have occurred along the way.

Firstly, I must start by saying I don't know how or why I didn't join MUSE in O-Week of 2007. The experience I had in doing this production reminded me exactly of who I was and where I wanted my life to be heading.

I auditioned for Drood cautiously, as I was part of the production team for the contesting production in the slot that lost to Drood, and felt that I was somehow always going to be a part of the 'other' team that lost. However, right from my initial audition, I felt a welcomed party and began to take the whole thing much more seriously, but also to enjoy it more.

I auditioned with a full-blown first day of the flu... fever, nausea, every resonant space in my head completely filled with fluid... and somehow managed to sing rather well. Well enough to in fact, be given a callback for the lead. Upon completing my audition for the part of Jasper in my callback, I was informed my only other contender, Rowan - a good friend of mine and fellow Conservatorium voice student (only he is much more talented than I), had turned down the role, so I had been given the part.

The next few months were a whirlwind of blocking, singing, frenetic dancing, drinking, conflict, scripted casual racism and a barrage of in-jokes. In short, I cannot detail everything of what happened as it would go on for far too long and not be particularly interesting for someone else to read, but these few months have truly transformed me as a person and truly affirmed me in where I want to take my life. I will attempt, below, to detail the wonderful, wonderful things that have happened to me as a result of this musical...

• The experience of once again being on stage affirmed both my undulating love for performance and musical theatre and, oddly, my desire to not perform professionally for a living, but to help other young people to experience the giddy and exciting rush that being part of a staged musical brings.
• I have made some of the most wonderful, amazing, beautiful friends that ever there was to be, and become even closer to the wonderful people I knew before Drood. This, I think, has been my favourite aspect of being a part of this production. For reasons I will explain further on in this post, these people and the chance to work with them on this production, were the one thing that kept a very fragile Patrick from falling into pieces during an epically stressful period of my life. If you are out there, I fucking love you all. You have become like family to me, and to work with some of you again in Sweeney Todd next year would just be my most rapturous dreams come true. I am a truly blessed and spiritually wealthy individual for having come to know and love you.
• Drood inspired me to pursue studying Honours in Music Education. I was umming and aahing about it for a few months, unsure if I had the passion that was required to research through literary sources and fieldwork research, write about a topic for two years and procure a 16,000 word thesis and presentation at the end of it. Being a part of Drood, and in particular having an extensive chat with my high school music teacher Liz at the end of the matinee performance she came to, made me realise this topic requiring passion was right under my nose. Let's hope my application will be successful (just quietly, I'm pretty confident it will be).

Overall, this experience was wild, and hilarious and just wonderful in so many ways. I have learnt so very much about the world and the way people work as well, of course, about the ins and outs and practicalities of putting on a musical. It'd be great to get some experience on a production team in the future.

And now, I'll move on and talk about other wonderful artistic things that have happened to me in the last month... beginning with Opera Australia's production of Britten's Peter Grimes

I have not been so in awe, so gobsmacked and affected by theatre in years. Not since 2006 when I saw Sydney Theatre Company's production of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, which is still in my mind the most brilliant performance (whether it be theatre, opera, musical, recital) I've ever witnessed. Nonetheless... Peter Grimes comes an extraordinarily close second.

Typically I never make it to see professional productions. They interest and excite me greatly, however I usually instantly dismiss them due to the expensive prices for tickets and my phenomenally small income. This opera, though, had a particular hype surrounding it before it was performed and my wonderful colleague Sarah, who writes a particularly well-renowned blog on opera in Sydney, insisted that, 'if you make it to one opera this year, it should be this one'. I was lucky enough to see a production of Madama Butterfly earlier in the year with student rush tickets, but decided that one opera was not enough and if it really was going to be so wonderful I should go.

And lo and behold, the Con offered all Con students and staff free tickets to opening night, but I had a rehearsal for Drood and couldn't attend. Depressing, I can assure you. However, all was not lost as the wonderful and divine aforementioned Sarah managed to wrangle me a company rush ticket to a Tuesday night performance. What a performance it was...

I won't attempt to review it, others have managed this much more eloquently and covered most of what I'd love to say (mainly the lovely Sarah here, here and here) but I just wanted to say that I never understood the true heart-wrenching appeal of opera until I saw this performance. It was a true marriage of an exquisite score played (and conducted) to much aplomb, epic talent in the way of Stuart Skelton, Susan Gritton and the ever-wonderful Peter Coleman-Wright, the most beautiful and moving lighting, set and costume design I have ever seen and of course the unparallelled vision of the virtuosic Neil Armfield, surely one of Australia's finest ever directors.

I just feel that anything I write here will not do this amazing performance I attended and experience I had any justice at all. So, I will leave it there. But, it changed me.

Another wonderful performance I attended was my good friend from high school David's graduation performance of Angels in America Parts I & II by Tony Kushner. He was graduation from his Dean's Scholar Degree from the University of Wollongong - Bachelor of Creative Arts with double major of Performance and Creative Writing.

I have only ever seen one other tertiary drama school production before (a 2004 performance of The Grapes of Wrath by the then-3rd Year students of NIDA - which was wonderful) and didn't quite know what to expect when seeing this play. What I did see was a wonderfully experimental and postmodern production that wasn't afraid to use confronting nudity, very confronting sex scenes and copious amounts of (very realistic) fake blood - but used so well. These were all combined with some of the most realistic, tight and fluid acting I have ever seen from people so young really made me pay attention.

I hate to say this, but I never really saw my friend going anywhere with his acting, especially (USyd snob coming out of me here...) if he went to UOW. However, I was shocked and so very happy to see him perform so very well. He was really in his element and totally unphased by very violently raping a man in the arse in front of his unsuspecting mother and sisters (who I had the delightfully awkward pleasure of sitting next to during this scene).

Seeing this play (all five hours of it) made me so much more excited to have more performance experience and hopefully study Performance Studies after I have finished my BMus.

Goodness, this post has become quite lengthy indeed. I did mean to talk about the specifics of my idea for my Honours application, however I think I will synthesise these a bit more and put them into a separate post later where people can give more direct feedback and won't be overwhelmed by all the other things I've put into this post. So, time to conclude.

HOW APPROPRIATE! Sunday in the Park with George just came on shuffle... and which track but Sunday, the conclusion to the musical. So exquisite... it is such a beautiful work of art.

The past month has been one of great adversity. I have had many things occur that have really challenged me and somehow I have managed to press on and pull through them all. It is this 'somehow' which I have realised is the most wonderful combination of artistic satisfaction, intellectual substance, personal nourishment, irreplaceable friends, a smattering of alcohol, a brisk night and musical theatre. It is here in this 'somehow' where I want to spend as much of my life as I can. For now, studying subjects based around musical theatre, expression and education, being a part of the wonderful opportunity that MUSE is and opting to follow my pursuit of musical and dramatic education through my electives and Honours research is how I will stay in this 'somehow'. In the future, working with young adults in context of the HSC Music/Drama classroom as well as extra-curricular performance areas while dabbling in my own amateur work on the side will fill this void.

But for now, I have MUSE. For now, I have an extraordinary group of friends. I have so many opportunities and I truly cannot be grateful enough for these.

"White: a blank page or canvas,

his favourite.

So many... possibilities..."

Absence

I must firstly apologise... it has been quite a while indeed.

I began this blog with a pledge to take it seriously, started well with four posts in the space of one day... and then nothing. This is due to a number of reasons.

• I was dealing with having a long-term relationship very suddenly whisked away from me.
• I was involved in one of the most fantasmagorical experiences in my life, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• I have been inundated with an epic amount of assessments and other associated stresses from Uni.

Well... they are the three main reasons. However, here I am! I have not given up hope... I have been reading all the blogs of the wonderful people I subscribe to, and it has only been a matter of time. I have many things to blog about, but such little time. However, I promise to find time over the next couple of weeks to write about the following things.

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood - what the experience meant for me and where I am going in life as a result of it.
• Peter Grimes (Opera Australia) - without any doubt the most stunning performance of any nature I have ever witnessed in my life. Plenty to say about this.
• Angels in America (UOW 3rd Year BCA Grad Students) - not at all what I was expecting, a surprisingly moving, intense and marvellously executed play.
• The road ahead - where I can see the new year taking me.

That's about all for now... it's past 2am, time for me to get some rest. More Uni assessments to get on top of, not to mention prac teaching lessons to plan and exams to study for.