My disqus friend magnificenttalepenguin attended the Masterclass Nina gave today at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Here are her thoughts on this unique occasion:
Nina appeared and took her allotted, single, lonely seat centre stage at The Haymarket Theatre, London, a theatre that during “resting periods” in her early career, she had been both an usherette and bar staff; know we know why she says all she can do is “fix people drinks and act.” She wore blue jeans, those “Romanesque” lace up boots from Elegy rehearsal pics and a bronze-orange top with a brown tailored jacket.
She was humble and bashful initially (and now and again during) wondering why on earth she had been asked to Chair a Masterclass, just because…why me? Also because “I am shy at heart and sitting here seems very odd…I’ll probably leave here and have a mini breakdown later”.
She began by giving a resume of her early days of training in theatre companies. She extolled the values and virtues of Kosh theatrical company, where she learnt the physicality of acting and also the tenets of her craft: discipline, hard work and good timekeeping. She stated that she very much learnt her craft “on the job” because she was frightened of attending drama school. As a result of her work in Kosh and latterly Oddsocks she managed to get a job in a musical, not even realising she could sing!
She then managed to get into fringe theatre at Baron’s Court* (all these references, of companies etc, Sos has methodically catalogued on this site) Othello was performed at Baron’s and Nina’s character had to die on stage…but it was such a tiny stage that she had to die standing up and remain that way!
She went to N.Z. for two years and worked there. Upon her return to Blighty she understudied at the RSC - during her audition for it, she ensured she wore an appropriate skirt for her character and realised afterwards she had the ticket with the price on it, showing to the casting directors that if she only paid £7.99 (back then) she “must be cheap, so we’ll hire her”! She ensured she attended all the mandatory, and also non compulsory, extra curricular activities classes such as vocal techniques etc.
Nina said that once she had The RSC on her C.V. it opened up so many doors, especially Educating Rita in Southampton. She felt that The RSC was her drama school, that’s it taught her everything a “school” would have and far far more. She said that she would be learning her understudy part, then doing the small play, in which she had one line (the same line for an entire year!) and then do the main play at night.
She was noticed by a casting director who had gone to see Andrew Lincoln (co star in Teachers and now in that Living Dead USA series) in a play next door to where she was performing another play and happened upon her and decided to ask her to audition for Jenny in Teachers.
The audience seemed to comprise of mainly theatrical students, or newly graduated. If I may say, for people whose livelihoods depend upon their voices, the vast majority of these thespians questions were mumbled and muttered, how the heck Nina could hear them and understand them was admirable in itself! When Nina was asked about whether there are still great parts for women in theatre & TV, she replied that theatre seems to be ahead a bit - it has a greater range of parts for women and TV is lacking somewhat. She did point out that it does help having female producers, writers etc in the TV business, mentioning that LTiH was predominantly of that ilk and she thought that was good and spoke favourably of LTiH female production team - maybe absence and distance give some wistfulness?
Breaking News People - Breaking News…you heard it here first…Nina loves Soap Operas. Nina: “you know the ones…the Aussie ones, go on, you all watch them really”. It is, she feels, the one form of performance where as the viewer, you are with that one character or character’s story for years; no other art form provides that continuity…There is a snobbery towards soaps which she believes is unnecessary and unfounded. She particularly liked one character and then ages down the line this character was regressing to type and Nina was “rooting” for the character to not do what she was intending to do!
Nina reiterated (in answer to a question from audience) what she had recently said re: how she prepares for a play, that she doesn’t have whole script in her head, that she has her part, the context of that within the play and then an outside eye, both when performing theatre and TV as to who is where, what is happening on stage and said she does the same when performing on TV, where you have to have more of “the eye” because of lights/cables your framing in shot etc.
I noticed that @syltansz off the tweets etc asked Nina re: You, Me & The Apocalypse and her excellent accent. Nina informed us that it was originally to be called “Apocalypse in Slough” but that the Americans wouldn’t be able to pronounce it!
Nina gave some insights into how she prepares for roles, research and how she advised the thesps in audience to look at what their character says, what that character says about other characters and what those characters say about your character, that way you begin to piece together the jigsaw of your character. She prepares for a specific theatrical performance a few hours ahead of curtain up with a variety of physical/vocal and other exercises. She feels it is her job to play a part she has been given and although as we know she has a work ethic of not turning down work, she informed us that she recently turned down a part where she as the main female lead was to be on the receiving end of domestic violence. She would have done it, if the part/play/drama was to explore the nature of such violence, the causes etc, but it seemed to her it was gratuitous solely for the sake of it…although she said that when that part comes out, it may well be that the way it is played it does become more than just violence for the shock factor, but she did not feel she wanted to do it. It is not for her to bring too much of her own opinions to roles as things are “taken out of context”, don’t “want to bring too much of my own perspective/opinion into things”. I may be way off kilter here, but to me, coming almost at the end of the Q&A, this, rightly was a diplomatic way of Nina perhaps saying that - I may be getting more main parts now but I am not venturing into doing anything mainstream that is not the promotion for a specific part/role…she even referred to the “tweeting thing” and all the other bits.
Nina clearly does take her art very seriously and she alluded to her thoroughness for a couple of parts - yet she remains self deprecating and happy and nonchalant and affable…long may she!
NB - to any other websites/readers/online periodicals/blogs etc, who may read this and “use” extracts or paraphrase the content, there may well be more than one or two red herrings in here, it’s a little trick used in some film/TV teleplays for copyright purposes and such like.
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