~IB~ thought you might appreciate discovering a little about the background of Chris Chambers who is keeping us updated with the progression of Olympus. What kind of a character is Chris and how did he come to enter the world of musicals? Read all about it!
Would you like to give us an introduction to yourself and how you got into musicals?
I started at school really singing in small Cantata’s like Joseph and Jericho Jazz. I was usually playing the lady (laugh.) Then I did a lot of amateur dramatics at the Miller Centre, Caterham and the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead. I used to go for a week to summer school where we would pick a theme, spend the week rehearsing and put a show on at the end of it. We did, ‘That’s Entertainment,’ featuring Noel Coward songs. I remember at 13, jumping up on a couch and singing, ’Josephine,’ which I really enjoyed and the other song I enjoyed was ‘Play Orchestra, Play,’ a fantastic song which opened the show. I got a real sense of the stage in those early days. At Caterham School they gave me the opportunity to write and direct ‘Gunpowder, Treason and Plot,’ which went down very well. Then I went to university at Cambridge and repeated the Gunpowder experience. There I met a guy who took my musical and said, ‘actually we are going to have to cut this off, shave this and change that. I had a strange sense of despair throughout the process but I went through it and he actually did shape the thing into something that wasn’t a children’s musical; it was now an adult musical.
So was that your first major learning curve?
Yes it was a major learning curve and quite a painful one for a creative 19/20 year old who thought he knew how his musical should look! For a slightly older guy to come in and say, ‘actually you haven’t addressed this point and the shape of the show isn’t quite right... you need to get more of a love triangle development there ...etc,’ was hard to accept. He spent a weekend with me but from that weekend I shaped the next version, which was good.
How did you react at the time?
After that weekend I spent a whole summer writing out the musical score of,’ Gunpowder, Treason and Plot. In the end I sent it to Richard Stilgoe and he was very helpful. He invited me round to his house and we spent an afternoon playing each other’s songs. For me that was a moment of, ‘I can do this. I can write musical theatre.’ I have maintained some communication with Richard and even he will tell you how hard it is to get your work on stage in the world of musical theatre.
What else do you do relating to music and theatre, for instance do you play any instruments?
I am an actor when I’m not directing or writing musicals myself. I compose music and also write lyrics. I have written a couple of songs for Olympus which Ian Rae has arranged, but mainly the music is Ian’s. It was similar with Gulliver’s Travels. I pretty much wrote the ‘book’ and the lyrics while Andy Rapps wrote most of the music. Andy is a West End Musical Director, currently Associate Musical Director for Sweeney Todd. I play the violin and accordion however acting is my main line of work. Last summer I was at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon doing, ‘All Join In’ and we actually ended up taking part in ‘West End Live,’ at Trafalgar Square, where every show in London has a 10 minute slot. It was great fun doing the 10 minutes and then bumping into the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz and thinking, ‘Oh this is fun... ‘ - and then spotting Danielle with her red shoes in the wings! That’s kind of the fun side of acting but obviously the challenging side of acting is that it’s very difficult to make a living out of it. You get maybe 2-3 jobs a year and you are constantly fighting for work. I think the figure is around 90% of actors who are out of work at any one time. It’s like gold dust to get a job that pays you some money. My last one was with the Birmingham Stage Company over Christmas this year doing, ‘The Firework Maker’s Daughter.’ Previous to that I was with the Birmingham Stage in ‘Skellig,’ which went to Broadway for 3 weeks, so that was an amazing experience. As an actor you really need to work at developing a link with various companies and try to do a good job... Hopefully they’ll call you back!
What were the most challenging aspects of Gulliver’s Travels?
I showed a DVD of it to a guy called Chris Grady who’s done a lot to help new musical theatre in this country and he sent me an email that said, ‘Wow that shows what you can do if you have a lot of passion.’ I think that’s the word I felt for it, passion. The story reflected what I felt about life, about a man’s journey through life. I saw it rather like Leonardo Da Vinci’s man and to me Jonathan Swift was dissecting human nature. He was saying that Lilliput was the physical part of man, Brobdingnag was the emotional part of man, Laputa was the mental part of man and the Houyhnhnmland was the spiritual part of man. Scholars have a different take on this altogether, usually thinking that Houyhnhnmland actually represents some form of ethnic cleansing but I don’t take it as that at all. I take it as a man reaching for something spiritual while recognizing that his physical nature will always be a separate thing and somehow he’s got to combine the two. To me Gulliver’s Travels was about a man trying to find his soul and a better way to live, using his spiritual energy to do that. That was what powered me through the writing of that musical,along with Andy Rapps. Andy’s a great composer. We talked for a year before we wrote a single note so we were in line with how we were going to approach the project. Then I wrote the draft copy and away Andy went for 3 months and wrote the score. The Mitre players, an amateur company took it on board and worked with Julia Ascott, a fantastic local director who further developed it with her ideas. It changed once again when we started to rehearse… it’s a fantastic process, a passion.
How many people were in the cast of Gulliver?
It has a cast of 40 and Olympus is even bigger with over 60!
Why is Olympus so huge?
We are trying to make it epic to suit the Olympics. Although it’s not specifically an Olympic musical it takes its setting from the Olympic year and goes back in time to ancient Greece, where we have this Romeo and Juliet love story unfolding.
Tell us more about the original version of Olympus
The original Olympus concert version has never been staged as such. It was basically the Romeo and Juliet story set in Ancient Greece. There is some utterly beautiful music in that. It also has a different approach to the gods. The gods were portrayed in the usual manner of Greek mythology as interfering beings who came down and ruined everything for mankind. Following the Gulliver trail of a man finding himself, when Ian approached me to do it, I felt that that approach towards the gods didn’t interest me; so we looked towards shaping the show and put the emphasis on man having the responsibility to make choices in life which alter the play and the destiny. It shows that we shape our souls, evolving our soul’s journey. It is probably the most important thing you can learn. As Christ says, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ and that is what embues my work really. That is the message I think that comes out of Olympus and out of Gulliver. Healthy competition is wonderful but when it becomes obsessive and starts destroying your life and other peoples lives, that’s when you have to look at aspects of winning and say,’ are you really winning anything here? What are you actually gaining from it?’
Could you introduce the storyline of the musical ‘Olympus’ to us?
RIGHT: Chris with Ian Rae
The story is about a very arrogant, driven Olympic athlete who is losing all the important things that surround him, including his wife, because of his intense obsession with winning. Although they all try to help him he has become a rather nasty person, in some ways an island - yet he is incredibly famous and the media love him. He is an untouchable figure who is becoming more and more emotionally detached from what is really important to his journey. At the opening rehearsal for the Olympic games he gets struck by lightening and goes into a coma, sending him back in his mind to 780BC to the first Greek Olympic games where he is mistaken for the God Hermes. The rest of the story is about him trying to get back to the future. The only way he can do this is by showing a selfless act of love which is what happens at the end of the show, where he gets given the choice to do the selfless thing or go for the win. That’s the story and you have to see it to find out what happens!
Finally, can you tell us about your theatre company?
We set up ‘Another Way Theatre’ in Oct /Nov 2010 and did Twelfth night at the Middle Temple Hall in the centre of London: where Shakespeare first produced Twelfth Night in 1602. That was a fantastic opportunity and we had a cast of actor musicians who did a fantastic job. We are going to be producing Shakespeare again at the Queens Park Road Swings in Caterham, on 21/22/23rd of June this year and that should be fun. It’s an outdoor production on Midsummer Night’s eve and we are going to do Midsummer Nights Dream. The company was set up by me and my wife, Nicky Chambers. We are looking to do Shakespeare, new musicals and small plays in the local area. We are just building our theatre company at the moment so it’s just beginning.
The other plug I’ve got to do is : www.stagescripts.com I work there as a marketing manager. We are trying to get new musical theatre into the theatrical cannon for both amateur and professional companies all over the country. We are trying to get amateur companies in particular to be more challenging in the choice of musical they present to their audience. Much as we all love ‘Guys & Dolls,’ ‘Kiss Me Kate’ and all the standards, it is time now to embrace new work and there are writers out there creating new shows. Recently Mercury Musical Development, Perfect Pitch and Musical Theatres Matters got a big grant from the government to help that process, so at last new musical theatre is starting to get some backing.
We hope you are well informed and eager to book your tickets for the show if that is possible! Don't forget to enter Olympus in the search box opposite for previously posted information and check the page ~IB~ Babies at the top of the blog. Big thanks to Chris for allowing us to enter his world and we look forward to continued updates.
Would you like to give us an introduction to yourself and how you got into musicals?
I started at school really singing in small Cantata’s like Joseph and Jericho Jazz. I was usually playing the lady (laugh.) Then I did a lot of amateur dramatics at the Miller Centre, Caterham and the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead. I used to go for a week to summer school where we would pick a theme, spend the week rehearsing and put a show on at the end of it. We did, ‘That’s Entertainment,’ featuring Noel Coward songs. I remember at 13, jumping up on a couch and singing, ’Josephine,’ which I really enjoyed and the other song I enjoyed was ‘Play Orchestra, Play,’ a fantastic song which opened the show. I got a real sense of the stage in those early days. At Caterham School they gave me the opportunity to write and direct ‘Gunpowder, Treason and Plot,’ which went down very well. Then I went to university at Cambridge and repeated the Gunpowder experience. There I met a guy who took my musical and said, ‘actually we are going to have to cut this off, shave this and change that. I had a strange sense of despair throughout the process but I went through it and he actually did shape the thing into something that wasn’t a children’s musical; it was now an adult musical.
So was that your first major learning curve?
Yes it was a major learning curve and quite a painful one for a creative 19/20 year old who thought he knew how his musical should look! For a slightly older guy to come in and say, ‘actually you haven’t addressed this point and the shape of the show isn’t quite right... you need to get more of a love triangle development there ...etc,’ was hard to accept. He spent a weekend with me but from that weekend I shaped the next version, which was good.
How did you react at the time?
After that weekend I spent a whole summer writing out the musical score of,’ Gunpowder, Treason and Plot. In the end I sent it to Richard Stilgoe and he was very helpful. He invited me round to his house and we spent an afternoon playing each other’s songs. For me that was a moment of, ‘I can do this. I can write musical theatre.’ I have maintained some communication with Richard and even he will tell you how hard it is to get your work on stage in the world of musical theatre.
What else do you do relating to music and theatre, for instance do you play any instruments?
I am an actor when I’m not directing or writing musicals myself. I compose music and also write lyrics. I have written a couple of songs for Olympus which Ian Rae has arranged, but mainly the music is Ian’s. It was similar with Gulliver’s Travels. I pretty much wrote the ‘book’ and the lyrics while Andy Rapps wrote most of the music. Andy is a West End Musical Director, currently Associate Musical Director for Sweeney Todd. I play the violin and accordion however acting is my main line of work. Last summer I was at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon doing, ‘All Join In’ and we actually ended up taking part in ‘West End Live,’ at Trafalgar Square, where every show in London has a 10 minute slot. It was great fun doing the 10 minutes and then bumping into the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz and thinking, ‘Oh this is fun... ‘ - and then spotting Danielle with her red shoes in the wings! That’s kind of the fun side of acting but obviously the challenging side of acting is that it’s very difficult to make a living out of it. You get maybe 2-3 jobs a year and you are constantly fighting for work. I think the figure is around 90% of actors who are out of work at any one time. It’s like gold dust to get a job that pays you some money. My last one was with the Birmingham Stage Company over Christmas this year doing, ‘The Firework Maker’s Daughter.’ Previous to that I was with the Birmingham Stage in ‘Skellig,’ which went to Broadway for 3 weeks, so that was an amazing experience. As an actor you really need to work at developing a link with various companies and try to do a good job... Hopefully they’ll call you back!
What were the most challenging aspects of Gulliver’s Travels?
I showed a DVD of it to a guy called Chris Grady who’s done a lot to help new musical theatre in this country and he sent me an email that said, ‘Wow that shows what you can do if you have a lot of passion.’ I think that’s the word I felt for it, passion. The story reflected what I felt about life, about a man’s journey through life. I saw it rather like Leonardo Da Vinci’s man and to me Jonathan Swift was dissecting human nature. He was saying that Lilliput was the physical part of man, Brobdingnag was the emotional part of man, Laputa was the mental part of man and the Houyhnhnmland was the spiritual part of man. Scholars have a different take on this altogether, usually thinking that Houyhnhnmland actually represents some form of ethnic cleansing but I don’t take it as that at all. I take it as a man reaching for something spiritual while recognizing that his physical nature will always be a separate thing and somehow he’s got to combine the two. To me Gulliver’s Travels was about a man trying to find his soul and a better way to live, using his spiritual energy to do that. That was what powered me through the writing of that musical,along with Andy Rapps. Andy’s a great composer. We talked for a year before we wrote a single note so we were in line with how we were going to approach the project. Then I wrote the draft copy and away Andy went for 3 months and wrote the score. The Mitre players, an amateur company took it on board and worked with Julia Ascott, a fantastic local director who further developed it with her ideas. It changed once again when we started to rehearse… it’s a fantastic process, a passion.
How many people were in the cast of Gulliver?
It has a cast of 40 and Olympus is even bigger with over 60!
We are trying to make it epic to suit the Olympics. Although it’s not specifically an Olympic musical it takes its setting from the Olympic year and goes back in time to ancient Greece, where we have this Romeo and Juliet love story unfolding.
Tell us more about the original version of Olympus
The original Olympus concert version has never been staged as such. It was basically the Romeo and Juliet story set in Ancient Greece. There is some utterly beautiful music in that. It also has a different approach to the gods. The gods were portrayed in the usual manner of Greek mythology as interfering beings who came down and ruined everything for mankind. Following the Gulliver trail of a man finding himself, when Ian approached me to do it, I felt that that approach towards the gods didn’t interest me; so we looked towards shaping the show and put the emphasis on man having the responsibility to make choices in life which alter the play and the destiny. It shows that we shape our souls, evolving our soul’s journey. It is probably the most important thing you can learn. As Christ says, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ and that is what embues my work really. That is the message I think that comes out of Olympus and out of Gulliver. Healthy competition is wonderful but when it becomes obsessive and starts destroying your life and other peoples lives, that’s when you have to look at aspects of winning and say,’ are you really winning anything here? What are you actually gaining from it?’
RIGHT: Chris with Ian Rae
The story is about a very arrogant, driven Olympic athlete who is losing all the important things that surround him, including his wife, because of his intense obsession with winning. Although they all try to help him he has become a rather nasty person, in some ways an island - yet he is incredibly famous and the media love him. He is an untouchable figure who is becoming more and more emotionally detached from what is really important to his journey. At the opening rehearsal for the Olympic games he gets struck by lightening and goes into a coma, sending him back in his mind to 780BC to the first Greek Olympic games where he is mistaken for the God Hermes. The rest of the story is about him trying to get back to the future. The only way he can do this is by showing a selfless act of love which is what happens at the end of the show, where he gets given the choice to do the selfless thing or go for the win. That’s the story and you have to see it to find out what happens!
Finally, can you tell us about your theatre company?
We set up ‘Another Way Theatre’ in Oct /Nov 2010 and did Twelfth night at the Middle Temple Hall in the centre of London: where Shakespeare first produced Twelfth Night in 1602. That was a fantastic opportunity and we had a cast of actor musicians who did a fantastic job. We are going to be producing Shakespeare again at the Queens Park Road Swings in Caterham, on 21/22/23rd of June this year and that should be fun. It’s an outdoor production on Midsummer Night’s eve and we are going to do Midsummer Nights Dream. The company was set up by me and my wife, Nicky Chambers. We are looking to do Shakespeare, new musicals and small plays in the local area. We are just building our theatre company at the moment so it’s just beginning.
The other plug I’ve got to do is : www.stagescripts.com I work there as a marketing manager. We are trying to get new musical theatre into the theatrical cannon for both amateur and professional companies all over the country. We are trying to get amateur companies in particular to be more challenging in the choice of musical they present to their audience. Much as we all love ‘Guys & Dolls,’ ‘Kiss Me Kate’ and all the standards, it is time now to embrace new work and there are writers out there creating new shows. Recently Mercury Musical Development, Perfect Pitch and Musical Theatres Matters got a big grant from the government to help that process, so at last new musical theatre is starting to get some backing.
We hope you are well informed and eager to book your tickets for the show if that is possible! Don't forget to enter Olympus in the search box opposite for previously posted information and check the page ~IB~ Babies at the top of the blog. Big thanks to Chris for allowing us to enter his world and we look forward to continued updates.
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