JANUARY 2013
NIDA's Open Program Summer sessions. I taught an intensive course on Accents. Five days and nearly 20 accents covered! We did focus on the big ones - RP, Cockney, GenAm, Southern American, etc. but we also looked at West Country, Yorkshire and Liverpool, Irish dialects and Scottish, Appalachian, Chicago, New England and New York, and a smattering of French! The five students came in leaps and bounds from the first day - the more accents we covered the greater the understanding of sounds and speech - I was very proud at the end!
JANUARY 2013
BWM's TVC campaign for iiNet with The Finch Company. I've was brought in to coach cast members in an Irish accent. I sat in on the casting process in Sydney with Fountainhead Casting and then on Skype for the Melbourne auditions! I was onset for the shoot helping the actors portray iiNet's main character Finn's crazy family from Ireland. Originally the brief was Southern Ireland, but we ended up going for Northern - although they used a take for one shot where an actor went South on one word - there's only so much we can do! Generally I think it came out fantastically!
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2013
Pilot season. Actors of all types are putting down scenes for the busy US pilot season. I've coached people on their auditions for projects including The Saint, Trophy Wife, Bloodline, a new Cinderella fairy tale TV series, and numerous as-yet-unnamed-or-undisclosed projects. Clients like Caroline Craig, Casey Burgess, Briden-Starr Aspinall as well as fresh, new faces have polished their accents with me for their auditions.
I also currently have two clients for foreign accent reduction - one Italian and one American. Both present unique challenges but are making great progress. For the former the difficulty is largely about the consonants and their interaction - initial /h/ especially - will vowel length is also a challenge. The latter drops a lot more -g's from their -ing's than I would have expected, finding them hard to insert in common contexts. Also the GOAT diphthong is predictably hard to realise and hard to conceptualise. For both a developing awareness of their own sounds is vital.
FEBRUARY-MARCH 2013
Beautiful Thing is an urban fairytale about two young men set on a London housing estate. It tells the story of teenager Jamie’s relationship with classmate and neighbour Ste. Together they find comedy, warmth and the music of Mama Cass with their loud-mouthed neighbour Leah. This queer theatre classic exquisitely depicts what it is to be sixteen, in the first flush of love, and full of optimism.
Cast: Michael Brindley, Luke Willing, Amanda Stephens Lee, Stephanie King and Andrew Hearle.
Director Brandon Martignago
Designer Jasmine Christie
Lighting Designer Benjamin Brockman
Stage Manager Daniel Oliver
Publicist Nick Creevey
MAY-JUNE 2013
The Crucible for Lane Cove Theatre Company, directed by Dan Graham. Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of its first production, Miller’s exquisite American tragedy is more relevant today than it ever was. A classic parable of mass hysteria, The Crucible draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 – 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' – and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations. A searing tale of belonging, intolerance, and moral courage that is destined to resonate for centuries to come. Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play in 1953.
Featuring a talented cast including Dimitri Armatas, Jessica Sullivan, Michaela Baker, Gemma Munro, Edward Hart, Shannon Fallows, Patrick Lester, Kevin Weir, Matthew Thomas, Melody Duan, Neil Khare, Ruth Murphy, Claire DeMellow, Lauren Adams, Courtney Gibson, Pam Ennor John Bowring and Emily Rader.
10th May - 1st June
Mowbray Public School
635 Mowbray Road,
Lane Cove
JUNE 2013
A 30 minute short film being shot in Los Angeles, REDENCIÓN is an epic sci-fi short set in 2038 on a future Earth entrenched with enough pollution that the government has restricted air travel and the rationing off of travel miles is just as important as money. At the core of it all is the story of a man on a quest to reconcile with his estranged daughter when a natural disaster hurls his plans off course. Written by Helen Shang and Aimee Long, Directed by Aimee Long and produced by Kelly Li and Xing-Mai Deng.
I'm coaching the lead actor Valentino del Toro in a Canary Islands dialect - for those curious, the most famous example of this sound is none other than Javier Bardem.
JUNE 2013
The Australian Premiere of Enron at the New Theatre.
"The only difference between me and the people judging me is they weren't smart enough to do what we did."
One of the most infamous scandals in financial history is transformed into a theatrical epic, charting the notorious rise and fall of the American energy giant Enron and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. I'm acting in this one after a nearly two year hiatus from performing. I'm playing the accounting wunderkind who was the architect of Enron's ultimate downfall, Andrew Fastow.
Directed by Louise Fischer, with a cast including Alexander Saloyedoff, Alexander Butt, David Todd, Donald Ferguson, Lisa Fletcher, Peter Flett, Lisa Franey, Cheyne Fynn, Jorjia Gillis, Paige Leacey, Cassandra Lee Heschl, Tristan McKinnon, Matt Young, and Gareth Cruikshank.
Great reviews rolled in - see below!
Previews Tue 4 & Wed 5 Jun 7:30pm
Wed - Sat 7:30pm, Sun 5pm
Final performance, Sat 29 Jun, 5pm
REVIEW: StageWhispers
REVIEW: Lisa Thatcher
REVIEW: Shit On Your Play
REVIEW: Timeout Magazine
REVIEW: Sydney Arts Guide
SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 2013
My second production for the year of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, this one for Emu Heights Productions, directed by Ian Zammitt. They've taken the plunge and sought my help for the Cornish dialect Miller himself has been quoted as saying was one of his sources for the unique language of the play.
Into a small Puritanical community struggling to survive the harsh conditions of the early American frontier, a new threat arises: witchcraft.A girl lies in a catatonic state under strange circumstances. Whispers of the devil’s influence begin to grow and shameful truths are lost among pointed fingers. Pride, jealousy, ignorance and terror are allowed to flourish amid the hysteria, with shattering consequences.
Written at the height of the paranoia of the Cold War, Arthur Miller’s classic of modern theatre is a searing indictment of mass hysteria.
Q Theatre, Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre
597 High Street, Penrith
Preview: 11am Fri 15 November (half price tickets)
Matinees: 11am Tues 19, Wed 20, Thu 21 & Fri 22 November
Evenings: 8pm Fri 15, Sat 16, Fri 22 & Sat 23 November
SEPTEMBER 2013
Equus for the Sydney Fringe Festival. I was brought in towards the end of their process to fine tune their vocal work.
The British play Equus, by Sir Peter Shaffer was first produced at the National Theatre in London on July 26 1973. 40 years later the impact the play has on audiences is still as strong as it was when first produced. The universality of some of the plays themes: crime, religion, the media, coming of age and identity, drive the play through a narrative that is mysterious, captivating, unnerving and breathtaking. A narrative that audiences can't help but connect with. This is one of the great plays centering around youth in society. A 2007 - 2009 London revival which transferred to Broadway starred Daniel Radcliffe and the late Richard Griffiths. You are invited to share in the celebration of this classic British play.
Check out the company's website here!
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2013
Fango Negro for Future Classic Theatre. Directed by Paul Ellis, this unique theatrical experiences comes to Sydney out of the depths of South America, i.e. Venezuela! Street theatre with a twist - the audience follows this story on a bus ride through the city, seeing the action unfold amidst bustling traffic, taking interactive theatre to another level.
The cast includes Latin Americans and Australians so I'm helping them all sound Latino, but also with the significant challenges of performing on a moving bus!
Season Commenced Thursday 29th August 2013
Shows Thu - Sat: Arrive 6:55pm for a 7:00pm start
Dawes Point Park
HICKSON RD, THE ROCKS
SEPTEMBER 2013
EMPIRE - Terror on the High Seas, a new play by Toby Schmitz, directed by Tamarama Rock Surfers' Artistic Director Leland Kean. I last worked with Leland on All The Rage in 2012, and the cast includes some old colleagues of mine and some wonderful new colleagues. I'm coaching this large and talented cast in the wide variety of accents and dialects called for - including Received Pronunciation, Cockney, Lincolnshire, Scottish, New York, South African, French, Barbadian (Bajan), Indonesian, and an Australian from the 1920's. Here's the official blurb...
Be transported back to the high-water mark of the British Empire for the kind of gothic thrills that will leave you haunted long after you disembark the Empress.
Director Leland Kean
Producer Kar Chalmers
With Ella Scott Lynch, Nathan Lovejoy, Duncan Fellows, Billie Rose Pritchard, Fayssal Bazzi, Anthony Gooley, Phil Spencer, Robert Alexander, Anthony Gee, Ben Woods, James Lugton and Elaine Hudson.
At the Bondi Pavilion Theatre
Previews 28 – 31 August
Season 4 – 28 September
Times Tue – Sat, 8pm
SEPTEMBER 2013
A one man show! As part of the Sydney Fringe Festival I teamed up with Brevity Theatre's Alexander Butt to put on Becky Mode's fantastic play Fully Committed.
We did three shows at the Fringe venue the New Theatre, and had great houses. Here are some reviews:
Lisa Thatcher - "...one of the most impressive feats of comic performance you are ever likely to see. Curnow is in full command of his challenge...
[He] races around the desk answering loud, imposing, dominating phones as he physically transforms into each of the personas he embodies. Speed, wit and comic timing are in perfect balance in a performance that almost can’t be improved upon."
Theatre Red - "Nick Curnow is superb, creating thirty eight characters in fifty minutes... Curnow’s ability to delineate such an enormous cast of characters is awe inspiring. The laughs come thick and fast. His vocal work is nothing short of extraordinary... This is silver service satire."
Shit On Your Play - "Certainly Curnow’s vocal skills were terrific. We recognised each character immediately and his nuance and range was impressive...It's a performance marathon."
