Another benefit of the trip is the opportunity to promote my business, and the group's every move is documented by photographers and a video crew. Everyone has been asked to tell his or her story, and tonight it was my turn to talk about my wish to return to Maldives to look for a way to continue training broadcasters there. The trip has already paid off in terms of the invitation from the US Embassy in Sri Lanka to do a workshop for TV reporters in Colombo. But before I hit the road... three days in London! Stay tuned.
Here's a mural on the 20th Century Fox lot in Century City, depicting a scene from "The Seven Year Itch." I've just joined the Screen Actors Guild conservatory to improve my skills as a performer. Who knows? I may branch out from newscaster roles and give Meryl Streep a little competition.
This panel at AEJMC in Boston has me rethinking the whole idea of voice training for multimedia. With all due respect to my fellow panelists, I believe it is old thinking to expect multimedia journalists to adopt the classic "announcer" voice of broadcast news. In fact, whenever I hear that voice on the internet, it's usually mocking someone who wants to sound credible but isn't. 
Internet media tolerates a wide diversity of voices, male or female and multi ethnic. But it's no longer the "we talk, you listen" school of announcing. Internet voices have an intention -- to inform, entertain, sell you something, persuade, help you solve a problem -- and they want you to TALK BACK. The voice must be engaging and approachable, like someone you'd want to meet for coffee at Starbucks. In other words, an articulate friend.
The simple stage shows a couple of bunk beds, similar to the ones I have seen in Nazi concentration camps. The beds form the backdrop for a work composed by Viktor Ullman, an inmate of Theresienstadt, commenting on death and tyranny in 1943. The opera had one final rehearsal that was "final" in more ways than one. The following day, SS realized the powerful message in the work and everyone involved was shipped off to Auschwitz, where they perished. The story concerns a dictator who is so brutal that even "Death" decides not to cooperate with him any longer. After realizing soldiers can no longer die gloriously in battle and that criminals will no longer die when they are executed, the dictator tries to "spin" this strange development as a powerful elixir he has given to the people. But no one is fooled. In the end, Death agrees to go back to work, but the emperor must be the first t0 die. In the end, stripped of his uniform, he joins the other "inmates" clad only in their underwear, as they march relentlessly toward a brilliant light. There's an excellent performance along the way by mezzo-soprano Peabody Southwell as the Drummer, using her sex appeal to try and pursuade a young soldier to choose war over love. It's as if characters from Cabaret were suddently doomed to a concentration camp arriving with their luggage only to be shown to their bunks and ordered to become the characters in the opera. Someone smuggled the score out of the camp and it was found in London during the 1970s. Powerful stuff. See it if you ever have the chance. I can't wait to see what the Long Beach opera will do next!
A Maldivian rocker chick? Who knew?
