When we think of actors, chances are that we consider movie stars over actors who get their start in a theatre environment. However, with thousands flocking to acting hubs like London, New York, and LA, how many think to look to the theatre as a place for training? If they do make it big, how many like to go back to the theatre for extra experience?
(Image Source: Pixabay)
A Different Ball-Game
Many actors like to go back to the theatre as acting here is a very different experience compared to being on a film set. For one, a crew is trained to keep as quiet as possible, to let actors do their jobs. However, an audience is nowhere near as considerate, with some even going so far as to call out to actors on stage.
Acting in the theatre also forces actors to use their skills in different ways. On a set, they have the luxury of being able to try different things in each take, and if they mess up or forget a line then there will always be another take. Things are not the same on stage. You have one shot in which to nail it, and if you under-deliver you can leave your audience for the evening unimpressed.
Prestigious Roles
Taking up a role on the stage allows actors to step into some of the most prestigious roles they will face in their career. For example, Shakespeare films are few and far between compared to the wealth of stage productions put on each year.
There is also a multitude of other iconic roles that are best performed on the stage. For example, James McAvoy is well-known for his film roles, but he is also an accomplished stage actor. Most recently, he took on the role of Cyrano de Bergerac to critical acclaim. This will allow them to develop new skills that will also help them once they return to a film state.
A Chance to Start
Even if they have a dream to end up as a movie star, many of the best actors start off in theatre. Many talented British actors like Sir Ian McKellen and Olivia Colman had their start on the stage and it helped them to develop their careers and build a following even before their first role.
If you want to know more about the best up-and-coming actors and what the big names are up to, you can browse sites like www.celebnetwork.com. You can easily keep in the loop when it comes to your favourite films and actors with sites like these, no matter what is going on in the wider world.
Every TV or film actor should consider taking on a stage role at some point in their career. It can teach them invaluable skills, and gives us – their fans – the chance to see them in a live setting, doing what they do best. Keep an eye out for news of film actors heading to the theatre soon!
Canadian digital video company Underknown is proud to lead LIVEMEDAID, a live-streamed benefit show featuring renowned scientific leaders. It will shine a spotlight on the global crisis caused by COVID-19, and celebrate hope, resilience and the human spirit.
The fundraising event will provide insight into the collaboration between global scientists and researchers in their collective hunt for a cure and share ideas about what we can learn from the virus. All money raised will support Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and frontline healthcare workers in the global fight against COVID-19.
The event will take place this Saturday, May 9th between 6 p.m. EST – 11 p.m. EST, and will stream live on LIVEMEDAID social channels including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and on www.livemedaid.com.
“We are thrilled to lead this global first-of-its-kind event, promoting unity and showcasing hope and humanity,” said Steve Hulford, co-founder and CEO of Underknown. “Science is more important than ever and we are committed to deliver credible, science-based information to a global audience who is searching for answers,” said Hulford.
An impressive list of doctors, scientists and other prominent thinkers confirmed to participate include:
Dr. Jane Goodall, primatologist and anthropologist
Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, cosmologist, planetary scientist and author
Dr. David Suzuki, academic and environmental activist
Wade Davis, anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author and photographer
Dr. Sarah Ives, Netflix documentary, “Pandemic”
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, infectious disease physician at University Health Network
Anders Tegnell, physician and civil servant and current state epidemiologist of Sweden
Musical acts lined up for the event include Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies), Earth, Wind & Fire, Bombino, Patrick Watson, Jesse Cook, Alex Cuba, Paul Anthony and more.
All online peer-to-peer donations will go to support relief efforts through Doctors Without Borders / MSF.
LIVEMEDAID is being distributed to over 200 million digital followers including: Popular Science, Goalcast, WatchMojo, Infographics Show, Diply, WCSFP and What If.
International award-winning Canadian singer/songwriter and recording artist Francine Honey has released a double single — both solo and a duet — for her newest song, “I Carry On” — available now!
The song is a testament to the human spirit and its ability to overcome the challenges that life throws our way. It asks the question: Where does this courage come from?
Co-written and recorded with Honey’s songwriting friend and neighbour, Robert Gray, “I Carry On” is the second single released in anticipation of Honey’s upcoming fifth project, 2020 Vision — a chronicle of her life story so far in song. The double album due out later this year follows the Fall 2019 single release of “Red Sky” and full-length Holiday album, Take Me To The North Pole.
Honey explores: “When the path through is unclear, there are unexpected heroes that appear with help. Whether it is a partner, a caregiver, a parent, a child, a friend, or one’s faith in something larger than life, this song expresses gratitude to those that light our world and help us through. There is nothing like seeing the light of love beaming from someone’s eyes when we need it most.
“I have had my share of challenges in life struggling to make ends meet as the sole provider for my two children and somehow I always knew I’d get through them,” Honey adds. “Robert and I were outside chatting one day as neighbours do and he told me he was going through a major health challenge with cancer.
“We bonded over our mutual feelings about overcoming challenges with the help of a positive attitude, gratitude, love and song writing! We talked about how others have inspired us in the past, and wrote about how people are there for you when you need them and the strength that we as humans find to survive and overcome our challenges.
“You just do what you have to do to get through it.”
It took them a few months to find the time to sit down to write this song they talked about, and when they did finally meet, it came together pretty quickly. In fact, Honey was headed down to Nashville to record Take Me To The North Pole and loved the song so much, she asked producer Neilson Hubbard if they could record the song for release in 2020. Honey invited Gray to Nashville to be there if he wanted to see the song being recorded, and after, asked if he wanted to take a stab at singing the song himself in the studio.
“Luckily, he agreed,” she recalls, “and it became clear a duet brings new meaning to the song.”
For this reason, there are two versions of “I Carry On” — the solo is a more country version with Honey’s vocals, and a duet featuring Gray which adds another dimension to the song, she says.
Honey is not new to dealing with adversity and finding a way to “Carry On.”
A mother of two and former federal civil servant, Honey is finally living her dream; she has the love of her life, and the career she long denied herself. Her path through life and into songwriting has been years in the making: Although she’s made music since childhood — “I wrote my first song in 1976” — Honey never dreamed of making it a career. Instead, she studied math and computers, got married, had kids and worked as a project manager. Her life seemed perfect. Then a near-simultaneous breakup and job loss forced her to relocate, find a new career and raise a family alone. Music went on the back burner; she never stopped writing, but songs went unfinished — until her kids fixed that.
“When my 18-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son kept telling me to “Get a life, Mom!” they really were showing wisdom beyond their years,” she says. “After spending time thinking about what my life would be after they left the nest, I realized I had stories to share, and there was still an opportunity for me to at least try and turn my musical hobby into my profession.”
Along the way, the down-to-earth artist has displayed extraordinary dedication to her craft. Honey’s debut self-produced (in her living room) album An Ordinary Woman came out in 2008 and was followed in 2014 by Re-Drawn, produced by Lang Bliss in Nashville. The latter includes the song “I Soldier On” — and its French partner “Je Vis Sans Limites” — in support of the Soldier On fund in Canada. In 2015, she also re-recorded many of her early songs for the EP An Ordinary Woman (In Studio) with Mark Plancke of SharkTank Productions in Windsor, ON.
Honey took a few years to work on her craft, studying, exploring and chasing her sound, until 2018, when she began working with GRAMMY Award-nominated producer Neilson Hubbard in Nashville, TN. She recorded her full-length album to be continued… live off the floor in six days.
The album has received critical acclaim Internationally; her song “Stay” is a finalist in the 2018 International Songwriting Competition in two categories, recognized from more than 19,000+ entries around the world, receiving semi-finalist nominations in both the Americana and Blues categories. In addition, “Stay” was a semi-finalist in the 2018 Canadian Songwriting Competition (Folk/Singer/Songwriter).
The Austin Songwriting Group out of Texas awarded first place honours in the Country Category with “Stay” and first place in the Singer-Songwriter category for “Can’t Break Through To You” in April 2020 along with five other song placements including a third place for “I Carry On” in the Inspirational category.
2019 saw Honey release a few singles starting with “Flocons de neige sur mes cils,” the French counterpart of “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes.” This was followed by “Chez mon oncle Lucien”, a song written around the Hangman’s Reel that her grandmother used to play on her violin, is a traditional French-Canadian song with the memory of doing maple syrup at her uncle’s farm. “Red Sky” was released in October 2019, described as a gritty and dreamy flight through change.
Honey’s music has received critical acclaim and sees airplay on CBC, Radio-Canada, AM800, CTV, SiriusXM, Folk Roots Radio, and more across Canada, the US, UK, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. Her over 20k+ fans online are very happy she left her government career to pursue music full-time. She performs regularly on-line with her series “Honey In Your Coffee” and streams almost every live venue performance. Her belief that music gets you through life and her commitment to helping people feel less alone by sharing life through song connects people across the world to support each other. Her campaign last year to touch those suffering with grief through the holidays with her song and video “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes” and the French counterpart garnered over 1.5 million views, but most importantly connected people grieving from all over the world. It’s no wonder that the video for “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes” was a finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest.
As a graduate of the Berklee College of Music Professional Singer-Songwriter Certificate Program, Honey regularly makes the nine hour drive from Ontario, Canada to songwriting workshops in Nashville where she has been mentored by icons like Beth Nielsen Chapman (who contributes backup vocals to Honey’s “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes”), Mike Reid (“I Can’t Make You Love Me”), Mary Gauthier (“Mercy Now”), Verlon Thompson (“Boats to Build”), Gretchen Peters (“Independence Day”) and Jonatha Brooke (“Put the Gun Down”).
Honey is a member of the Americana Music Association, Songwriter’s Association of Canada (SAC), Nashville Songwriter’s Association International, and Canadian Country Music Association. She co-ordinates the SAC’s Leamington & Windsor Regional Writer’s Group mentoring other songwriters, has showcased at the Texas Songwriters Symposium four years in a row, as well as at the NSAI Tin Pan North Festival, Hugh’s Room, the WinterFolk Blues and Roots Festival in Toronto, the Kingsville Folk Music Festival, and the Folk Music Ontario conference. Her music and songwriting have not only taken her through Canada and the U.S but to the U.K., Switzerland, and Italy.
She continues to co-write with other artists, aiming to have her music recorded by fellow performers and licensed for TV. “If I could get a song on Grey’s Anatomy or another TV or Netflix series, that would be cool,” she laughs. “But really, I just want to keep going, writing better songs. I’m finally a songwriter and I know I’ll do this the rest of my life.”
If you’re an artist, you know music, so, why not review an album you love, an album you recently got into, an album you didn’t think you’d like but love, and album you loved, ignored, and love again – see the pattern, no hate, no negativity. Give some insights to it all from your perspective, the album cover, the song titles, the mood, what’s awesome about it? And best of all, you get to listen to a favourite album again!
Refuge is the stunning new release from Billboard-charting, multi-JUNO nominees Sultans of String – a diverse collection of songs celebrating the struggles and successes of refugees and immigrants. The album boasts an impressive guest list of collaborators and weaves masterfully through a myriad of different sounds and styles.
Join Sultans of String’s violinist and producer Chris McKhool and Canadian Musician Editor-in-Chief Andrew King for the Refuge Online Album Launch, going live from Canadian Musician‘s Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/cdnmusician) on Tuesday, May 12th, 2020 at 2 pm ET (11 am PT).
You’ll hear songs from the album with video from the recording sessions, get the inside story on the album and how they landed their high-profile guests, and a lot more!
There probably isn’t a musician on Earth who hasn’t dreamed of jamming with the one-and-only musical force of nature known as Prince. For Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, this dream came true during Prince’s now-famous 21-night residency at The Forum in Los Angeles in 2011.
As the opening of this 1974 documentary demonstrates, many people in the United States have never heard of New Zealand. In an attempt to remedy the situation, Kiwi director Tony Williams (the Bugger ads) followed Texan country rocker Kenny Rogers and his band The First Edition as they toured the country in a Road Services bus. All western shirts, shaggy hair, beards and satin jackets, they see the sights, meet the locals (many of them older rustic characters), play baseball, put down a hangi, break into song — and admire the country’s slower, more dignified pace.
Canadian dark-pop/alt prodigy Mikalyn Hay — and co-write partner EDM and pop artist Xtro (Chris Graham) — has dusted off an earlier fave for a fresh remix with a global vibe in “Close” — available now!
Discovered by International label and management outpost Reven, “Close feat. Mikalyn & Xtro” was reimagined by Brazilian bass/future/tech house artist RQntz (Requintes) and Russian EDM duo 39 Kingdom for the Spring 2020 release.
The original video from Mikalyn and Xtro’s initial imagining remains available via YouTube here.
“‘Close’ was a very fun song to write,” Mikalyn recalls of the track’s creative process some two+ years ago. Hay and Graham — who were 16 at the time — collaborated for a six-track EP, Love Again where the original version of “Close” was featured. “Chris and I have written many songs and this one started out the same way all of them do: alternating between our makeshift home basement studios, mine in Guelph and his in Toronto.
“For ‘Close,’ we had been freestyling around the line ‘close to me’ and, once we had the song fully written, I knew it was my favourite,” she continues. “It’s been so cool seeing where the song started, and comparing it to what it’s become. It’s crazy.”
RQntz and 39 Kingdom’s take on “Close feat. Mikalyn & Xtro” is available now.
