Orvin - Champion Of Champions: Quotes by Alan Ayckbourn

"You don't often have the chance to write for a cast of 40, do something fun, with sword fights and dances. I met Jeremy Taylor [director of the National Youth Music Theatre] at the annual Andrew Lloyd Webber junket in 1996, where the National Youth Music Theatre were doing an excerpt from one of their shows, and Jeremy said `We must do something together'. He kept coming back to me and then two years ago he said 'Well, what about it?'. He gave me three time structures to work to and I chose the furthest away!"
(Yorkshire Evening Press, 1 July 2003)

Orvin - Champion Of Champions: Quotes by Denis King

When I was asked by Alan if I would like to collaborate with him on Orvin, I said yes before he’d even told me anything about it and in February of 2002 we started work at our by now customary breakneck pace. The show was more or less completed by April, with Alan in Scarborough and me in London the whole time. We never once met up throughout the entire writing process, nor did we speak on the phone (Alan dislikes the telephone). Alan would write a lyric, email it to me, I would set it to music on Capella, my computer programme, which Alan also has, and email it back. He would download it and be able not only to listen to it, but to see the music as well. A song would travel back and forth between us this way as minor adjustments were made until we were happy with it.
With the book and the score completed, the whole thing was put on hold until early 2003 when auditions were held both regionally and in London. Over two weekends at the Oval House in Kennington we saw over four hundred aspiring young actors. Eventually we arrived at a talented cast of forty. The selection process was complicated by the fact that the National Youth Music Theatre was auditioning for three other of its shows at the same time on the same premises, and because they didn’t want the kids to know which show was which--so they didn’t all run to audition for the Ayckbourn - each of the four production teams was given a code name. For some reason the theme was oriental fruits.
Alan and I were “The Lychees”, which amused us, but not as much as the discovery that our assigned audition space was on a stage where in the evenings there was a show in performance, meaning the set had to stay in place, something which one normally can work around and would be at most an inconvenience, but in this case the set consisted of a twenty foot giant phallus, and the NYMT was in a bit of an uproar trying to figure out ways of disguising it so that all these hundreds of kids auditioning for “Mango”, “Kiwi”, “Lychee” and so on didn’t have to stand next to it or worse, go home and tell their mothers. (Alan’s and my disguise suggestions included hat, gloves, and glasses).
What a great business this is.
(www.deniskingmusiclibrary.com)

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