Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 20

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

IT BEGAN IN AFRICA

R a radio and repertory actress Pauline Kermode showed, we thought, exceptional reticence when. we _ persuaded her at last to come in and tell us about herself. After all, we pointed out, she had worked for The Listener not so long ago, and should be willing to give us some bright copy. But Pauline kept pretty closely to

bare facts, and insisted that there should be "no frills"’ The Kermode story, we discovered, be-

gan in Salisbury, Rhodesia, but Pauline went to England as a little girl and after a few more years came out to New Zealand. Here she spent some years in Napier before settling in Wellington. She was educated principally at Marsden College and Victoria University College. An interest in both radio and drama began very early, for Pauline admits she "must have been only about 10" when she had a small part in a_ broadcast series called Know Your Child. At that age it was exciting to be a professional, collecting half a guinea a broaccast for speaking only a few lines. While still at school Pauline also took part in 2YA Children’s Session programmes, and as recently as 1950, while she was on holiday in Australia, wrote a series of letters which were broadcast in the

session. A year after that she joined the staff of the Broadcasting Service. Several positions during her three years in the Service included, apart from one at The Listener, spelis in the Head Office Music Library and in Head Office Talks Section. In 1954 Pauline left the NZBS to go abroad. "T went to England to study drama," she told us, "but besides doing that I was able to take my L.T.C.L. and to see a good deal of Britain and the Continent. I was away from New Zealand altogether for 14 months. Highlights of the trip? Well, the real highlights, I suppose, were a skiing holiday in Austria and repeated visits to Stratford-upon-Avon, where the Oliviers were

playing. And Paris was wonderful, too, especially by night." During the next few months:Pauline will be heard in the Women’s Hour from the ZB and X stations and 2ZA in six talks on her Continental travels. The first will be broadcast from 2ZB this Friday (July 27). Since coming home Pauline has been teaching speech and drama, both privately and to school classes. Drama, she admijts, is still her main interest. In recent years she has taken part in both radio plays and Wellington repertory productions. Her most recent radio part was in Christopher Columbus, and lately she has been working Hard as producer of Moliere’s Sganarelle for the Victoria University College Drama Society. Outside working hours she has been giving some time to fencing, which she took up enthusiastically while in London. "But skiing is still my favourite recreation," she says. Incidentally, this is an interest she shares with her fiancé, John McLean, whom she _ will marry at the end of the year. John is in the final year of a law course at Victoria University College.

AUDIENCES

¥* ‘THE Austrian pianist Paul Badura-. Skoda had found his New Zealand audiences most appreciative, he told us when we saw him briefly about half-way through his tour. All over the world audiences are different, he finds, and

their response largely depends upon their basic musical education. "This

is true whether the artist is playing jazz or any other kind of music," he said,

"and of course the same is found in all the other arts."" In Mr. Badura-Skoda’s opinion the best kind of audience is the one that’s quiet while an item is being played. Then, he feels, the atmosphere is charged with a kind of electricity. "It gives an artist a wonderful feeling," he said, "when a great crowd is completely silent and he feels almost alone." The applause at the end is the final reward, he added, and no performer ever minds how many times he is recalled. :

REPRESENTATIVE

a HEN James F. Mudie takes over shortly from Robert Stead as BBC representative for Australia and New Zealand it will not be his first broadcasting job well East of England. As far back as 1939, as a young man in his early twenties, he worked for the Malaya Broadcasting Company after a short spell with the BBC’s Engineering Division. He has a more personal interest in Australia through his wife, who was born there. Mr. Mudie, who is 39 years old, went to school in Edinburgh and at the Royal

Technical College, Glasgow, and joined the BBC on the

technical side in 1937. The war found him in Malaya, where he served with the Royal Corps of Signals and was taken a prisoner of war in 1941. He remained in enemy hands till 1945. After the war Mr. Mudie returned to the BBC and was with the Overseas Service, in the Presentation Department and the Ceylon Programme section. Later his experience of the East was'drawn on when he spent four years in Singapore as Head of the British Far Eastern Broadcasting Service. Since last year he has been Senior Planning Assistant with the BBC Television Service. Mr. Mudie has one daughter. a

‘THE Australian tenor Ronald Dowd, always popular with operatic and concert audiences here, has within the last few months joined the Sad'er’s Wells (continued on next page)

DEBUT

(continued from previous page) Opera Company in London. The magazine Musical Opinion wrote of his debut as Canio in Pagliacci: "Mr, Dowd is a singer of sensibility and an actor of great possibilities. His voice is well

placed and controlled and is consequently secure in pitch. He is able, moreover, to use

it as a means of expression. He realises that artistic necessity for degrees of tone amount, and appreciates the dramatic

power of a planissimo. Not once did we feel that he considered (as so many appear to these days) that a= sustained fortissimo is the sine qua non of a singer. It will be interesting to hear Mr. Dowd later on in a more lyrical role."

The review also noted the first appearance of the New Zealand singer Denis Dowling in the title role of Don Giovanni: "Denis Dowling gave a nimble, swashbuckling account of the Don and, until the last few scenes when his voice began to show some signs of strain, sang with a good quality of tone and sense of style."

FRANCISCAN

x ‘| HOUGH Father Agnellus Andrew has been associated with religious broadcasts from the BBC for about 14 years -he is now Roman Catholic Assistant to the Head of Religious Broadcastinghe first took the air in a programme of

music from the Western Isles of Scotland. "That was during my long

spell in the North of England, when I founded a large choral, orchestral and operatic group which I ran ti'l I left Manchester for London," he told us. "It became well known in the North. Our programmes included a good deal of lighter music, such as Gilbert and Sulli-

" . van." Father Agnellus said that music was "quite a hobby" with him, and there was a note of regret in his voice as he mentioned that he now has no time for this sort of work. Father Agnellus, who is being heard in the monthly Christian Question Box programmes-the next will be broadcast from YA and YZ stations on August 2is a friendly, cheerful Scot who was born in Ayrshire and educated at Garnethill College and London University, A Franciscan friar, he did parish work in a big parish in Manchester for six or seven years and lectured "pretty continuously" to Catholic undergraduates in Manchester University. After that he was put in charge of Catholic social teaching in an area in the North of England. | Readers will recall from our interview | with Father Agnellus printed some time | ago that he first took part in religious | broadcasts when a BBC representative heard him answering questions "off the cuff" at a factory gate meeting. From then on he was heard, for several years, in a religious "brains trust" called The Anvil. Nowadays Father Agnellus does little ordinary religious broadcasting, such as talks and services, but still has a hand

in sound and television commentary and in other work where special knowledge and techniques are required. Broadcasts of this sort have taken him to Europe on a number of occasions, and he has also had to attend many international conferences on broadcasting —

in France, Spain, Germany, Rome and America. Outside his BBC post Father Agnellus works-and lives-in a big | Roman Catholic radio and television centre in London. |