Conviction – The verdict at Leeds

A week at Leeds Conservatoire

Our week at Leeds Conservatoire was marked by the students’ work ethic – they were in the studio 20 minutes before call time, preparing and warming-up their voices – and their enthusiasm to experiment with new elements of Conviction.

P Burton-Morgan directed and encouraged their explorations and rehearsals.

The students showed the work in the Leeds Conservatoire auditorium, led by Josh Sood, our Music Director, on keyboard, and Gavin Dent, our General Manager running the voting response programme.

Gavin Dent holds the camera for a selfie. P Burton-Morgan, Ian Grant, and Chris Walker sit on chairs behind a music stand used as a desk, while Josh Sood stands behind them. They are all smiling.

Six students sit together in a semicircle of chairs, they are looking at music stands in front of them. They are in a room with black walls. Behind them to the left there is a stage with drum kit and speaker and lights on steel trusses.

On the right six students sit together in a semicircle of chairs with music stands. Behind them there is a stage surrounded by steel trusses. To the left is Josh Sood playing piano, Chris Walker stands behind the piano and P Burton Morgan sits facing the students.

P Burton-Morgan sits on a chair with their back to the camera. They are wearing a pink jumper and have short dark hair bleached blond. Beyond them six students sit together in a semicircle of chairs with music stands. Josh Sood stands with an iPad to the right, gesturing with his right hand.

Ian Grant and P Burton-Morgan smile at the camera. They are both wearing yellow beanie hats. P wears teal fingerless gloves and gives a double thumbs up.

A curved glazed building with yellow brickwork above. A black sign over the windows reads LEEDS CONSERVATOIRE in white text with a broken rectangle around the words.

P Burton Morgan points with a pen. They are wearing a pink jumper, teal fingerless gloves and a yellow beanie hat. You can see a red brick building through a large window behind them.

In the foreground two male students laugh. They have sheet music on an iPad on a music stand in front of them. In the background Chris Walker sits at a laptop on a music stand and Ian Grant stands at another music stand. There is a big white frame holding blue fabric on the wall behind.

Chris Walker smiles while sitting behind a music stand holding his laptop.

Ian Grant, Chris Walker, Josh Sood and P Burton-Morgan squeeze into a lift.

Six students stand in front of chairs with their backs to the camera. Josh Sood leans over on the far left. They are all standing on a wooden stage floor facing a bank of raked seating in an auditorium.

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What was new?

New rap number

The audience – the cohort of music theatre students and faculty – responded vigorously to the rap number we showed.

Testing a vocoder

We were testing the concept of delivering the language of the court sung through a vocoder, distorting the sound to simulate the sense of disturbance and anxiety that the central character, Maria, might feel being on trial and under pressure from the Prosecuting Counsel.

Some audience feedback was positive, but I’m not sure the effect is sufficiently disturbing yet.

Voting response technology

We were also trying out our voting mechanism for audiences to fulfil their role as the Jury.

“I got excited when I could vote – ANYTIME I could vote” Audience member

So how did they vote?

This audience clearly found Maria ‘not guilty’. This was the same verdict as we’d had from the students at Chichester University in a workshop last October. Other audiences have concluded differently and we look forward to receiving and recording more opinions as we continue to develop the work.