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She looked a rather unassuming lady in a fuchsia pink coat, but once she spoke in a warm New Zealand accent, she transformed into both a performer and storyteller. Diana Dodd is part of the Cotswolds Savoyards, an amateur theatre society formed in 1962, which has specialised in performing the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Her excitement and passion for theatre is palpable. She discovered from the age of five that it sparked such joy for her.“I get a total buzz out of performing. I can’t think about anything else. I don’t care about the cost of living or Liz Truss or anything. It’s just so exciting.”
She drew on the unpredictability of her craft. “The thing about musical theatre I love is that the performance you’re sitting in the theatre [watching] is live. It’s not pre-recorded, not on a film, or a DVD… it’s actually happening.” She explained, “there will be mistakes and people will trip up on things, and they may have to keep going because that’s the nature of theatre.”
And Dodd has experienced some incredible mishaps.“I once performed in a show in Chipping Norton when the entire set fell down! The whole thing! And the audience clapped and cheered and thought it was meant to happen.”
Even as such an outgoing character, even she gets a little nervous when the curtain first draws: “[There’s a] mixture of terror and excitement, [it] depends on the size of the role really.” Dodd also spoke about the parts she often performs. “Now I’m a bit older I usually get the ‘old lady’ roles which is fine by me. I’ve been playing ‘old lady’ roles since I was 30! I really like [these characters] because they usually come on[stage], say something ridiculous, maybe sing a song and then swan off.”
Before she came to the UK, Dodd was a performing arts teacher. She spoke enthusiastically about the achievements of her previous students.“Some of my students were in Harry Potter, and three of my students were in the Lord of The Rings down in New Zealand, you might know one of them, Marton Csokas.” (Who played the Elf Queen Galadriel's husband, Celeborn). “He was in New Zealand and then he went on to do the Bourne Supremacy and all those things.”
She reflected on her former student with pride. “He was a very talented teenage boy, who could have gone on to do anything really. He could have been a professional rugby player as well. But he decided he wanted to do theatre, which is fabulous. Those kinds of experiences…you know, watching a film and knowing a student of yours is going to be in it, is just so exciting. And a present Disney princess over in Disneyland Paris, is one of my students. Emily says to me, (she comes back and visits sometimes), ‘If I ever have to sing ‘Let it Go’ from Frozen again I’ll scream,’because they do about nine shows a day. But that gives you excitement too, it gives you pleasure, thinking I had a little bit to play in that person's totally idiotic choice to go into the arts.” She laughs.
She revealed her favourite production she’s been a part of so far. “[It was] Magenta in the original Rocky Horror Picture Show in New Zealand. So this was when I was a young woman, and had the legs to wear that sort of costume! Because [the show] was so new, New Zealand audiences didn’t know what to think about it. They thought, ‘there’s a man in suspenders!’ [it’s]not often you see that in New Zealand!”
She has played another popular role in musical theatre. I played Rizzo in the original Grease in NZ, {starts singing, There are worse things I could do..} ‘the tart with the heart’, they used to call me. Not the Sandy role which everyone thinks is adorable. When I was in my early twenties I didn’t see myself as that sort of person, I actually auditioned for Sandy… what was I thinking? And they said oh no no, your voice is all wrong for that, sing this song, ‘there are worse things I could do’, and I didn’t do it very enthusiastically, and they said “You’ll do for that role.” She was a many-faceted character.
The biggest event she’s been a part of was quite patriotic.“I was in the choreography team for the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Auckland. And that was very exciting to be asked to be a part of that. There was about ten of us.” She explained that if you ever got to watch a video of the opening ceremony, there’s a part with a sea, which is what she created. “That’s what I did!” She chuckled. “That was amazing, working with hundreds of people, they had all these big [pieces of] material which they had to waft around to show the journey across the ocean for all the Pacific Islanders. And you knew it was only one performance. You didn’t get paid for it, but what you did get given [was a] bronze medal at the end.”
Dodd described the roles that she finds most challenging.“Probably any role that has played me against the cast. I’m a very outgoing person, which I presume you can see, I’ve always been like this since the age of five. If I had to play anyone very shy, [or] things that had a lot of lines…I’m not so great at lines, I tend to make them up when I forget them which annoys people!”
She outlined for us ‘The Gondoliers’, the latest show for The Savoyards that she is directing, which she described as ‘light’ and ‘funny’. “It’s a comic operetta. So an opera is when you have no dialogue, and an operetta is when you have a bit of dialogue. It’s a comedy, about two slightly dumb men who are gondoliers in Venice. And they get told that one of them is King of Barataria, this mythical country. They then fall in love with two girls and marry them. Then suddenly someone arrives and says, ‘hold on, you can’t be married, we’re going off to Barataria to find out which of you was married as a child to the Queen of Barataria.’ It’s a typical Gilbert and Sullivan, [with] lots of mistaken identity, some beautiful love songs in it, and some funny comedy songs.
“There is some fabulous singing. I’ve got a handful of singers who are ex-pros from the Royal Opera who can really belt out a song. They don’t need microphones, the just go ‘wham!’ and it’s just stupendous.”
Diana provided an inspiring example of someone who gets the most from life in finding (and losing) themselves in their passions.
‘The Gondoliers’ is running at the Cheltenham Playhouse from the 8th-12th November 2022.
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