Singer and Actress Catherine Francoise
Singer and Actress Catherine Francoise
There
has been quite a bit of drama in Catherine Francoise’s life and a lot of singing
too. There has even been some dancing. Ms. Francoise is the founder and owner of
the Vocal Performance Academy, located just outside of London, England, a
performing arts teaching facility for youth. Catherine Francoise, her faculty
and students regularly stage musicals and other productions that draw crowds
large enough that they would be the envy of many North American theater
companies. At the end of March and the
beginning of April her school is reprising the musical
Annie and in July the are embarking
on their biggest theatrical production to date, as they stage
The Sound of Music in six hundred
seat Beck Theatre in Hayes, located in the London borough of Hillingdon. The
production will also feature an orchestra.
In some ways producing The Sound of Music is déjà vu for
Ms. Francoise, because when she left college in 1982 she auditioned for
The Sound of Music and was one of the
finalists, prior to her also auditioning for Irving Berlin’s
Call Me Madam and she was selected to
be a singer and dancer in the ensemble.
Call Me Madam began at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and eventually moved
to London’s West End.
“Over the next four to five years I worked consistently
in a variety of regional theatres in the U.K. and some musicals,
Jesus Christ Superstar. (Several
years) later I went into The Phantom of
the Opera. I went in on the Monday, I got two days of rehearsals in and I
was on stage by the Thursday. I was what they called a swing cover. I was
covering everybody in the company. I enjoyed doing that. Four of us auditioned
to do a show called songs of the musicals. They wanted four of us from
The Phantom of the Opera, a mezzo, a
soprano, a tenor and a bass. For two years we went around the U.K. doing a thing
called The Great Musicals.
Phantom opened a lot of doors for me.
I was also able to go and do some work on the ships. I did some concert
performances on the QE II. I (performed) in Hungary, Belgium, Slovakia, France
and Australia (including on stage at the Sydney Opera House) and in the United
States (including) Atlanta, Georgia,” she says.
For such an accomplished performer, it may surprise some
to learn that becoming a world renowned singer and actress was not something
that many would have thought would be in store for Catherine Francoise, when she
was a child.
“I was quite a shy child and I was told that I would
never, ever be a performer. I played the piano, but I was painfully shy. If
anyone spoke to me I would just shrivel up. This is why I am so passionate about
teaching. I still think of myself as a performer. All those years of being told
that I wasn’t good enough or I wouldn’t make it, I was determined that I would
make it. Nobody ever said to me or pulled me aside and said let me go over that
with you or give you some coaching, so you will be more confident.
I was just trying my own way. My lovely
parents knew I liked playing the piano, but they didn’t take it very seriously.
It was a different era then, you didn’t ship your child off to stage school or
anything else, it didn’t exist. When I got into the Guildford School of Acting
nobody was more surprised than my parents and my teachers.
Nobody thought in a month of Sundays that I could do it. They thought I
was too quiet to be a performer,” she recalls.
She in fact became quite in demand as a singer and
actress in the U.K. appearing in Annie
as Gracie, The Girlfriend,
H.M.S. Pinafore (Josephine),
Carousel,
The Pirates of Penzance,
Perchance To Dream,
Bless The Bride,
The Girl From Vancouver and the
pantomime of Sinbad The Sailor. Her
beautiful soprano vocals have been showcased in roles such as The Queen of the
Night in Die Zaubeerflote, as Susanna
in The Marriage of Figaro, Tatyana in
Eugene Onegin, Despina in
Cosi Fan Tutte, Voletta in
La Traviata, Adele in
Fledermaus and Frasquita in
Carmen.
Before founding the Vocal Performance Academy, Catherine Francoise served as a
teacher at other notable performing arts schools, including, the Mountview
Theatre Academy and the Guildford School of Acting located in Surrey, England
and an affiliate of the University of Surrey.
“I am a singer and actress, but I trained originally as
a dancer and my heart is still a dancer and if I come back in another life I
would like to be a dancer. I look like a dancer, so I got away with an awful lot
when I was booked in the West End. I can move and I can actually dance to a
degree, but I would never really be involved in the mainstream dancing. I
trained as a dancer from the time that I was seventeen or eighteen. I did have a
lot of injuries. I didn’t have a particularly good dance teacher and I realized
that is why I wasn’t a very strong dancer. I picked up bad habits that caused
all of these injuries (including tearing the ligaments in her left ankle),” she
says.
When she started the Vocal Performance Academy, Catherine Francoise wanted to
put the emphasis on performance.
“I remember as a child while taking ballet, we were
lucky if we did one or two performances in a year and you were just waiting for
that time when you would do the show and then you would have one dance that
would last for two minutes. I really love to give them (her students) the
skills, but also to give them the performance opportunities. After that it will
give them the confidence for whatever they do in life.
In December of 2011, the Vocal Performance Academy
presented its third Christmas pantomime, this time,
Alice’s Adventures in Christmas
Wonderland. Other productions included
Billy Elliot presented at the
Watersmeet Theatre, Journey to Oz,
Little Women (Compass Theatre),
The Jungle Book,
An Evening With Judy Garland,
The Pirates of Penzance and
Songs That Won The Wars. Her largest
cast to date has numbered thirty-six, but that number of players may be topped
with this summer’s production of The
Sound of Music.
“Along the way, I have taught some very talented
students, who have gone on to forge some great careers in the West End or on
television and the rest of it. There are a number of students that I taught who
are currently appearing in the West End or who are currently on tours in shows
like Sister Act,” says Ms. Francoise.
However, whether her students or former students are
performing in large or smaller scale productions, Catherine Francoise says, “I
think it is important for the students to understand that whether a venue is
big, or small or grand or poor, the quality of your performance should remain
the same. You do your best, whatever performance you are going to be in. When
they grow up, they might find they are performing in a pub one week and on the
stage at the opera house the next month.”
The Vocal Performance Academy has an exceptionally
gifted faculty including Guest Choreographer Adam Maskell who is one of
critically acclaimed, Tony Award winning choreographer Matthew Bourne’s dancers.
There are classes in ballet, tap, jazz and street dancing. There is instruction
in Classical music, musical theatre, Pop vocals and drama.
Bottom Photo: Catherine Francoise with Sir Elton John
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