ANIMALS and children feature strongly on Natalie Toyne's list of favourites at the moment, flying high in the face of received theatrical wisdom concerning the suitability of either as work mates.
Except that the 29-year-old, South African-born singer and actress seems to be spending more time performing as one of the former than as a human. And the reason? To create opera for the latter.
"All I seem to be doing at the moment is playing ani
mals," she says. "I was in the Tron panto last year and they cast me as an Australian spider. They loved it. I was a button spider with a big bum that spun golden thread and all sorts of things."
It's an attitude which certainly ticks the first box for working with children - the ability not to take yourself too seriously.
And now that she finds herself cast as a hen in the title role of Scottish Opera's latest offering for three to five year-olds, Auntie Janet Saves The Planet, such an attitude seems to be a prerequisite.
The hour-long mini-opera is set in a wood where Janet runs a hotel for animals who have lost their homes - with the young audience getting in on the act as they play water voles, complete with wee ears and noses.
"The children get totally involved," Toyne reveals. "I love it when you hear their little giggles as they see my chicken bum coming out for the first time. The costume works a treat!"
While Toyne takes her young audience on a quest to save the woodland in Auntie Janet, her personal adventure in the theatre has taken her from a disco-dolly Snow White (with several dwarves) in panto back home in South Africa, through singing jazz in holiday resorts around the world, to a course at the RSAMD and subsequent appearances for Scottish Opera and Random Accomplice.
It is also a journey that has seen the wannabe actress find herself forced into the role of a singer.
"When I first started out I loved my acting course," she recalls.
"I studied at the university of Natal in Durban and I studied psychology as well. Then somebody said I should use my voice and I was able to get on to this jazz course even though I had not studied loads of music before. I loved it so much I ended up joining a jazz trio."
Which is how Toyne also ended up singing in the Turkish resort of LykiaWorld, performing in the musical theatre side of things by day and jazz in the lounge by night.
It was there that she realised that every time she tried to get a role in straight theatre, she would be offered a singing role instead.
"I kind of enjoyed being forced into it!" she says with a laugh. "But that is why I decided to go and study musical theatre at the RSAMD, because that is the way my career was headed really."
Although she couldn't have foreseen the number of animals she might have to play in the process.
• Auntie Janet Saves The Planet, Traverse Theatre, Cambridge Street, Thursday - Sunday 21 June, 10.30am, 2pm (1.30pm Thursday), £6, 0131-228 1404
The full article contains 546 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
