Just a quick reminder that my short play Room 20 (written as part of my Nuffield Theatre Writers Group coursework) will be performed in London next Monday (15th).

SYNOPSIS
Room 20 is in silence – at least it should be. 15 year old Jason Azim is nearing the end of his second day of Isolation for the relentless bullying of another student, but Mr Brooks is supervising the last couple of periods – and he’s not in the mood for marking.

CAST
Jase: Lee Peck
Tim: Phil Gerrard

VENUE
Actors and Writers London (AWL)
Bridge Room/Bar
4th Floor
The Polish Centre
238 King Street
Hammersmith
London W6 0RF

DETAILS
Room 20 will be one of eight plays performed as part of an AWL competition night. The performances will be script-in-hand rehearsed readings.

TICKETS
£5 on the door.

Please let me know if you intend to come so I can meet up with you.

As well as the homework set after each fortnightly session at the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group, we are also given longer term projects that build on all the skills we have been studying in the sessions with the aim of writing a full length play at the end of the programme.

Our first such project was a short two scene piece (literally two pages) made up entirely of snippets of overheard conversation – I did mine after a trip to Morrisons! It’s here if you are interested.

Our next project (over the summer) was our first ‘play’. The brief was to write a 10 minute play (a popular format in the States, I understand) in 3 acts.

Why 3 acts?

Well, the brief goes back to the time our mentor, Director, John Burgess, was Head of New Writing at the National Theatre.

One year, there was a surpless in the budget and an idea was put forward to commission 10 writers to write a 10 minute play each. It was decided that to make the performances much more interesting for the audience, the plays would need to be written in three acts, that way Act I of the first play could be performed, followed by Act I of the second, and then of the third, and then back to Act 2 of the first play, etc.

The result was an evening of quite different plays, where you didn’t know which installment was coming up next, almost like a ‘soap opera’ with individual stories being played out.

Well, the summer is now over, and Room 20 has made it out of my head, through my MackBook, on to paper and down to Southampton (and in London by now!) and I’m happy with it.

Mind you, it’s taken long enough. I had no idea how much work could possibly be involved in writing a ten minute play.

There were a few last minute changes (including a character name which I knew needed changing, but was stuck on – Thanks Tom) but I have tried to include all the things I have learnt so far, and hope I have been able to write something good and worth reading; a complete play with believable characters and a plot and all in 10 minutes. Not easy, I can assure you.

Anyway, I handed it in last Thursday at our writers group meeting, and as soon as I had we were being set our next project. We now have until the end of February to write a 44 minute radio play.

44 minutes?

Yep, that’s the length needed for the afternoon play slot on Radio 4. We were given three examples, one of which was directed by John, and another was written by Sarah Daniels.

Time to study the format. Gonna be tricky. Haven’t got a clue where to start!

Umm, ideas anyone?

–

Must end by saying some thank yous.

Writing, I’m learning, isn’t necessarily a solitary job. Many people’s time and efforts have gone into Room 20.

I see things, I overhear things, I think things, I listen to things; and they all go into my writing. (Even a comment said to me in passing is now an important part of the end of the play – Thanks Mike.)

Sometimes, however I need somewhere to start. And for this play I ‘interviewed’ some of the young people from the Riverside Youth Theatre, and from that came the idea for the play and the inspiration for the characters and the plot.

So a big-massive-huge-gynormous thank you from me to:

Tom Addy
Mark Forrest
Peter Williams
Annabel Smith
Katherine Parkinson
and
Michael Smith

Room 20 is now here on my blog for downloading if you want to read it.

Any comments good or bad, very much appreciated.

A little more active this week. Just.

Rich and I meet up with a couple of friends briefly yesterday, which was good as I haven’t seen much of anybody in a while.

I’m also doing FOH for Ottershaw Players production of Oscar Wilde’s short story ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ (adapted for the stage by Constance Cox in the ’50s) at the Rhoda in Woking this week.

I watched it Wednesday night and very enjoyable it was too. (Brilliant costumes Chris and thanks for lunch!)

Last night I sat in the foyer and did some prep work for my Riverside Youth Theatre Improv Workshop on Sunday.

Last week’s went down well despite my poor mood and lack of concentration. I managed to plan something in the morning, having had a couple of hours sleep and the workshop was well received. I had a few thankyous directly afterwards as well as a couple of emailed thankyous later which made me feel better.

Week Two (of six) on Sunday, and after a few trust exercises I’ll be introducing the ‘Who, Where, What, When, Why and How’ of Improv.

The objective for Week Seven (the AGM before they break up for the summer) is to have a couple of groups perform a live ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ style show, using all the techniques I’l be teaching them.

If their introduction to it all last week was anything to go by, then we’ll have a good show. They’re up for it, which is great!

Tonight in the foyer at the Rhoda I’ll be reading a play that John emailed the Nuffield Writers Group as a little bit of extra homework!

By next Thursday I need to have read a couple more plays, plus the emailed one, as well as finished writing a two character scene involving ‘action’ and writing another scene entirely of snippets of ‘overheard’ conversations.

I’m off to Argos at Brooklands to buy a digital recorder thingy then I’ll sit in the Tescos cafe and see what nuggets I can record! You’ve been warned!

Having recently overheard (and scribbled down) such interesting lines as “She was proper minging”, “It smells like horse piddle” and “Go on be a bitch, at least I have a life”, I’m looking forward to it!

May I refer to a previous post back in February in which I mentioned a play called How to Disappear Completely and Never be Found by Fin Kennedy.

The play was recommended to me by a friend who had worked with the text on a Contemporary Drama course at the NODA Summer School last year.

Well, at my Nuffield Theatre Writer’s Group meeting last night, I saw a copy of the script on the table in front of fellow writer Mavis who was sat next to me. Nothing unusual in that since at the beginning of most meetings we each give a quick review of the plays we have read during the past fortnight.

Before we all got started I commented to Mavis that I had recently read the play and how good I thought it was, and since I’d done some research on the playwright was able to mention a little more about the writing of the play, the awards it had won, and subsequent productions.

What I didn’t realise was Mavis knew everything I had to say about Fin Kennedy and his plays, and more besides – she’s his mother!

Well, three and a half months after sending off my script of Kath and Kin it has come back with my first official rejection letter.

The Bush Theatre kindly wrote in their stock letter:

Our reader enjoyed Kath and Kin but I’m afraid we can’t see an opening for developing the piece here at the Bush.

The first of many, I’m sure. I’m not disappointed since I’m at the bottom of a steep learning curve. Besides I’m on the third draft of Kath and Kin at the moment and shouldn’t really have sent it to them in the first place.

Each producing theatre has it’s own criteria and although most will receive well over 1000 unsolicited scripts in a year, they will only produce one or two.

Fin Kennedy received rejection letters from all the London producing theatres for his play How to Disappear Completely And Never Be Found, then in 2006 the play won the Art Council’s 38th John Whiting Award for New Writing, the first time an un-produced play had won! Needless to say, it has been produced since.

PS: Just read the play for part of this fortnight’s Nuffield Theatre Writers Group homework. It’s is very clever in its construction and writing. Just the sort of thing I like. (Also, oddly enough, it makes good use of the shipping forecast in it, as does Kath and Kin.) Thanks Pete, for recommending/lending it to me.

A number of friends have enquired about the list of Playwrights I’m studying the work of as part of my learning with the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group. I generally manage to recite the names of half a dozen or so before I get all confused so for those of you interested here’s my complete list (*American) in alphabetical order:

Edward Bond
John Byrne
Caryl Churchill
Sarah Daniels
Helen Edmundson
Peter Gill
David Harrower
Jonathan Harvey
Judith Johnson
Terry Johnson
Sarah Kane
Tony Kushner*
Bryony Lavery
Mick Mahoney
Patrick Marber
Conor McPherson
Meredith Oakes
Joe Penhall
Mark Ravenhill
Willy Russell
Sam Shephard*
Diana Son*
David Spencer
Heathcote Williams
Roy Williams

This is the list that our writing group leader and mentor John Burgess has given us (originally written for me on the back of the last page of my Kath and Kin script when I met John at the National back in October). It appears John has worked with/knows many of these playwrights as during our meetings we are often given interesting snippets of information and insights into one or other of these people and the plays they have written. Fascinating.

One interesting (for me anyway) thing I have noticed is that many of them are associated with a genre known as in-yer-face theatre of which my play The Man in the Middle of the Road is also as an example.

I’m certainly enjoying the reading.

Last night was my first meeting with the Nuffield Theatre Writer’s Group in Southampton.

Our leader, John Burgess, who has directed over 40 premiers of new plays in his career, was the National’s Head of New Writing from 1989-94, and co-founded the NT Studio, welcomed us all, and after we’d had a chance to tell everybody about ourselves in the time taken for a match to burn (there are 13 of us writers in the group from published authors to television writers and playwrights) we got straight to work.

We started by writing questions and then statements using only words of one syllable. John then ‘acted’ each line and we were all inspired to write better and better lines for him to perform. It was very inspiring for me and I’m really looking forward to the next two years.

On top of my current play reading list (I’m working my way through Volume One of Caryl Churchill at the moment) we were also given two other plays to read and a number of writing assignments for our homework.

I’m going to be busy!

Today sees an article about me published in the Woking Review.

Here’s the online version.

Having fired off a decent press release at the beginning of the week I was interviewed by the Woking News and Mail yesterday about me being invited to join the Nuffield Theatre Writer’s Group and this afternoon a photographer came and took some photos of yours truly supposedly hard at work writing.

I had a letter in the post from Southampton today.

Would you like to be part of the new Nuffield Theatre Writers Group?

It seems that “competition for places has been unusually fierce”, but I’m in. Boy, am I delighted.

For the next two years I will be under the auspices of the Nuffield’s Script Executive John Burgess, a freelance director well known for his productions of new plays and who has worked at the National Theatre, where he founded (with Director/Writer Peter Gill) the NT Studio – the theatre’s experimental wing, and was Head of New Writing from 1989 to 1994.

Past graduates of the writing group have gone on to have work produced in the West End, including Kate Betts who beat off competition from more than 2000 entrants to win Channel 4′s The Play’s The Thing.