Well, I’m back, for the time being at least anyway!

So here’s the news I’ve been wanting to blog about for ages.

Spaceboy is getting its first production this weekend! (4th/5th June) I am so pleased.

Yes, that’s tonight, I know, but depression isn’t concerned about time, so I guess I’m lucky I came back from the blackness yesterday. I have know about this production for well over a month now, but this is the first time I have been able to write about it! I was getting concerned that I wasn’t going to fully engage in the amazement of it all.

It was nearly a year ago now that the play was a given a professional ‘rehearsed reading’ by Actors and Writers London, and now finally makes its way on to the stage for the public to see.

Spaceboy is being produced because John Burgess, my mentor from the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group, put another writer, Nina Lemon, in contact with me. Nina has just started in the current Nuffields group; my group having completed the programme at the end of December.

Nina runs a theatre company called Peer Productions, based at the Woking Youth Arts Centre, a five minute walk from my house, and she asked to read some of my work.

Needless to say she loved Spaceboy and I was pleasantly surprised back in April when she asked if they could produce it.

I’ve now met both Nell King and Nathan Trapnell who will produce and direct the play as well as take the roles of Anna and Nathan. They have also cast Alex Paterson in the role of Hayden.

Alex is a member of the Peer Productions Youth Theatre, and is also at Woking College with my friends Mark Forest and Adam Amin from the Riverside Youth Theatre – Small world.

I recently saw Adam and Alex perform in ‘The Interview’ for part of their AS Drama exam at the college and having directed Adam before at RYT, knew he would be good. I was also entralled with Alex’s performance and am very pleased that he’s been cast as Hayden in Spaceboy.

For those of you who know the play and it’s origins, you’ll know that Hayden‘s part, played excellently by Tom Addy in the London rehearsed reading, is a very demanding series of monologues performed one after the other and lasting about twenty five minutes.

Hayden is my favourite of all the characters I’ve created thus far, and I’m pleased to say that Alex, having thoroughly researched his part, has just as much enthusiasm and understanding of Hayden and his issues as I do, which is fantastic and very gratifying for me as the playwright.

My play will be performed as the second in a double bill with the short piece The End Where I Begin, written and directed by Kirsten Hill.

The venue is The Black Box Theatre, a small studio style theatre in Knaphill near Woking where Peer Productions is based.

The 50 seat studio theatre is cosy and very intimate, which to be honest, as those that saw the London reading will know, suits Spaceboy very well indeed

The booking details for the show are all here and again, appologies for the lateness in blogging about this; as I say, depressive episodes are a law unto themselves.

Spaceboy
by
PAFoster

Part One – ‘If I Fall’

Single, self-employed Nathan falls for his next-door neighbour, thirty something Anna Walker.

But Anna has a painful past and a troubled teenage son; and when a local lad goes missing, Nathan’s new relationship is tested to the brink.

Part Two – ‘Moondust Will Cover Me’

Fifteen year old Hayden is a little confused and thinks he’s in love; and that would be fine, if his new found friend wasn’t hearing voices.

I am so pleased that a lot of friends are coming to support me and the cast by seeing this production.

I have also developed new friendships because of because of it, including Tony Chessman, an aspiring writer too, and Lewis Flude who was stood next to a Pet Shop Boys fan in a record store talking about the PSB references in my play! Weird or what? But that’s another story!

Lewis and I have both been following each other on Twitter for ages, but never realised we both knew a lot of the same people from different social groups – Spaceboy has revealed those connections.

Oh, and I nearly forgot!

I am honoured to have been invited to take part in an after show Q&A style discussion with the directors/cast, where we’ll be taking about the play and the writing of it. So get your questions ready, and surprise me!

Hope you can come; it’ll be good, very good. Come and see why, say Hi!

Best wishes!
A very (at last) happy Paul.

PS: Better introduce Tom (the ultimate) Fidler, a great friend and keen to learn writer from Riverside Youth Theatre, who has, since I’m now being referred to as a “minor celebrity”, lol, dutifully elected himself as my PA – After dinner speaking engagements, book store openings, breakfast show interviews, and indeed any other public appearance or product endorsement requests should be directed to Tom, lol. I’m far too busy writing!

Public thanks again to my close friend Tom Addy, without who’s care and support, Spaceboy would never have seen the light of day.

Thank you Major Tom xx

Room 20 is being presented as part of the Southampton University Students’ Union Theatre Group’s Showcase 2010 on Saturday 24th April.

My short play in three acts, was written in 2008 as an early assignment for the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group and will be performed with six other plays from members of the 4th group as well as other short plays/sketches written and produced by university students.

Tickets are £6.30 (£4.30 students) and are available from the Nuffield Theatre Box Office on 02830 671771. There are two performance times, 5pm and 8pm and the show lasts for approximately two hours.

Room 20 is in silence – at least it should be.

15 year old Jason Forrest 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.

This will be the play’s first actual performance (it had a rehearsed reading in London in December 2008) and I’m looking forward to seeing what Student Director Jonny Haines has done with it.

(I hasten to add, it should be interesting to watch from my ‘writer’s’ perspective since initial discussion showed the director didn’t seem to understand what my play was actually about; Having his own complex ideas about the play’s simple theme. Oh well, I hope it’s worked out okay for him, and at least it’s being performed!)

Interesting month so far, to say the least.

Updates coming, I promise.

April.

So where’d the first quarter of 2010 go?

Oh well, what’s past is past. Time to get on with the present and plan for the future.

I’m feeling so much better these days. I seem to be on the right level of medication to counteract the effects of my bipolar disorder and am thus able to concentrate and do things with my days.

And best of all, I am able to enjoy my life and write.

So here goes.

I have entered ScriptFrenzy – an annual scriptwriting event encouraging all those wannabe scriptwriters to get of their arses and do something about it. And all with the support of thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing. (Just over 17,500 this year.)

ScriptFrenzy lasts for one month – April – and the goal for everybody is to write 100 pages of script (not necessarily in one actual story). The script can either be for tv, film, stage, radio, comic book etc.

Ths idea stems from National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) which has been running across the world every November for a number of years now, with the objective of writing a 175-page (50,000-word) novel. (120,000 people took part in 2008 and 20,000 completed the goal.)

Of course, with all of this, the objective is to write, write, write a first draft. Nothing else. If you complete the page/word goal then you win!

And after you have won, then that is the time to take that hastily written 3 pages a day script, or 6 pages a day novel an do something with it, like editing, writing more drafts, and hopefully on to submitting the finished work somewhere for performance/publication.

So wish me luck.

And boy do I need it.

I only decided to do this when I came across the site a couple of days ago. And it’s not as if I haven’t got anything else to do.

This month I have also planned to finish and submit my full length Nuffield Writers Group graduation piece, which is nearly completed, (and overdue) as well as get most of the way through a novella I’m writing for a good friend to read to his three year old child; Hi Josh, it’s on its way – Chapter 5 today!

So, as well as working in Coventry, and all the other stuff one has to do, I’m going to be very busy this April. No time to suffer from depression!

And I’ll keep up my blog too, letting you know my progress every few days if I have the time!

Oh well, that’s my first 450 words written today – there’s a counter at the bottom of my input box – but it doesn’t count towards anything, so I had better get on with some scripting!

Cheers!

Firstly, some news, finally, from the Bush Theatre.

I sent them Spaceboy back in August, and was beginning to wonder what happened, thinking I had somehow missed the ‘no thanks’ email months ago.

It appears the reason it took so long was because it went further; the Bush readers found it a “really interesting piece” and passed it on to their ‘creative associates’ for “a second look”.

Sadly, they felt they couldn’t develop it as a production at the Bush, but suggested a couple of other theatres to send it to, which indeed I shall.

And secondly, I also received news today that Room 20 will be performed twice on Saturday 24th April at Southampton University as part of their ‘Nuffield Writers Showcase’.

A group of student directors and actors are producing seven of the ten minute plays written by members of the 4th Nuffield Theatre Writers Group as one of our assignments.

I’m looking forward to meeting my play’s directorJonny Baynham next week.