Welcome to a special Halloween edition of our e-bulletin to remind you of our upcoming events and bring you a few updates.
Our final programme of 2011 starts tomorrow, 1 November. All our regular meetings are happening in Waterside 1 at Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX. Please remember that you can find the date, time and location of our next meeting in the panel on the right beneath the slideshow on our website’s home page, and there’s a full list of forthcoming activities on the Diary page — check this carefully to be sure you’re clear about what’s on because sometimes there’s more than one event listed on the same day. Ask at the Watershed box office if you need directions to a meeting. Everyone attending meetings pays £1.
Tuesday, 1 November at 7.30pm: O Crewel World by Heather Lister
Tonight we’re reading Heather’s short play in which Olwen, Brenda and Gwen meet in Olwen’s house near Pontypridd to do embroidery and talk about one another. Behind the respectable exteriors, the inoffensive routines and the shifting rhythms of gossip, there lie the passions of the devil and the endurance of angels.
This evening’s run out for O Crewel World at Watershed precursors the play’s London debut next Monday, 7 November, when it’s being performed at Theatre 503 as part of Play Tank, an evening of short plays presented by the London Playwrights’ Collective. Heather wrote the script as part of the Ustinov Writers’ Forum (now Writers’ Forum @ Tobacco Factory Theatre) Push initiative, and had it presented originally as a rehearsed reading at Bath’s Ustinov Theatre in June 2010.
Monday, 7 November at 8pm, Brewery Theatre, Southville: Who’s There? by Steve Lambert
Hard on the heels of Theatre West’s successful production of his play The Darkroom (‘You’re never in for a dull moment with Steve Lambert…’ — Venue) at the Alma Tavern Theatre earlier this month, Steve Lambert’s writing takes the stage again next Monday, 7 November, with a Writers’ Forum @ Tobacco Factory Theatre Script Sessions reading of his new work, Who’s There?, at the Brewery. The show is the second Script Session — following the event featuring Aficionados by Peter Kesterton on 17 October — and promises ‘a tale of loneliness, forbidden desire, and the lost souls who wait on the far side of the door.’
Tuesday, 8 November at 7.30pm: Open Workshop
Tonight is the second of our three meetings at Watershed this month, and a chance for you to workshop your entry for our Looking Back, Writing Forward competition (see below for a reminder of what to do and how to enter).
Tuesday, 15 November at 8.30pm, Alma Tavern Theatre: I Remember Green by Heather Lister
A ‘group outing’ to the Alma Tavern Theatre, 18-20 Alma Vale Road, Clifton, BS8 2HY, for the opening night of Theatre West’s production of Heather’s one-act play, I Remember Green.
Developed with Southwest Scriptwriters for TW’s Picture This season, I Remember Green explores the emotional turmoil a blind student’s departure for university stirs for his estranged parents. The play is at the Alma at 8.30pm from Tuesday to Saturday until 26 November, so please catch the show in the next two weeks if you can’t make it tonight.
Tuesday, 22 November at 7.30pm: After the Wall by Gary Sugden
Our final meeting of 2011 features Gary’s new play:
‘At an art gallery in Israel, an exhibition is being planned to celebrate ”Peace in the Middle East“. Old frenemies — Florence, a sassy curator, and Dahlia, a self-important artist — struggle over an exhibition room and the affections of Florence’s husband, and Dahlia’s ex-lover, Otto.’
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Living Local success
Many thanks to everyone who supported our Living Local event in association with Papercut Productions at Kingswood Heritage Museum on 20 October.
Living Local featured script-in-hand performances of five monologues and one duologue by group members presented alongside or within the museum exhibits that inspired them. The audience divided into two groups to tour the exhibition and take in the performances.
The show raised £90 towards the cost of a Premises Licence to allow Kingswood Heritage Museum to host larger performance events — and more opportunities for Southwest Scriptwriters — in future.
Adrian in Digits
Hotfoot from producing and appearing in Living Local, group committee member Adrian Harris takes the stage again this month in three lunchtime performances of Digits by Tamsin Walken at The Brewery in Southville.
Digits is a new play by the Berlin-based writer that was one of the winners in the Tobacco Factory’s Script Space competition this year:
‘Mick’s got some explaining to do. According to him, Jimmy had been losing it for a while, and just missing out on the only job to come his way in ages was the final straw. That’s why he did it, see. And besides, people shouldn’t be allowed to talk loudly on buses, should they?’
Digits is at The Brewery, 291 North Street, Southville, Bristol, BS3 1JP, at 1.15pm (with lunch from 12.30pm) on Thursday, 17 to Saturday, 19 November.
Looking Back, Writing Forward
We’re heading into the New Year with a challenge for you to draw on your own experience to write the first ten pages of a new stage, screen, radio or television script, and giving you the chance to win a £25 Amazon gift certificate.
In his book The Playwright’s Process: Learning the Craft from Today’s Leading Dramatists
Because the exercise is a little personal, we don’t need to know directly about the experiences on which you’re drawing to write your script extract, we just want you to bring your work to be read at an upcoming meeting and submit it at the end of January — I’ll include details of how to submit in our first newsletter of 2012.
Please remember that although we’re only asking for the first ten pages of your new project for this contest, this doesn’t mean that we want you to write ten-page scripts. Ideally, you’ll enter the beginning of a project that you’ll go on to write to length and bring the full version to a meeting later in 2012.
Looking Back, Writing Forwards works in the same way as similar mini competitions of ours in the past: Members who workshop their script extracts with us before the end of January 2012 can submit them for judging. An independent judge (to be confirmed) will read the entries, and the one s/he finds most appealing will receive the prize.