The first of our July duo of meetings is tomorrow, Tuesday, 16 July, and we’ve confirmed our bimonthly schedule until the end of September. Find our upcoming dates below and on our What’s on page.
All of the following meetings are in the Coopers’ Loft at Bristol Old Vic, King Street, BS1 4ED. Sign in at reception near the bar on the ground floor and take the lift to the Loft — please ask BOV staff if you need directions. Everyone attending a meeting pays £2.
Book a workshop slot
Schedule some time to discuss your work in progress at one of our upcoming meetings using our Book a workshop slot form.
Tuesday, 16 July at 8pm: Open Workshop
Tonight’s meeting features the second act of Euphoria Kew’s play in which a struggling writer breaks into a successful actor’s house to leave her script. When he catches her in the act, she accidentally discovers his long-kept secret.
Tuesday, 30 July at 8pm: Open Workshop
Tuesday, 13 August at 8pm: Open Workshop
Tuesday, 27 August at 8pm: Open Workshop
Tuesday, 10 September at 8pm: Open Workshop
Tuesday, 24 September at 8pm: Open Workshop
Checkpoint Edinburgh preview at Lightship Theatre
Startled Cat Productions is giving Saito Hawkins’ satire, Checkpoint, a pre-Edinburgh Festival Fringe runout at Lightship Theatre on Sunday, 28 July.
Saito’s play, featured in our second Scratch Nights event in March, lampoons ‘the absurd logic of xenophobic paranoia’:
‘…an enigmatic stranger, Roman, arrives at Checkpoint 4 and attempts to bluff and bribe his way past two incompetent border guards. Daredevil tourist or diehard terrorist? Could the answer lie concealed in the contents of his curiously cumbersome trunk?’
Following its one-night Lightship preview, Checkpoint is playing at Venue 29, Paradise in The Vault — The Annexe in Edinburgh between 2 and 17 August.
Preview the production at 7.30pm on 28 July aboard Lightship Theatre, The John Sebastian, Bathurst Basin, Bristol, BS1 4RL.
Get it off your chest for Angry Bear Scratches
Angry Bear Productions is accepting script submissions for its charity event, Angry Bear Scratches for…, from 10am on Friday, 26 July, until it has received 225 ten-minute plays.
Angry Bear is staging this autumn’s Scratches event at the Royal Court Theatre on Friday, 27 September, and will announce its chosen charity when the script submission process is complete. The company is keeping the beneficiary to itself until then to avoid influencing writers’ choice of subject for their scripts.
The brief invites you to write on any subject about which you feel strongly — to get it off yur chest. Your script should have:
- A maximum running time of ten minutes
- A maximum of two performers
- Minimal technical requirements (set, lighting, sound)
To maximise contributions to Angry Bear’s chosen charity, no one involved in creating the event will receive payment for their work. If the company picks your script and you find that you’d prefer not to support the show’s beneficiary, you can withdraw your work from the programme.
Angry Bear will assess submissions with their authors anonymised, so please check that your script does not include your name before emailing it.
Green Stories for University of Southampton
The University of Southampton’s Green Story Writing Competition is seeking entries presenting a positive environmental outlook focussing on innovative future developments or on green characters in contemporary settings.
The contest builds on research by Dr Denise Baden finding that positive narratives work better to inspire changes in approach than dystopian visions. It is an effort to spread optimism through fiction to promote personal action on environmental challenges.
The contest has a number of deadlines (some of which have passed already) for different forms of story writing. The remaining ones for scriptwriters are:
- Full-length film screenolay: September
- Short film: October
- TV/Netflix six-part series: 30 November
The competition offers cash prizes of up to £750 with opportunities to progress winning entries toward production.