Celebrating a year back in action following our 2016-2017 hiatus, we’re meeting in Bristol Old Vic’s Rehearsal Room tomorrow, Tuesday, 26 June.
Enter the theatre through the Stage Door off Queen Charlotte Street, BS1 4HJ, and go directly to the Rehearsal Room on the second floor — please ask Bristol Old Vic staff if you need directions. Everyone attending pays £2.
Tuesday, 26 June at 8pm: Open Workshop
Briony’s back in the chair for tonight’s session featuring continuing script extracts from Kieran Battles and Stuart Found.
Kieran debuted part of Apex Alpha, exploring ‘the reality, the possibility and the unknown’ of coming artificial intelligence, at our April meeting, and tonight we hear the concluding part of the story.
Also a stage play, Stuart’s The Late Night Vanity Project unravels the fragile secrets of an up-and-coming theatre director and his old friend whom he has invited to stay late after a rehearsal. We’re continuing with Stuart’s script tonight having heard an initial extract last month.
Southwest Scriptwriters Scratch Nights
We’re very pleased to announce an exciting new venture for the group. Scratch Nights are a chance to bring work and writers we’ve developed at our regular meetings to a wider audience in a unique setting.
The events will feature script-in-hand performances of work that emerges from our programme at Bristol Old Vic aboard the John Sebastian lightship moored in Bathurst Basin, BS1 6SV.
With the support of the Cabot Cruising Club, which runs the venue, we’ve scheduled our first Scratch Night for October (date to be confirmed), and are curating work for the debut session. We plan to reflect the range of material writers bring to our workshops including scripts for all media — we showed stage, screen, radio and television scripts in dynamic rehearsed readings at our New Writing Festivals (1998-2005) and Scripts @ Starbucks (2008), and found that this live presentation works well for every medium.
Find out at Tuesday’s meeting how to have your work considered for Scratch Nights. If all goes well in October, we plan to make this a quarterly event, so there will be more chances to score runouts for your scripts aboard the John Sebastian if you don’t make the cut this autumn.
Keep tabs on these postings for news of October’s date, line-up and booking details.
July deadline for Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize
The third Liverpool Hope University Playwriting Prize is open for entries until 23:59 GMT on Sunday, 22 July.
Its organisers are inviting new and established playwrights to submit full-length (not shorter than 80 minutes) comedy scripts for the competition, which has a top prize of £10000 plus the possibility of a production at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre. The contest’s judges also have a £3000 fund to award in up to two discretionary Highly Commended runners-up prizes.
The judging process is anonymous with the identities of the finalists not revealed to those involved in it until they have confirmed the winners. To enter, you need to upload your comedy script with a cover sheet and ‘elevator pitch’ via Liverpool Hope University’s online store. The competition has an entrance fee of £20 to cover judging expenses.
Sian seeks a screenplay
Sian Morgan is a final-year student at the Bristol-based Screenology film school seeking a 15-30 page screenplay to produce for her final project.
Sian has no particular preference for genre, but potential scripts will have a contemporary UK setting and make modest demands on production values — nothing requiring hordes of extras, please! She is interested in collaborating closely with a writer on the project, and plans to gain as much exposure as possible for the eventual film at festivals.
If you think you can help, please email Sian to discuss possibilities.