We’re back at in Waterside 1 at Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX, this Tuesday for the first of another quartet of meetings. As with our previous season, our Tuesdays aren’t entirely consecutive, so please jot the following dates in you diary.
Check the date of our next meeting in the panel on the right beneath the slideshow on our website’s home page, and a full list of upcoming events on the diary page. Ask at Watershed’s box office if you need directions to Waterside 1. Everyone attending meetings pays £1.
Tuesday, 11 March at 7.30pm: Robbie’s Date by Michelle Warwicker
Robbie and Carl are trapped in a dingy world of petty criminality and the eerie presence of their dead mother. But Robbie secretly yearns for change, and a rare date with young mum Gemma could be his chance – just as long as his overbearing sibling, his junkie neighbour and his dark past don’t engulf them both.
Tuesday, 18 March at 7.30pm: The Woman of the Eleventh Hour by William House
Tonight’s meeting features William’s short, experimental male and female duologue, a fragment of which he brought to a group meeting last year. It doesn’t quite dispense with language, but the characters communicate using only words and phrases from an ancient Buddhist sermon.
Tuesday, 25 March at 7.30pm: Woman on a Bike by Lissa Carter
Sally is big – she would say fat. On the day of their mother’s funeral, Ruthy, her sister, prepares the food while Sally chooses to make the journey to the crematorium by bike – a journey with unexpected results.
The opening of Lissa’s play won our Looking Back, Writing Forward competition in March 2012.
Tuesday, 1 April: *** No meeting ***
Tuesday, 8 April: Open Workshop
Turning ‘ages previews at Junction 3
In a change to our project working with local artist Elaine Robinson, you can now see her sculptural piece Turning ‘ages at Easton’s Junction 3 Library where it will be part of the facility’s first anniversary celebrations on Wednesday, 19 March, remaining on display at the new library until the end of May.
View Turning ‘ages at Junction 3 Library, Lower Ashley Road, Bristol, BS5 0EJ, from 19 March to find inspiration for a short monologue or duologue (up to 1800 words) for potential performance alongside the artwork when it transfers to Bristol Central Library throughout June.
Junction 3 is open from 11am until 7pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9am to 7pm on Tuesday, and 10am to 5pm on Saturday. It’s closed on Thursday and Sunday.
Book a slot for your Turning ‘ages script at one of our upcoming workshop meetings to get feedback in time to rewrite before the project deadline in late May.
World War I remembered at Brass Works Theatre
A reminder that we’re working on another project with Brass Works Theatre, this time an event in August to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I.
South Gloucestershire’s new theatre will present an evening of your monologues centring on life during the global conflict of 1914-1918. The Great War was the first to see attacks on civilians as well as the military, and BWT aims to present scripts centring on the home and other battlefronts in addition to that in the trenches.
To submit a monologue for the project, book a slot for your WWI-inspired script to be read at one of our forthcoming meetings. The submission deadline will be in June, and Adrian Harris, BWT’s artistic director, plans to attend our meeting on 25 March to answer your questions about the initiative.
BWT’s next presentation is a show by quick-fire improvised comedy company Instant Wit, led by Southwest Scriptwriters committee member Stephanie Weston. Instant Wit brings its made-up mayhem to the new venue on Saturday, 26 April, following sell-out success in Warmley last year.
31 March deadlines loom for Theatre503 Playwriting Award and Script Space
London’s innovative Theatre503 is offering new and experienced writers the chance to submit a script each for its 2014 Playwriting Award.
The new biennial Award offers a top prize of £6000 plus a guaranteed production at Theatre503 in SW11, and includes development opportunities for five writers with no professional theatre credits through its 503Five strand.
The end of the month is also the deadline for Tobacco Factory Theatre’s annual Script Space development opportunity reported here previously.
The IMDb Script to Screen Award 2014
Bath Film Festival has teamed up with the Internet Movie Database for a third year to present a short film scriptwriting competition.
The IMDb Script to Screen Award is open to anyone who wants to write and submit short film scripts with a maximum length of ten minutes. Bath Spa University’s Creative Writing staff read the entries and whittle them down to the top five, which drama students from the university rehearse and perform before judges and a live audience. The judges and audience vote on the best script, and the winner scoops a cash prize of £5000 plus £2000 of filmmaking kit to produce the film of the script.
The downside is the £50 entry fee — so it’s a good idea to run your submission past the group before entering it.
Carole offers ebook alternative for Easter
‘Into Jack and Zelda’s tangled lives comes a blast of magic from another world. Tang is an ancient Chinese dragon who doesn’t know how he arrived in their dad’s antique shop basement or how to fly anymore. The children must use all their ingenuity to get him home without discovery.’
Read an extract from Tang and download it to your ebook reader for £4.12 here