We have a split season in May, so please put the following dates in your diary. You can also find our upcoming meeting dates here, and check for the next one in the panel on the right beneath the slideshow on our website’s home page. All out meetings are happening in W1 at Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX — please ask at the box office on the ground floor if you need directions to a meeting.
Tuesday, 1 May at 7.30pm: The Marriages by Simon Greely
Tonight we’re reading the first act of Simon’s play, which he’s rewritten using feedback from a previous meeting:
When Alexander the Great returns from his conquests, he decides to marry his men to Persian wives, hoping that this will promote unity in his new empire. Instead of finding harmony, he struggles to keep the peace between his warring wives — the beautiful Roxane, and the headstrong Barsine — and strives to prevent mutiny among his men.
Tuesday, 8 May: No meeting
Here’s the split in the season!
Tuesday, 15 May at 7.30pm: Open Workshop
This session includes a reading of The Cliff, a ten-minute play by Brian Weaving.
Tuesday, 22 May at 7.30pm: Open Workshop
Your second chance this season to get feedback on your work in progress.
Tuesday, 29 May at 7.30pm: A Stitch in Time by Stephanie Weston
This evening’s meeting features a reading of Stef’s stage play:
Canterbury, November 1067: embroiderer Eadgyth and her employees are down on their luck, but hope to reverse the situation by taking on a commission from the Normans — a gigantic piece of work detailing their invasion. The pay is handsome — but what if you’re unsure what actually happened at Hastings? Eadgyth, Aldfrith and Milburga are forced to think laterally to outwit their Norman overlords.
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Bruce’s triple
Group member Bruce Fellows is maintaining a prolific output, with three pieces of work performed or published between late April and early June.
The Broadway Theatre in Barking presented a rehearsed reading of ten minutes of his play, Zip and Amelia — which he brought to a group meeting last year — at its Script This… event on 27 April. The audience voted Bruce’s excerpt the most intriguing of the four on offer, which means the company will present a longer extract at the next Script This… show.
Show of Strength Theatre Company is teaming up with Bristol City Council to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee by commissioning 12 new pieces of writing or stories lasting three minutes each and inspired by a dozen different locations around the city’s Harbourside. Professional actors will record the pieces, and visitors at the Jubilee celebrations from 2-5 June will be able to access the recordings and listen to them in the various locations.
Show of Strength has commissioned writers featured in its Recycled Stockings show at The Southville Centre last December to write two pieces each for the Jubilee project, with A C H Smith (who spoke at a Southwest Scriptwriters meeting in June 2001) writing the last two. Both Bruce and recent group member Andrzej Wawrowski had work performed in the Christmas show, and feature again in June. We’ll bring you details of how to hear what they write in our next newsletter — or via social media if our next edition isn’t out before the Jubilee.
Adrian in Corrie and Casualty
Group committee member Adrian Harris makes his debut Coronation Street appearance in the episode to be transmitted on 31 May, so tune in to see him in full Mancunian action!
Following his Street recording in early April, Adrian landed a part as a paramedic in an upcoming episode of Casualty — we’ll let you know when this will be aired.
When not busy with his hectic acting schedule, Adrian has been developing Engineer’s Blue for Kingswood Heritage Museum, having won funding from the Peggy Ramsay Foundation to support his script’s development earlier this year. If all goes well, Adrian will produce the play during July — watch this space for news of this show too!
Rift at The Brewhouse
The Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre in Taunton is keen for other southwest-based writers to see Natalie McGrath’s new play Rift, which it is producing from Thursday, 17 until Saturday, 19 May at 7.45pm, with a matinee at 3pm on Saturday.
‘A tale of two strangers at opposite ends of the earth. As an athlete trains and dreams of Olympic success in Kenya’s Rift Valley, a woman on Exmoor puts on a pair of trainers that do not belong to her and begins running for the first time. Between both lie volcanic fault-lines connecting them across continents.’
Natalie McGrath’s last production was Coasting at Bristol Old Vic, on which The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner observed, ‘there was no mistaking the distinctive timbre of McGrath’s voice.’