Fresh from the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, we’re back at Bristol Old Vic next Tuesday, 29 May.
This month’s meeting is in the Clore Learning Studio. Enter the building via the Stage Door entrance off Queen Charlotte Street, BS1 4HJ, and go straight to the meeting on the second floor — please ask BOV staff if you need directions to the meeting. Everyone attending pays £2.
Tuesday, 29 May at 8pm in the Clore Learning Studio: Open Workshop
Stephanie Weston leads tonight’s session featuring works in progress by Stuart Found, Jennalee Rhodes and Brian Weaving.
Stuart’s stage play, The Late Night Vanity Project, finds up-and-coming theatre director Tim French desperate to recast a part in his new play. When he invites an old friend to stay late after rehearsal, the delicate tension between the two men starts to expose the fragile secrets of their buried histories.
Jennalee is seeking feedback on her treatment, Blood Apples, and Brian has a 500-word short for your thoughts.
Upcoming meetings
We also have meetings confirmed on 26 June, 24 July and 21 August — visit our What’s on page for a full list.
At present we have a backlogue of workshop bookings that should keep us busy until our September session. Please do get in touch using our ‘Book a workshop slot’ form if you have something you’d like to bring, but for the time being we will only schedule shorter scripts and extracts from longer works. We are hoping to increase our meeting frequency a little from this autumn, and may be able to offer more time per writer then, but please bear with us in the meantime.
The pressure on the space available currently at Bristol Old Vic often means that we are unable to schedule meetings very far in advance, and consequently we’re booking slots in meetings for which we’ve yet to confirm dates. We’re sorry about the uncertainty this causes for those of you who have bookings in unconfirmed meetings, but we will let you know as soon as we have definite dates.
Open Session again at Bristol Old Vic
June is the time for Bristol Old Vic’s Open Session during which its Literary Department accepts submissions of new plays and musicals by writers based in the South West.
The session is open to new and experienced writers, and your script should be original and unproduced. It’s fine to submit something that’s been through a workshop or other development process, so you’re free to enter something you’ve brought to Southwest Scriptwriters.
The initiative seeks ‘work that is distinctive and theatrical, with live staging at its heart. We’re attracted by stories that ask questions and tell us something about being alive today, pieces that in some way have relevance to our own lives and consider their audience.’
Bristol Old Vic’s script reading team will read the anonymous submissions, and the writers of the top 15 will receive full script reports. The Literary Department will create bespoke development packages for the five foremost writers that ‘may lead to commissioning opportunities.’
Upload your script via the web form available in the ‘WRITERS’ section of Bristol Old Vic’s website from 9am on Friday, 1 June until midnight on Saturday, 30 June.
Free Bedsitland this weekend
Discover what scores in Bristol Old Vic’s Open Session with free admission at The Bristol Improv Theatre in Clifton on Saturday, 26 May.
Jane Spurr’s Bedsitland was one of the quintessential quintet in 2016’s Open Session, and it’s getting a one-night runout as part of BOV’s Studio Walkabout season.
‘Terry and Blandy exist in a one-room world, on a street near you — probably!
‘The neighbours are noisy, the cat is insane and a never ending number of larger than life characters are knocking to be let in. But sometimes our lives get bigger than the tiny world we inhabit and you have to move out… or move on.
‘Daft, fast-paced and poignant, this scripted play looks like improv — and, just maybe, it is…’
The hour-long play starts at 8pm on Saturday at BIT, 50 St Paul’s Road, BS8 1LP (off Whiteladies Road). Email Bristol Old Vic using the link below to ask to be added to the free admission list — please mention that you heard about this opportunity here.
Southwest Scriptwriters and the GDPR
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which determines the appropriate use and protection of personal data, comes into effect on 25 May.
You might well have received emails from companies and organisations recently asking you to confirm your permission for them to hold your personal details and contact you with newsletters and marketing information to comply with the terms of the GDPR.
Since reconvening in June 2017, we have introduced a new system for subscribing to our updates. Subscribers enter their email addresses in our ‘Sign up for newsletter notifications’ form, and need then to respond by clicking a link in an automatic reply email to confirm that they intended to subscribe. This ‘double opt-in’ approach represents best practice in ensuring that subscribers have given permission for their email addresses to be used in our list because confirmation requires access to the specified email account.
If you were a member of Southwest Scriptwriters before June 2017 and have not taken the above steps to join our new subscription list, your details are not included. We have added no members from our previous lists and are unable to do so without confirmation from email address owners.
If you have subscribed to our newsletter feed and no longer wish to receive email updates from us, you can remove your email address from our list by clicking ‘Unsubscribe’ at the bottom of a newsletter email. This means that we will hold your information only for as long as you give your permission for us to do so.
Our website runs using WordPress blogging/content management software, and our newsletter notification system is provided by WordPress via Automattic through which it delivers blog subscription and other website services — Automattic’s privacy policy is here.
We are able to view and download our subscription list, which, for the majority of subscribers, includes only email addresses with no associated information. If you have a WordPress account (because you used your email address to set up a WordPress blog, for example), we are also able to view your WordPress username and profile picture for that account and link to your blog — the details available to us here are those you chose to make available publically when setting up your WordPress account.
We do not keep offline copies of our subscription list (ie while we have the facility to download our subscription list from Automattic, we do not do so). This means that if you unsubscribe from our list as described above, we have no residual subscription records containing your information.
Southwest Scriptwriters has never shared its contact lists with other organisations or with companies — aside from the outsourcing of the current subscription list to Automattic as described above. We promote relevant events, opportunities and services to subscribers via our newsletter and do not allow third parties direct access to our list.
Southwest Scriptwriters engages with participants and other interested parties through social media presences on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter, and the privacy policies of the respective platforms apply to our activity on these sites.
If you have questions about our use of your data, please get in touch using our ‘Email us’ form.