Please pay close attention to the weekdays and meeting places of our four sessions to January as they vary from our regular day and setting. Find them all below and on our What’s on page.
All our upcoming meetings are happening as usual at Bristol Old Vic, King Street, BS1 4ED. Sign in at reception opposite the bar between the box office and the main entrance, and ask BOV staff if you need directions to the evening’s meeting place. Everyone attending pays £2.
Tuesday, 12 November at 8pm in the Meeting Room: Open Workshop
It’s our usual day but a different place for our first November meeting — watch out for more changes below!
This session features Taylor Ayling’s stage play The Moon, The Sun and we have 20 minutes to spare for a second script or script extract — get in touch using our ‘Book a workshop slot’ form to air your work in progress tonight.
Friday, 29 November at 8pm in the Coopers’ Loft: TimeWeb by Adrian Harris and The Red Dress by Maria Edey
Back to a familiar setting but an alternative day — round off your week with a scriptwriting workshop in the Coopers’ Loft.
Tonight we’re featuring the pilot episode of Adrian Harris’ family-friendly TV sci-fi series TimeWeb:
A young woman tries to find her way home through history, righting wrongs with the help of her friend, a computer nerd back in the 21st Century. Her situation is complicated by a shadowy organisation that wants to weaponise the phenomenon that unexpectedly catapulted our heroine through time.
Maria’s script The Red Dress, is a 20-minute screenplay set in the 1920s.
Monday, 9 December at 8pm in the Meeting Room: Open Workshop
Our final meeting of 2019 sees a change of day and meeting place — it’s Monday, so it’s the Meeting Room (this time).
Get in touch using our our Book a workshop slot form for feedback on your embryonic scripts tonight or early doors in 2020.
Tuesday, 7 January 2020 at 8pm in the Coopers’ Loft: Open Workshop
Start 2020 in familiar style with a Tuesday evening meeting back in the Coopers’ Loft and a first chance to test your New Year’s scriptwriting resolutions.
Stephanie’s Scratches and Salisbury successes
Congratulations to group committee member Stephanie Weston who had short scripts selected for performance in London and Salisbury earlier this autumn.
27 September saw Stephanie’s short play Likeable take the stage at The Royal Court Theatre in London’s Sloane Square as part of the Angry Bear Scratches for CoppaFeel! event — an opportunity we reported in our July newsletter.
Proceeds from the event staged by Angry Bear Productions went to the charity CoppaFeel!, which raises breast cancer awareness, and the show’s theme was ‘get it of your chest.’
In Likeable, Lady Macbeth is visited by one of the witches who is worried about her weird sisterly personality. Various menfolk from the clans have complained that she is not very likeable for a woman over 40 and they’d prefer her ti be mire ‘mum-like’, blending into the background and keeping up a steady supply of tea and shortbread.
Stephanie’s scriptwriting was on show again the following weekend at the Salisbury Fringe where her play, Witches, was staged at The Pheasant Inn as part of the Short Cuts event on 5 October, and he monologue, Bus Tour, (featured as part of our first Scratch Nights event in October last year), was one of the picks at the Fringe’s Monologue Mash on 6 October.
Your success stories here
If you’ve had success with work developed with Southwest Scriptwriters, please get in touch using our Email us form so that we can exercise bragging rights in this bulletin.
Verity Bargate Award submission window open soon
A reminder that the submission window for Soho Theatre’s biennial opportunity for fresh playwriting talent opens on Wednesday, 20 November, and closes at noon on Friday, 20 December.
Soho’s Literary Manager, Gillian Greer, led a talk and workshop to launch the Award at Bristol Old Vic last month. The workshop brought together writers from Southwest Scriptwriters, Theatre West, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s Drama Writing MA with unaffiliated local dramatists.
The Verity Bargate Award is open to playwrights of all ages in the UK and Ireland with fewer than three professional production credits. Soho Theatre is working with the Character 7 production company on the award, which seeks ‘extraordinary plays from extraordinary new voices.’