WRITE!

Well, I would – if this thing didn’t eat my words. I jest not, alas. So, second – er – fifth time lucky…
The writing musculature was left to fester at the hell-end of last year. All very passive-mood. But! Action in 2010 calls! And thankfully, I have found some things to write about. So, I’d like to share some outlines of work in progress / in the system.
First off is The King Was In His Counting House – a 10-minute 4-hander, which is having a script-in-hand perf / reading at the launch of 17% (a women playwrights’ campaign) on 11-12 March in London. It’s set in October 2008, just as British banks are going to the Bank of England to be bailed out, after Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers. We are the coffee-break wall-fly at Her Majesty’s Treasury, mid-way through discussions about whether or not to close all the UK’s cash points without inciting endless riots.
Next is One Man’s Honeypot: a 60-minute 4-hander (again) and a comedy. It’s about a family-run sex shop, headed up by a glamorous granny matriarch, which is taken over by her 17-year old A’ Level Business Studies grandson and then threatened by mysterious outside powers. That’s in the system, at the mo, so I shall say no more.
Last up, the extremely exciting Theatre:24 project, run by Bristol Old Vic, with the Old Vic Theatre Company, Young Company and Bristol Uni. I was one of four writers involved in this massive and brilliant event, where writers, directors and cast worked from 6pm saturday 13 Feb with nothing, through to a full show on the main stage at 7:00 the next night. Inspired by a great cast and director (Anna Girvin), I sketched out Six Degree Angles, a 6-hander ensemble 20-minute piece, involving an egotistical academic-cum-angler, a scientist who’s discovered the soul, a viciously cynical superstar, a selfish stalker, his puppeteer wife and a confused and idealistic “hoodie”. Each loves another, but perhaps none of them really knows what love is, or what they want.
So now, it’s about revision, as well as getting on with the first draft of a full-length piece, which has grown out of Bristol Old Vic’s Writers’ Sprint back in October (another great project from that place), where a group of 9 of us worked on the opening 10 pages of Something New – better get going, then….