Gill Kirk: making it all up
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What Dali can, Su-bo can’t? Artist / audience gap
An artist works, gives their sweat and soul to communicate something in a form that is somehow different to the everyday-expected. The audience engages, pays, comes, listens, studies. Different activities. If these two then disagree on the art, whose opinion matters more? Which one defines the “art”? When there’s a jarring chasm between what an…
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Knots: undo, remake, procrastinate
Today’s one of my two days a week to write, toddler-free. And this is the state of my desk. I’m halfway through my first draft of the C4Screenwriting pilot/spec script and found some mega-weaknesses. I’m now trying to weave some irn-bru strength girders through the plot, with the help of Massive Attack’s Heligoland (a haunting…
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Be Stung by Beestung!
Congrats to Annabel Wigoder and Lucy Ter Berg of Beestung Productions who pulled off a smashing night at London’s Old Red Lion theatre on Monday night (2 April). Sold out early on, the show featured six pieces, including my Passion (dir. by the superb Alice Butler and performed breath-takingly by Scott Reid): Annabel’s own The…
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From fulfilment to survival
A superb two weeks of Broohas’ production of Away with the Fairies is now over. A fat and happy thank you to the Broohas team, director Eleanor Fogg and the Alma Tavern Theatre in Clifton, the Adepts of the technicals and ten chuckling audiences. Tomorrow, the focus shifts from the seeming wimsy of Fairies‘ world…
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Two chances to see…
There’s one more week of Away with the Fairies at Bristol’s Alma Tavern Theatre (ends 31 Mar). It’s followed very swiftly by Passion, a short monologue piece in Beestung Productions’ Tales from The Hive on Mon 2 April at Islington’s Old Red Lion pub theatre. Fairies reviews can be read below.
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Reviews for Away With The Fairies
Away With The Fairies opened on 20 March and runs ’til March 31st. Here are some of my favourite reviews: 4 stars * * * * WhatsOnStage.com “The strong all-female cast deliver the snappy dialogue with real energy. Kirsty Cox in particular is excellent as the put upon daughter as she has to deal with…
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Away with the Fairies: Alma Tavern Theatre, 20-31 March
“Bath playwright Gill Kirk’s latest play is hitting all the right notes in the arts world: a comedy to cheer us in leaner times, about and starring “older” women, cocking a snook at economics and art worlds alike, and of course, it has the ultimate “must-have” for any modern play: an invisible troll. “At Bristol’s…
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Living, unfamous writers: too many of ’em about?
To be fair, if you’re not receiving tax-payer subsidy or other grants that call for you to support writers that live, you can do what you want. But theatre faces a challenge. It’s competing against those guys I mentioned earlier (Cowell, HBO, the West End, film) for audiences. And it shouldn’t just be competing for…
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Catching Up
You (I) run fast through autumn and early December to get that time off at Christmas and New Year, trip up (get the lurgy, natch), sleep a lot and fall madly behind. It has, I realise, become a pattern. BUT! Waving a blazing torch of flaming, rejected, double-side printed scripts, I stride with gumption into…
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High Tide Winter Retreat
6 December already? How did that happen? Terrifying. So I’ll ignore it and pretend I will easily make the year-end deadlines I’ve given myself… Let’s deal with the Now instead. Am back a day or so from the excellent High Tide winter retreat in Halesworth, Suffolk. Sixteen brave scribes [wrighters, rather than writers, we hope]…
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Quickies
Oh, it’s the end-of-year madness, which, like all other things seasonal, comes early. First of all, a massive grins all round as Venue Magazine released its judgement on the year’s best bits, rating May’s 24 Hour Plays at Theatre Royal Bath, run by the great Shane Morgan at Roughhouse as 2nd best play of the…
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A voice is for….?
“Tale Man tell me what’s wrong with my life, am I only here to question? No, sir, you are undoubtedly here to cajole and make suggestions.” Julian Cope – “These Things I Know” – ‘Black Sheep’ album Excellent day yesterday at the Soho Theatre, where they held (yet another) great training session for writers, in…
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