Gill Kirk, writer

Writing Life: insights, updates, and craft

  • Devoted & Disgruntled Roadshow: massive

    There’s a thing called Devoted & Disgruntled (D&D). It’s for theatre people who love theatre but also get pissed off with it from time to time. It’s a forum, an open space where you gather, raise issues, talk about them, share them. It’s real and online. It’s also on the road. Right now! I spent…

  • Absurd journeys

    Black Barn at LOST is now over. This dysfunctional circus family, scary siblings, pyromania and (understandable) reclusivity is – for now – a thing of the past. Theatre company tidy carnage did a great job with a sterling cast: Cameron Crighton, Helen Cuinn, Eilidh McCormick and Scott Reid, directed by Alice Butler with a superbly…

  • Black Barn 15-17 June

    Black Barn – it’s getting closer….15, 16, 17 June, LOST theatre, London You think it’s just you. That footstep. That scrabble. That…breath? You shouldn’t be scared. You’re all grown-up now. Come on, come with us. Let’s go inside. Look: the door’s open.” As you might have read below, I’m v excited about this project with…

  • In a dark, dark house…

    Did you do this rhyme at primary school? “In a dark, dark house, there’s a dark, dark, door. Through the dark, dark door, there’s a dark dark room. In the dark dark room, there’s a MONSTER!” I’ve loved the creepy and the uncanny since I could read. And – in a relationship that keeps banging…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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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