UK Theatre Network

New opportunities for emerging Scottish Playwrights

A new mentoring and development programme for emerging playwrights is announced today. Edinburgh-based theatre production company Siege Perilous is introducing the scheme in conjunction with its inaugural Writer-in-Residence Caroline Dunford.

The aim of the ‘Playwrights’ Development Programme’ is to help aspiring playwrights develop their writing skills. Up to six playwrights will be chosen for the programme. Playwrights will be invited to submit a single script or work-in-progress which will be used to determine the final selections. At the end of the programme, the developed work will be workshopped with the production company and a team of professional actors. There is the further possibility that a script will go into a full production.

“We are so pleased that someone of Caroline’s experience has agreed to become our first Writer-in-Residence and that she is so enthusiastic about this new initiative” said Siege Perilous General Manager Tina Finch.

Caroline commented that “There are a number of excellent mentoring programmes available but it is extremely rare to find one that offers such richness of support. Not only does the playwright get direct one-to-one mentoring with me rather than email exchanges, they also get feedback about staging the work and practicalities from an experienced Director and Producer.”

The Company is committed to running the programme for an initial 3-year period subject to evaluations from the first cohort of playwrights in this first year, and funding.

The programme to be operated in Edinburgh will be open for submissions for a 2-week period from 12^th September, and any Scotland-based playwright will be eligible to apply. The playwright does not have to have been previously produced, but the work they submit should not have been professionally performed nor used as part of another mentoring scheme. Full details of the programme can be found at www.siegeperilous.co.uk.

The Royal Exchange is usually a pantomime-free zone come Christmas time - but they’ve broken the mould this year with a Lancashire-set “Cinderella Circa 1910” by Harold “Hobson’s Choice” Brighouse.  And in the best gender role reversal tradition of panto, Cinderella is played by a boy.

 Zack is a distinctly unheroic hero - a gormless innocent with a big heart whose lack of social airs make him an embarrassment to his aspiring petit-bourgeois family.  After a lifetime of emotional neglect and constant criticism inflicted by his battleaxe mother, Mrs Munning, and miserly brother, Paul, they’ve even sacked him from his job in the family catering firm because his only suit (a hand-me-down from his dead dad) has worn to rags.

 Enter Zack’s Fairy Godmother-cum-Prince(ss) Charming, in the form of beautiful and rich cousin Virginia, who immediately sees what’s going on - until the artful Paul, scheming mother, and some sexual misadventures on Zack’s part convince her otherwise.

 If you’re familiar with the film career of George Formby then you’ll immediately be at home with this style of gentle northern comedy, where the unlikely protagonist wins out despite nothing to recommend him but a mixture of good humour and pathos.  Zack is played by local comedian Justin Moorhouse - for those unfamiliar with his work, he’s the guy you’d ring if you couldn’t get Johnny Vegas - and he’s certainly “got a gift for jollification”, as well as eliciting several choruses of “ahhh” from the audience when his fortunes fall.

 Pearce Quigley’s Eeyore-ish Paul is as drippy as his lank moustache (“there isn’t a woman on earth worth buying roses for at sixpence a bloom”), while Polly Hemingway as their mother nicely catches the sharp-tongued quality of the aspiring lower-middle-class (“your ways would make a cat laugh”).

 Greg Hersov’s production finds the anarchic nature of “Lancy” humour in the comparatively small roles of dirt poor Martha Wrigley (played with all the spirit of an Eliza Doolittle by Samantha Power) and the bogus servant Sally Teale (rendered with an hilarious lack of deference by Michelle Tate).

 Although Hobson’s Choice is Harold Brighouse’s greatest hit and a deservedly iconic play, Zack is also an enjoyable example of the work of the Manchester School of Playwrights - and even the panto-averse won’t object to its fairytale happy ending.

  Zack is on until Saturday 22 January 2011

Prices: £9-£30

Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30 (not 24 Dec); Sats @ 8pm

Matinees: Weds @ 2.30pm (also Tues 21 & Fri 24 Dec); Sats @ 4pm (& Mon 27 Dec)

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

SHAKESPEARE GLOBE PRESS RELEASE – 15 February 2010

WORLD PREMIERES

Published by: Tremayne

Shakespeare’s Globe and its 2010 theatre season host two world premieres, Howard Brenton’s new play – Anne Boleyn and Bedlam by first female playwright at the Globe, Nell Leyshon.

“…for years I’d wanted to write a tale about The Tudors.  …sex and religion at such a high level…”

(Howard Brenton).

Anne Boleyn is a dramatisation on aspects of her life and the legacy of her husband, Henry VIII,to whom she was second wife .  A sexually charged woman who took it upon herself to improve the state religion was in, and for the better.

“…anything Tudor-related is gold dust to us at the moment, think to T.V. adaptations…”

(Dominic Dromgoole – Globe Artistic Director).

Nell Leyshon’s writing is described by Dominic Dromgoole as ‘a still and beautiful incapsulation of that Somerset life that’s passing’.  Her new play Bedlam is a fictional take on a London hospital for the mentally insane and looks at the common link between art and insanity.

“…mental illness wasn’t understood, you were either high or low.”

(Nell Leyshon).

SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE 2010 THEATRE DIARY:

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

23 April – 27 June

Directed by Lucy Bailey

Henry VIII by William Shakespeare

15 May – 21 August

Directed by Mark Rosenblatt

Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 by William Shakespeare

Part 1: 6 June – 2 October

Part 2: 3 July  - 3 October

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole

WORLD PREMIERE

Anne Boleyn by Howard Brenton

24 July – 21 August

Directed by John Dove

The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare

14 August – 2 October

Directed by Christopher Luscombe

WORLD PREMIERE

Bedlam by Nell Leyshan

5 September – 1 October

Directed by Jessica Swale

Tickets are available through the box office:

020 7901 9919/020 7087 7398 or

Online: www.shakespeares-globe.org

Q&A SESSION

• The development of The Winter Theatre

“…we retain a shell.  We’ve built up an understanding of The Blackfriars, the indoor theatre in Shakespeare’s day, combined with some of our own designs…”

(Dominic Dromgoole)

•Writing for the Globe

“The Globe loves storytelling.  Being an experimental theatre, it is a psychological window where audience’s brains can open up”.

(Howard Brenton)

•Ticket prices

The Globe continue to sell stand-up tickets for just £5.

“We’ve got the most democratic mix of audience.  I doubt we’ll ever reach the equivalent to New York where a free theatre pass has been made available.

(Howard Brenton)

•Nell Leyshon – First Female Globe playwright

“I wanted to improve the complexity found within plays, which resulted in me writing harder.  For a penny, on a Sunday, during the 18^th century you could observe the mentally ill and poke them with a stick.  I didn’t want to write an historical account.  I wanted to have some fun and not be held by history”.

• Themes of the world premiere plays: religious turmoil from Howard Brenton vs. binge-dinking by Nell Leyshon:

“I’m very interested in religious conflicts.  You don’t set out to write a play with addressing the nation though.  Otherwise you’d go mad like Sir Bernard Shaw!”

(Howard Brenton)

“You couldn’t go to a West End Theatre for fear of being stabbed”, Nell Leyshon who makes a comparison between theatre back in the 18^th century and now.

•Sum-up by Artistic Director, Dominic Dromgoole

“The extraordinary story of the Globe goes on.  It’s little short of a miracle that it’s becoming reachable on your laptop from the top of The Himalayan Mountains”.