PRESS RELEASE – 20 June 2004
New Writing Showcase at the Alma Tavern
Southwest Scriptwriters is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a festival of new dramatic writing. Three radio plays, a screenplay and a TV drama will find their way on to the stage of the Alma Tavern over the week commencing 6 July. They are the winners of this year's Southwest Scriptwriters drama competition, an annual event which this year drew members’ entries from across the region.
The week long festival of script-in-hand performances will begin on Tuesday, 6 July with Bottled Up by Kate Stonham. Then, on Wednesday, 7 July, Abraham by Patrick Makin will take the stage. On Thursday, 8 July, the Alma will be showing A Pint On the House by John Colborn. Friday, 9 July, will bring If Possible, Make a U-Turn by Linda Ewles. Finally, on Saturday, 10 July, there'll be a performance of competition winner Wingless Victor by Bruce Fellows.
Each script will take the stage at 7.30pm and 9.00pm on the evening of its performance, apart from Abraham, which, because it’s a full-length feature film script, receives a single reading at 7.30pm on 7 July. Tickets, priced £5, can be reserved online at www.southwest-scriptwriters.co.uk/festival or by calling 0117 909 5522.
Southwest Scriptwriters is a new-writing workshop based at the Bristol Old Vic. It works to promote stage, screen and radio writing in the area using a mixture of talks, courses and reading workshops to develop and encourage new work.
Former group presidents have included writer of the hit west end musical Mamma Mia!, Catherine Johnson, and the creator of Cold Feet, Mike Bullen. Current members have won a number of awards and written episodes of TV series such as BBC1's Doctors and ITV's The Bill. Scriptwriters' member and Bedminster resident Ray Brooking recently won a British Soap Award. His 75-minute episode of Doctors, Say a Little Prayer, won first prize in the best individual episode category.
Scriptwriters’ artistic director Tim Massey, who was voted Drama Writer of the Year at the 2004 TAPS Awards, was impressed by the standard of this year's submissions. “Ten years on, we're still finding that there really is some exciting new work out there,” he said recently.
The first play in the season, Bottled Up, is by Totterdown resident Kate Stonham. Kate is a multimedia director whose clients include BBC Education and has lived in Bristol for three years. Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey, a radio play written by Kate, was runner up in a previous Scriptwriters competition. “It's very encouraging to see my work placed again,” Kate says. “Even the rehearsal process, seeing the actors’ reactions to the script, helps the development process.”
Equal fourth with Kate is St. Andrews based management consultant, Patrick Makin. Patrick currently has a screenplay in development with the UK Film Council and he describes his winning screenplay Abraham as “a sort of cross between Angel Heart and The End Of the Affair.” Patrick's been writing film scripts for six years and he's delighted to have won a place in the competition: “When you're writing in your garret at home, it's encouraging to get a bit of recognition at last.”
John Colborn's third-placed script A Pint On the House is based on a true story about a Welsh miner and his ingenious plan to get a free drink in his local pub every night. A freelance copywriter from Clifton, John's influences are Coupling and Cold Feet and he tries to mix both comedy and drama in his work. “I'm hoping that someone will spot its potential,” he says of his radio play.
If Possible, Make a U-Turn is the intriguing title of Linda Ewles script, also a radio play, which was second overall. “I've always been fascinated by inanimate objects taking on a life of their own,” says the dietician and public health writer, and her script concerns a woman whose life is changed when the GPS navigation system in her car does just that. Linda, who lives in St Michael's Hill, has been writing for ten years, and has won several awards for her short stories. “Winning has given an enormous boost to my confidence,” she says. “It's so valuable to see your work in front of an audience.”
Winning writer Bruce Fellows was also a winner in last year's Scriptwriters competition, with his play Honeysuckle Cottage about the WWII flying ace Guy Gibson. By day, Bruce is Director of Studies at the English Language Centre in Bristol, but he's followed a parallel writing career for over 35 years. On winning the competition, Bruce says: “after being a runner-up last year, I feel doubly blessed. I'm really hoping that this win will stimulate some interest in my work”
Southwest Scriptwriters is delighted to have won the support of two national writers’ organisations for this year’s New Writing Festival. writernet, the London-based organisation promoting new drama writers and writing throughout the UK, administered the competition to select scripts for the Festival, and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain has generously funded the hire of the Alma Tavern theatre for the event.
