Stage write
Southwest Scriptwriters’ annual showcase features the cream of Bristol’s drama-writing talent. Dan Butt and Steve Wright check out the programme.
“Different writers find different paths to success, and there’s no proven route. I’m always keen to encourage writers to take a proactive, ‘punk’ approach to getting work shown – doing shows off their own backs rather than waiting for production companies to pick them up.” This is Tim Massey, artistic director of local drama-writers’ group Southwest Scriptwriters, offering his pearls of wisdom on cutting it in the world of writing.
Next week’s annual SWS gathering would seem to illustrate this ethos perfectly. The group’s eighth New Writing Festival will feature script-in-hand performances of the best of members’ recent efforts. All scripts submitted for each year’s festival are sent to the London-based talent agency writernet for consideration, and the latter send back the list of their top eight scripts, all of which you’ll be able to see performed over the course of the week.
SWS’s beating heart, though, is at the weekly workshops at Bristol Old Vic, where budding radio, TV and theatre writers get together to read and critique each other’s work-in-progress. The SWS ethos is, it seems, a pretty open one. “It’s important when doing something creative to have the right to fail,” explains Tim. “Some weeks we hear cracking scripts from writers who have really got it together, but other times the work’s not so good. Everyone learns more, though, by figuring out where the less successful writing isn’t working, so these scripts are just as .valuable as the good ones.”
It seems to be working: current member Brian Jennings has just been taken on by the BBC’s writersroom talent stable, for example, while Mark Breckon’s stage play, ‘The Radicals’, which graced the 2003 Fest, has won him a place on a writers’ course at the National Theatre. Member Ray Brooking, meanwhile, is a major contributor to the BBC1 daytime soap ‘Doctors’, and has his first episode of ‘Casualty’ appearing in November. The group attracts both raw beginners and old pros – as witness the case of their last president, Mike Bullen, creator of ‘Cold Feet’ and ‘Life Begins’, who just happened to wander in one evening.
This year’s opener is Steve Lambert’s ‘Last Train’, in which two strangers are moved to tell each other some close secrets while waiting for the last train out of town. The following night’s ‘Living Doll’, by SWS veterans Lesley Bown and Ann Gawthorpe, is perhaps the fest’s most out-and-out comedy, about an inflatable sex doll that comes alive. When Kevin finds the blow-up buddy in the attic, he decides to pump her up – pure curiosity, naturally – but gets a surprise when she not only comes to life, but demands to settle down with him. On the same night, Richard Lambert’s ‘Coast’ centres on a quartet of characters who meet unexpectedly on a beach, each bringing their own tales of love, loss and insanity to the party.
Things get a bit grittier on the Thursday, as ‘Fitting In’ (Gareth Manson) tells the story of an ambitious teacher trying to find his feet on a sink estate. There’s light relief afterwards, though, in the form of William House’s ‘The Elevator Man’, which features a fortysomething woman agonising over what to wear on her date with a man she met in a lift. Friday’s tales are Kevin Cattell’s radio drama ‘Resting’ a black comedy whose hero relieves his frustrations with a catalogue of lies – and ‘The Return’, by Didier Desmedt, about a mother and her daughter-in-law both waiting anxiously for the return of their beloved husband and son.
On Saturday, it’s time to roll out the red carpet for this year’s winner. Peter Kesterton’s ‘Air Guitar’ deals with a man’s attempts to heal the rift with his sinister, eccentric brother. It also deals – timely, this – with terrorism. Two estranged brothers, Mike and Ed, find themselves in Ed’s shack in the wilds of Cornwall, trying to patch up their differences. Mike’s a go-getting TV producer; Ed has dropped out and holed up in his shack where, as his brother starts to learn, he’s planning something a little sinister.
“I guess there are two strands, really,” says Peter of his prize-winning piece. “On the one hand, it’s about sibling rivalry there’s a long thread of sexual jealousy between the two brothers. But it’s also about paranoia – how much we worry about what might be going on in people’s heads, even those close to us.”
Say it quietly, but this play could be going places: there’s been some interest in theatrical circles, and there’s a decent chance of a fully-funded, professional production at some point in the future. Not surprising, then, that Peter has some warm words to say about the group. “I think the whole workshop process works so well, and I’d urge anyone thinking about joining a writers’ group to come along. For one thing, it’s easier to see faults in other people’s work than in your own. And really, it’s just great to meet people who don’t think you’re wasting your time as a writer...”
SOUTHWEST SCRIPTWRITERS’ NEW WRITING FESTIVAL IS AT THE TOBACCO FACTORY, BRISTOL FROM TUE 19–SAT 23 JULY. FFI: WWW.SOUTHWEST-SCRIPTWRITERS.CO.UK |
