Dates for Your Diary

We shall be giving a “trial run” to a new venue, the Phoenix Artist Club – off Charing Cross Road – on the first two Mondays in June (Monday,7th and Monday, 14th) 7.15pm for 7.45pm as now. Details are as follows:

Venue: PHOENIX ARTIST CLUB

Address: 1, Phoenix Street,

Charing Cross Road,

London, WC2H 0DT

Website: www.phoenixartistclub.com

The Phoenix Artist Club is a basement club on the corner of Phoenix Street and Charing Cross Road. It is under the Phoenix Theatre (where “Blood Brothers” is running) just north of Cambridge Circus and practically opposite Foyles. The club consists primarily of a bar room with a long well-appointed bar along one wall, and a private room which is adjacent to the bar area and which is where we shall be located.

Some of the plus points of this venue are as follows:

A reasonably regular, ample space for our activities with no sight line problems, good acoustics and comfortable seating.
No charge: the room is free. The ethos of the club is to be a place for people from the arts world to meet and network.
Good ambience, atmosphere, “gemutlichkeit”, “feng shui” etc., both in the room and in the adjoining bar
Parking for bicycles and motorcycles in the immediate vicinity
Some free parking after 6.30pm in New Compton Street nearby.
Close to Tottenham Court Road and Leicester Square tubes.
Food served until 9.30pm. Good standard pub food (i.e. fish and chips, sausage and mash, various burgers, omelettes etc) available at £7 give or take, and some cheaper snacks.
Wine, however, is expensive (£5.50 for a small glass). Wine drinkers should get together and buy a bottle to share.

A full announcement will be made and more details given at the reading next Monday (May 24th) at the Green Man.

Time Please

May 24th brings us the return of Denise O'Leary. Denise first came to P-P as a writer, then found herself cast in other people's work, and before we knew it she won writer and actor of the year, in the same year. Time Please is her first work for us since Pandora's Boxes which got performed on digital radio station Resonance a couple of year's ago.

This is another radio piece, forty-five minutes in length, and should be well worth your time, anyway.

Come along to the Green Man, at 7.45.

Peter Cox Speaks & Norman's Invasion

May 17th brings us an exciting double bill. First up is a talk by award-winning playwright Peter Cox. Let Peter introduce himself:

"I began my writing career at the Royal Court Theatre where winning the George Devine Award for most promising new playwright changed my life. Since then my stage plays have been performed throughout Britain - from the Royal National Theatre and Belfast Opera House to miner's welfare halls. (The latter during a stint with 7:84 Theatre Company (England).)

Over the years I've also written and developed film and television drama for the BBC and BBC Wales as well as various independent companies. My radio drama has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 & 4 and BBC Radio Wales. A huge chunk of my career was spent writing 227 episodes (I know!) of the Channel 4 drama serial, Brookside, between 1986 and 2003. (It was my drug of choice!) During that time I was a member of the writers' 'team' that created multiple-strand stories for more than 2,400 episodes!! As you might guess I love story and the power of story metaphor in people's lives".

And that's just the tip of a veritable iceberg of creativity. He told me he could talk for hours, but we're settling for half an hour, followed by questions, on the broad subject of rewriting. Something some of us don't do enough of, I suspect.

Then, after a ten minute break for beer and skittles, there is a brand new tv sitcom by the P-P legend that is Tim Gambrell, a man who needs no introduction. Unless you don't know who he is. Anyway, this is the set-up:

"Norman Flyte is a 21st century office facilities manager in the city. He's not bad at his job, but his face doesn't quite fit the corporate image and professionally he's probably got as far as he's going to get. Privately he is a lonely batchelor who's never had much luck with women and has spent too long under the watchful gaze of his mother.
One day, randomly, Norman finds himself transported from his office to the West Country in Norman England. There, suddenly, many aspects of his life start to become more successful - but it's not all plain sailing for sure. Why has Norman been sent to Dipford, near Trull, in 1067? What does the future there hold for him, and why do calls from his mother still seem to get through on his mobile phone?

You won't find answers to all of these questions in episode one - if you did there wouldn't be any reason to tune in for the rest of the series!"

I'm rather proud of this one as, even before it had been written, I thought up the title. I haven't actually read it, but rest assured if it's half as good as Tim's usual stuff it'll still probably be quite funny. And twice as good as most of the stuff that actually gets on the telly.

So, 7.45. Green Man. Be there.

Cuckoo

After the trauma of the bank holiday and the fun of the election, we can all get back to normality on Monday 10th of May with, if not the first cuckoo of spring, the first reading of Cuckoo. Jean Rees is making her P-P debut with this intense stage play, and it's been read before at another group, so it isn't a completely unknown entity.



So, 7.45 p.m. at the Green Man. Be there.

May Day!

As usual, there's no reading this week as it's the May Day bank holiday, but we'll be back on May 10th.

Last year in this spot I showed you some Russkies having fun at this time of year. Well here's part two.