When, Why, and How To Be Published

Monday March 7th brings us our third guest speaker of the term, in the shape of James Hogan, who founded Oberon Press in 1986, and still runs the company.

Oberon publishes about 80-100 new plays per year by established and new playwrights. James's own first plays were read by Player-Playwrights in 1962, when it used the British Drama League studio theatre in Fitzroy Street.

James's first professionally produced play was at the fledgling Gate Theatre, Notting Hill; in fact, the first original play produced there (1978). He has recently returned to playwriting with productions at the Print Room and the Jermyn Street Theatre. His next play, Dizzy Fingers, opens at JST in May. He will also talk about his beginnings with Player- Playwrights and its open door policy at The Green Man in 1962. His own writing, and publishing, grew out of that experience, because, he says, P-P took beginners seriously.

7.30 at the North London Tavern.

YOU CAN’T TEACH ANYONE TO WRITE BUT ….

Monday 9th February brings us our third talk of the term, with veteran comedy writers and collaborators PETER VINCENT and IAN DAVIDSON sharing their tricks of the trade.  Peter Vincent, is of course,  one of our longstanding members, and has a TV track record that goes back many years as a writer and editor.  He wrote or co-wrote 69 episodes of comedy for the BBC including seven series of Sorry with Ian Davidson, and episodes of All at No. 20 and the Brittas Empire.  He wrote for twelve series of The Two Ronnies and also edited some of the scripts.  He was Dave Allen’s script editor for around twenty years, and also edited the Russ Abbot show with Barry Cryer.  He has worked with Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse, Bruce Forsyth, Harry Secombe, David Frost, Cliff Richard, Les Dawson, Michael Parkinson and many others.  He has also written plays with David Nobbs, John Chapman and Barry Cryer.

Aside from their collaborations, Ian Davidson has performed and written with Michael Palin and Terry Jones at Oxford University - his first BBC writing credit was for That Was The Week That Was in 1963 - he became an actor at The Second City in Chicago. Returning to the UK, he worked for Ned Sherrin (as a film director) and David Frost, and then began a lifelong association with Barry Humphries as a writer and director. He appears, briefly, in many of the Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes - notably as a Dead Indian On a Pile of Dung, and as a news reporter who interrupts a sketch to say that it's his first time appearing on television.

Andrew Loudon

February 8th brings us a guest speaker, actor, writer and director, Andrew Loudon. He's got more credits than I've had hot dinners, and no fewer than three of his productions have transferred to the West End. As Tony Diggle explains:

TAKING A SCRIPT FROM THE BOTTOM

DRAWER TO THE WEST END

Andrew Loudon made his directorial debut in 1999, an adaptation by Emma Reeves of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women at the Pleasance, Edinburgh. The success of the show led to a further production at Sadler’s Wells in 2002 and its eventual arrival at the Duchess Theatre in 2004.

He has since directed other shows in the West End, most recently Cool Hand Luke at the Apollo Theatre in 2011 with Marc Warren in the lead. He has also had a long career as an actor appearing on stage and television. 

His regional theatre credits include Charles Ryder in the stage premiere production of Brideshead Revisited, and he has just appeared for a year as the father in the Railway Children at the Kings’ Cross Theatre. His television credits include Peak Practice, Absolutely Fabulous, Doctors and The Bill. He also writes, and has found time to appear in two of his own plays including Dangerous Play at the Arts Theatre. So there will be plenty to talk about during Q & A which might be sub-titled “How to survive in the theatre”!

Find out how he does it, at 7.30 at the North London Tavern.

WHY DID THEY WRITE IT LIKE THAT? THE WRITER AS PUZZLE-SETTER, THE ACTOR AS DETECTIVE

Monday 18th January brings us a talk by acclaimed acting teacher John Hartoch, who leads an evening exploring how actors interpret the clues in the writer's words. Somewhere between a talk and a workshop (A Talkshop?) the evening will play with the extremes to which creative brains can go when concentrating on possible subtexts, and how easy it is to make inaccurate assumptions about characters we find on the page. Writers will be invited to contribute an instant rewrite of the exposition of a famous text so by all means bring along writing materials. Open to all, but newcomers will be asked for an annual membership fee of £12.

John Hartoch was until 2015 Head of Acting Courses at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he began training actors in 1979. He has a successful record as a theatre director and has written a number of stage adaptations, notably Kipling's Jungle Book, (Samuel French) which he directed at the Adelphi more years ago than he cares to remember.

7.30 at the North London Tavern.