Result

Neil Rhodes was a winner in our INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR competition last term, and is coming all the way from Llanymynech, Powys for a reading of the play, Result, on Monday, 4th November. It is a medium length stage play about a local newspaper that is struggling for survival by creative news-reporting. Jane, the beautiful and highly principled freelance photographer is unhappy about this at first, but soon gets the hang of it and of other things too.

It's in the Evelyn Waugh vein and has more laughs than the Leveson report.

7.30 at the Three Stags.

AGM

There is no reading this week as it's the AGM. So if you want to rant or rave, get something off your chest, or bang the desk in approval, now's your chance.

Monday October 28th at 7.30 at the Three Stags.

It's also the deadline for the competition. So, get writing!

At The Heart of Everything

Monday 21st October is, of course, Trafalgar day and at Player Playwrights we have decided to celebrate by bringing you the latest drama from Mary Conway's hugely productive collaborative group. This one is written by Mary in association with Barry Fyfield, and we'll be seeing two episodes of a tv series:

"It’s Nigel’s first day on the senior management team of Runcible Further Education College. He arrives full of hope and a high minded determination to inspire the joys of learning in the masses.


However, nothing has prepared him for the realities of a management team lost in the mire of personal quirks and limitations, systemic failure and silent resignation.

Set in and around the college management boardroom in the space of one day, two half hour episodes of this TV series remind us of all the dysfunctional meetings we have ever attended as the managers try and fail to stamp any kind of control on a dramatic situation that is fast spiralling into an orgy of chaos and farce.

As the day progresses, we see the senior team intent on their own survival at all costs. Meanwhile Nigel dissolves into despair, his hopes derailed and his professional pride in tatters.

Familiar or what?"

7.30 at the Three Stags.

Frequent Seismic Activity

Monday October 14th brings us a new play by PP debutant Andy Moseley, who is a graduate of UEAs Creative Writing Masters Programme. He has written several performed plays including Casual Encounters, which enjoyed a sell out run at Etcetera Theatre, Camden in 2013, Are You Lonesome Tonight? A Bridge Game Too Far (winner of the Roy Purdue New Writing Trophy at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, 2011) Heart Shaped Box and Going For Gold. His book, Around the States in 90 Days was published in 2009, and is the true story of a road trip across the USA and Canada in 2006. So he's been around the block. Here's what he says:

"Frequent Seismic Activity is a play about a family holiday at the time of the Ash Cloud that caused flight cancellations and disruptions for weeks in 2010. The family’s relationship mirrors that of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, with issues and tensions that were building up before the holiday started, causing minor eruptions when they reach their destination. The fallout from these combine to make a major incident inevitable once the real ash cloud makes escape impossible. Whether things settle down afterwards, or whether the volcano remains active is open to question".

7.30 at the Three Stags.

Writing for Performance & Exit Through the Window

This Monday, 7th October, we have an enticing double bill. First up is our guest speaker, Gill Adams, who has writen for both stage and tv, including those trusty stalwarts Doctors and EastEnders. Her current claim to fame is Keeler which incidentally has a run at the Charing Cross Theatre starting at the end of October. Gill also does workshops on writing, which is how we have come to engage her for the evening.

After questions and an interval, we then have the return of Kevin Connor. He hasn't had anything read at P-P since “Harry and John” last November, his play about John Lennon. Could this be even better? It's a 30 minute stageplay in which "Two ageing gay men attempt to pass off an alcoholic Glaswegian graffiti artist as “Banksy” in a modern homage to George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion ". Has your appetite been suitable wettened? Come along on Monday to the Three Stags to have it satisfied.

Bottle

A mere two weeks after Debbie Nagioff presented Showdown, she's back with Bottle, a one hour tv drama, co-written this time with the living legend himself, Peter Vincent.As Debbie explains:

"The idea of a mysterious manuscript found in a bottle has teased us ever since Edgar Allan Poe sent his hero to a horrifying death, allowing him only time to finish his story and hurl a bottle (and his story) in the general direction of posterity.

"But what if the bottle is found in The River Thames - and the manuscript is in a foreign language? Two kids from Essex, Beth and Ethan, cared for, As you might expect, by a nasty aunt, have to overcome the aunt and her slimy husband, school kids who don't like them, a total lack of money and a sneering parrot to solve the mystery of who sent the bottle and why. Are they seeking some imprisoned Princess? Or is it really their missing Mum they long for? A knowledge of the railways of Bulgaria might help you find The Princess before they do. A small cash prize for the best solution has been considered and rejected. You're not in this for the money, are you? By the way, no parrots were harmed in the making of this story but only because we couldn't catch the so and so."

7.30, at the Three Stags.

Babylicious

Monday 23rd brings us a piece by Carmen Harris, who is surely one of the more prestigious writers to have graced our doorstep. She is a published children’s author, and as well as writing 13 episodes of her own primetime BBC1 sitcom ‘Us Girls,’ she has written for numerous TV soaps, including 10 years as a team writer on EastEnders. Over recent years she has written several episodes of ‘Rastamouse,’ and has been employed as a Voice/Dialogue coach by the BBC, Disney, and the Bond franchise.

Babylicious is her new comedy series, and, as Carmen explains: "BFFL teens Kandia and Sherelle are out to prove to themselves, the world, and Miss Prinsley, that they are life’s winners. Most of all, they’re going to show those two absent women who had the temerity to render them motherless, just what they gave up".

Yes. I also had to google BFFL. 7.30, at the Three Stags.