Welcome To The Cabaret!

The last time I had anything to do with theatre (well, apart from the time when Great Aunt Dolores had her disastrous run as Phaedre in Paris's Comédie-Française), was when I was a member of a travelling theatre company in my student days. We took an old van, some mouldy costumes and a few tatty flats to Austria, where we managed to baffle the locals in a string of remote alpine villages with our somewhat tortuous interpretations of Ibsen, Brecht, Rattigan and even some Pinter. I was a dreadful actor, and probably an even worse stage manager, but it was a fun trip and we all became firm friends and thought we were all heading for stardom.

So, it is with some delight that I am helping to organize a festival of new stage writing here in Nottingham. Basically this is a writing festival, but it will culminate in the performance (by professional and semi-professional actors) of the winning scripts. We intent to invite the submission of scripts, mainly from new or emerging playwrights, and we shall have some independent judges who will select the winners whose plays will then be performed over three days in various venues around Hockley in Nottingham. This will take place in the summer of 2010.

I'm working in conjunction with the already established Halden Theatre Company (click here for details) whose productions are both professional and effective. This will be a quality festival and will hopefully produce some new talented writers for us to talk about. I'm so excited by the whole idea and even though it's going to be a lot of hard work, it will be hugely enjoyable. One of the best things about it will be the opportunity to network with so many creative people in the city. It means spending time with both new and established writers, as well as liaising with the venue managers and working with the actors too. On top of all that, there's the added satisfaction of knowing that we'll be pushing out some superior and innovative new writing to the public. Everybody wins!

At the moment, we're having a heated debate about what to call the festival. We want to find a name for it that's seductive, slightly zany, evocative, and also representative of the message we're trying to send out. We're throwing ideas around like mad, but haven't settled on anything yet. When we do, and we're ready to broadcast the details, you'll be the first to know, gentle reader. In the meantime, we're having fun. Again, everyone wins. Wooh!