We are delighted to announce our latest initiative, Everything Theatre’s Scripts Spotlight Week.
5th-8th February 2014 at the award-winning White Bear Theatre, Kennington.
At Everything Theatre, one of our main aims is to share our infectious enthusiasm for theatre with a wide audience. In doing so we hope to get more people into the arts. We also strive to give practitioners at all levels the opportunity to share their work.
With this in mind, we have put together a selection of scripts which will be presented as part of a week of new writing. Our aim is to share them with theatre-goers old and new. New writing theatres are often in possession of a number of excellent scripts, so here’s your chance to hear six of them first!
- 6 rehearsed readings at the White Bear Theatre.
- International, award-winning plays.
- UK award-winning playwrights.
- In the spirit of involving audiences in the production process, entrance is FREE!
From Wednesday 5th – Saturday 8th February we will be showcasing a diverse range of truly outstanding scripts. Moreover, the White Bear Theatre is offering the opportunity of a full production based upon audience feedback. Yes, it is you who will be putting scripts under the spotlight!
Weds 5th February at 7:30pm
Música de Balas by Hugo Salcedo. (Full reading in Spanish)
Directed by Juan Solari.
Thu 6th February at 7:30pm
Walking to the Sun by Vivek. V. Narayan. (Excerpts)
Fingers Crossed by James Rushbrooke. (Excerpts)
You can reserve your place here!
Fri 7th February at 7:30pm
Scottish Widows by Grae Cleugh. (2 monologues)
All the Way to Albuquerque by Henry Martin. (Excerpts)
You can reserve your place here!
Sat 8th February at 7:30pm
I am Don Quixote of La Mancha by José Ramón Fernández. Translated by Andy Dickinson. (Full reading)
You can reserve your place here!
A more detailed programme with show descriptions is available below.
We look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible.
Team ET
DETAILED PROGRAMMME
Saturday 8th February at 7.30pm
I am Don Quixote of La Mancha by José Ramón Fernández. Translated by Andy Dickinson. (Full reading)
Yo Soy Don Quijote de La Mancha (I am Don Quixote of La Mancha) has been a huge success in Spain. It has won the National Prize for Dramatic Literature. Through December 2012 it played in the 740 seat Teatro Español in Madrid. Since then it has been on a national tour.
The three protagonists are Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and Sancho’s daughter Sanchica. Together they relive and recall some of the most famous adventures and misadventures of the knight errant and his squire. In between times they engage in previously unheard of banter, thanks to the imagination of José Ramón Fernández. This is in the style of Cervantes’ great original. A play filled with both humour and pathos.
Friday 7th February at 7.30pm.
Scottish Widows by Grae Cleugh. (2 monologues)
Scottish Widows is a series of six monologues set in Scotland and based around the theme of widowhood. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this is a play full of humour as well as one that explores the more nostalgic and tragic moments of losing a partner. The ‘speakers’ in this play may all be Scottish but otherwise are a very mixed bunch. Scottish Widows is about death certainly – how could it not be – but much more, it is about how in the face of sometimes terrible grief we keep going, moving forward. In that sense the play is truly about life.
Grae Cleugh’s first full-length play F***ing Games was produced at the Royal Court Theatre and was directed by Dominic Cooke. It later won the Laurence Olivier Award for the UK’s Most Promising Playwright. His second play The Patriot was produced at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow. Though based permanently in Glasgow, he is an assessor for new writing at Arts Council England. He recently completed his third play Scottish Widows.
All the Way to Albuquerque by Henry Martin. (Excerpts)
What happened when radical lesbian feminist and writer Jill Johnston visited the reclusive celebrated painter Agnes Martin in the New Mexico desert in 1974? This is the starting point to All the Way to Albuquerque, a new project inspired by these two unique women and the society they changed. It is a blend of fact and fiction that shows the distances people go to to find or escape who they really are.
Henry Martin is an award-winning playwright. His work has been shown at Theatre 503, The Roundhouse, Latitude Festival, Fishamble Theatre and at the Arcola as part of their first new writing festival PlayWrought, January 2013.
Henry has also been involved in projects at the National Theatre, HighTide, Hampstead Theatre, and Central School of Speech and Drama. Forthcoming projects include an adaptation of The Man Who Would be King for Firstborn Theatre.
Thursday 6th February at 7.30pm
Walking to the Sun by Vivek. V. Narayan. (Excerpts)
Walking to the Sun stages the history of Polish writer Janusz Korczak and the performance he directed of Rabindranath Tagore’s Dak Ghar (The Post Office) with the children of his orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. The text of The Post Office was performed in Hindi translated by Ashok Mishra, and not in the archaic English of the text being read out today. The play was commissed by Sunil Shanbag of Theatre Arpana and was based on a story idea narrated by him.
Vivek V. Narayan is a theatre director, playwright and theatre researcher currently pursuing graduate research in the Dept of Theatre and Performance Studies at Stanford University. He is artistic director of Theatre Counteract. He directed Ends and Beginnings, based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, which won Best Play and Best Director, at a national-level theatre festival for young professionals in India. He wrote Walking to the Sun for the Mumbai-based group Theatre Arpana. It was directed by Sunil Shanbag for the Tagore Utsav in Kolkata.
Fingers Crossed by James Rushbrooke. (Excerpts)
Fingers Crossed draws partly from news reports about the discovery of the human genome, its subsequent sequencing and the mammoth jumps forward in our understanding of human nature. It seeks to invoke questions about the perception of good and evil and question the importance of scientific reasoning over human compassion. It also draws heavily on the author’s direct experience of working with troubled children in ‘residential care’ – particularly those labeled as ‘dangerous’ and the institutions that care for them.
James Rushbrooke is a playwright, director, and social activist. He has worked as a drama teacher for children aged 6 -18 for the last decade and has written for children. In other work he has been an advocate for children in the care system, and has spoken at conferences across the UK about how to engage with children. He moved to London in 2012 and became an associate playwright with the Old Vic Community Theatre in December 2013. He is interested in exploring dystopian futures and much of his writing is informed by the development of modern technology.
Wednesday 5th February at 7.30pm
Música de Balas by Hugo Salcedo. (Full reading in Spanish!)
Dirigida por Juan Solari.
Música de Balas es una pieza dramática conformada por cuadros breves que desarrollan el tema de la violencia actual en México; desentraña los motores que la generan y expone las consecuencias de la guerra emprendida contra los narcotraficantes mexicanos desde una perspectiva intimista.
Hugo Salcedo es narrador, ensayista y dramaturgo. El obtuvo el Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Universidad de Guadalajara – Gobierno del Distrito Federal para Música de Balas, 2011.
Back in 1989, Juan Solari gained a BA in performing Arts from the National Institute of Fine arts in Mexico City . He extensively worked as an actor in theater plays and TV series in Mexico and before coming to live in London in 1999 he directed several miniseries for Mexican TV.
Once in London he did an MA in Audio-Visual Production and film making at London Metropolitan University and in 2003 he set up Solar Dreams Productions Ltd, a video production company based in London.