Plymouths inaugural fringe festival is a week away, over 100 performances in venues all over the city. Plymouth has been in need of this for longer than I care to remember, I have witnessed a lot of theatre makers leaving the region to get their work seen in cities with more opportunities for independent artists. My hope is that audiences … Read More
Coffee with Vera returns to the Plymouth Synagogue
When I first performed Coffee with Vera it was inside the vestry of the Plymouth Synagogue. My decision to use the vestry rather than the synagogue was twofold. The synagogue can be accessed through an appointment to view with a guided tour, conducted by the caretaker. It can be considered a performance in itself, which gives a particular reading of … Read More
Creative conversation or development discussion
When I travel from the south-west up the M5 beyond the turning for Bristol south and the airport you pass an orchard, row upon row of young apple trees in perfect straight rows at right angles to the motorway so you can see the precision of the planting. I don’t travel up with enough regularity to see the changing of … Read More
Bringing the audience into the cultural conversation
In August 2014 four women came together to research and develop the first draft of a new play The Orchard. It wasn’t even a first draft, it was two monologues for two actors. Although intended to be a dialogue playwright Natalie McGrath wanted to find the voices of the characters, she was finding one easier than the other and so … Read More
White Rabbit Red Rabbit
There’s an actor’s nightmare where you dream about being onstage but you don’t know the play you are in or any of your lines. I have had that dream many times in the past, usually when I am stressed about something that is often not related to theatre at all, but obviously, subconsciously, my greatest fear is the nightmare scenario. … Read More
Thinking big by thinking small
Something I wrote for the New Theatre in your Neighbourhood blog
the art of good conversation
I am getting to that point in my life where sometimes I struggle to find the word in a conversation, sometimes a small everyday kind of word that normally you don’t have to even think about. This doesn’t matter when you are with a group of friends, people who know you, who understand because they are experiencing the same thing, … Read More
Research for my @TheatreWestUK show
Believe it or not this is research for my next show. When you are there, at a baseball game, it is pure theatre. This clip is a mash up of Robert Redford in The Natural and the real life drama of the 1988 Kirk Gibson home run to win the World Series, which features in my new show Homeward Bound. … Read More
Plymouth independent theatre makers Forge ahead!
In Arts Professional Adrian Vinken, the chief executive of the Theatre Royal Plymouth says that because of the arts funding imbalance between London and the regions ‘[t]he result is a continuous brain drain where talented new artists get a professional introduction in the regions, but are then obliged to head to London, like Dick Whittington, to gain access to the … Read More