The meeting is under construction – watch this space!
Sunday January 5th 2020
New Venture Theatre Bar, Bedford Place, Brighton
19.00 – 21.00
Free to Sussex Playwrights members
Visitors £3 (£2 with Equity card)
Includes drinks
Please note – Sussex Playwrights are not affiliated with our friends the New Venture Theatre.
2020 dates
Jan 5 Feb 2 Mar 1 Apr 5 May 3 Jun 7 Jul 5 Aug 2
Welcome to Sussex Playwrights
For writers, producers, directors, actors and anyone with a passion for plays
We promote new writing for stage, screen, radio, audio and on-line.
Our purpose is to encourage new work from writers throughout the English speaking world.
Sussex just happens to be where we started, in 1935.
Sussex Playwrights Honorary President and Vice President …
Playwright, novelist and screenwriter William Nicholson
Author of
His latest film Breathe, directed by Andy Serkis
Shadowlands
Les Miserables
Gladiator
First Knight
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
is our Honorary President.
About William and his work: www.williamnicholson.com
For many years the late Sir Peter Shaffer was Sussex Playwrights’ Honorary President.
Honorary Vice President
In a role previously held by the actor Paul Moriarty, our Honorary Vice President is a long-term Sussex Playwrights member
Playwright and screenwriter Judy Upton
Author of
Ashes and Sand
Sliding with Suzanne
Bruises
Sunspots
People on the River
Her plays are published by Methuen Drama
About Judy and her work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Upton
Thank you to William and Judy for their support of new writing in the region
from Chair Philippa Hammond, Secretary Thomas Everchild and the Sussex Playwrights committee and members
How to have your work read and discussed at a meeting
Work in progress or for sharing
We’re looking to members and guests to take part in meetings and showcase their work
If you’d like to have actors read an excerpt from your latest script in progress for discussion [10 minute slot]
If you’d like to read an excerpt from your latest fiction or non-fiction on the night [10 minute slot]
If you’d prefer to have someone read it for you, if you’re happier writing than speaking
Please contact us chair@sussexplaywrights.co.uk
Ideas for guest speakers
If you can suggest a great guest speaker for one of our meetings – please get in touch with us.
Ideas for workshops
Are there any particular workshops you’d like to have as part of a meeting?
Suggestions so far include:Reading aloud to an audience – For authors, being able to deliver an excerpt from your poetry, fiction or non fiction to an audience can raise your profile and increase your sales
Acting script-in-hand for beginners – being able to take a script and bring it to life with a group reading is a great skill for writers, and can help you appreciate what makes dialogue playable
Crowd funding your writing – how writers can create their own fundraising project online to support themselves and their creative work.
Audio drama performance skills – an essential toolkit of skills for anyone interested in performing audio drama
Please contact us
Follow and share
Send us your latest news and successes to feature on social media
‘Like’ the Sussex Playwrights Facebook Page for the latest news and links
Follow us on Twitter @PlaywrightsClub
To contact Sussex Playwrights
Contact Sussex Playwrights
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Castings are announced on the Sussex Playwrights Facebook Page and on Brighton Actors Networking Facebook Page and Group.
The Group is open to all aspiring, training, pre-professional and professional actors and anyone in related fields.
Brighton Actors Networking Group and Sussex Playwrights
Sussex Playwrights casts its readings from actors in Brighton and Hove and the surrounding area.
Castings are announced on the Sussex Playwrights Facebook Page and on Brighton Actors Networking Facebook Group.
The Group is open to all aspiring, training, pre-professional and professional actors and anyone in related fields.
We encourage
Networking
Sharing opinion and advice
Casting news
Services – classes, workshops, photography etc – relevant to actors
Debates and alerts to issues
Performance news
Brighton Actors Networking Facebook Page and Group were founded and developed by Thomas Everchild and Philippa Hammond [secretary and chair of Sussex Playwrights].
‘We knew there was a big and active community of actors in Brighton and Hove – but there was nowhere online for networking and sharing.
A chance conversation at an event in 2013 sparked the idea to create a Facebook Page and Group for actors in the city.
We created the Page that evening and by the end of the first weekend had over 100 members.
The Group followed quickly, and together they have over 2000 members today.’
Philippa Hammond
Sussex Playwrights Reviews
Quintessence
Sweet Productions
Brighton Horrorfest 2019
Written and performed by Emily Carding
Directed by Dominique Gerrard
Winner of the Fringe Review Outstanding Theatre Award (Brighton Fringe 2019).
‘one of the UK’s leading Shakespearian actors’ – The Stage
Earth, the far future – and humanity has finally succeeded in wiping itself out. Its successors, the android Guardians, are at work. Humanity 2.0 is under construction, and we’re the evidence it’s going quite well.
Emily Carding as Guardian Ariel, a poised, precise figure in turquoise plus ethereal makeup, eyes black pinpoints in blue-shadowed white, welcomes us to our lessons.
This artificial intelligence, a creature charged with the care of precious if problematic young life, is programmed with the entire works of Shakespeare as its guidebook to the human soul.
With crystal clear delivery, all measured oddness and beatific white gaze, every second, every move is choreographed and precisely executed.
Assured technical support delivers a complete and subtle soundtrack of nature, computer sounds and voice fragments. As the light changes colour and quality, Ariel shifts and rearranges body components and voice samples, into young Juliet, blokey Henry and extreme Richard, all fluidly accessed moment by moment.
Like all experiments, some don’t go according to plan. There are moments of humour in the eeriness; the AIs can’t have been paying attention to Romeo and Juliet, as they completely fail to get adolescence. And shocks too, achieved by swiftly flipping lighting and performance. We’re left with our own ‘cry God for England’ moment, a call to action in our own fight for survival.
The piece is versatile; it could be performed in a huge venue with projections on screens, headmic and video closeups – or in the tiniest most claustrophobic venue, even one to one. Up close, Carding’s favoured mode, it’s captivating, an intensely personal and mesmerising experience.
Keep an eye on the Page for news of when and where Quintessence is on next.
Sussex Playwrights Reviews
2 Dumb the Musical
Roedean Theatre, Brighton
This is the first ever performance of this show. Roedean Theatre hosts a five performance weekend of this new rock musical by Tim Newman and Stuart Brayson, featuring an assured and accomplished lead cast, great voices and songwriting and superb support from the live band and the Brighton Academy’s 120-strong chorus.
Denver James is both a rock star, and a charismatic leader of the young. He’s come to the PM’s attention – and as he gathers his people, a great conspiracy unfolds.
Laced with glimpses of characters’ private life and the past, with strong echoes of Jesus Christ Superstar, this tale of a silenced youth movement that’s found its voice feels so now, with Extinction Rebellion and climate change school strikes front page news.
For a show of this quality and scale with rightly ambitious plans to transfer and tour, this intensive weekend tryout is a great opportunity to polish a gem.
It’s wordy, the writing at times resembles a lecture, with characters rapidly declaiming manifestos and political opinions, and as a result is long (there is an interval, and a bar) and would benefit from an edit.
The technical element is terrific, using the venue’s resources to the max. This is no school hall; Roedean’s fully equipped theatre has the wow factor, with huge scope for very big shows. Brighton fringe must surely envy the Roedean students for this terrific asset.
The few first night technical glitches can be addressed – the sound mix on the night lost some of the lyrics and occasionally dancers and spot lights didn’t quite meet.
But we’re left with a lasting impression of a show with fantastic energy, the quality of lead performers’ singing, fabulous exhilarating ensemble singing, dancing and sheer exuberant presence are a joy. The enormous almost entirely female supporting cast often surround the audience, using every inch of the stage, aisles and upper tiers. We felt completely part of the whole experience, the finale enclosing us in a wall of sound and firefly-like torchlight.
Highly recommended, and it will be fascinating to see where 2 Dumb the Musical goes next.
The show contains strobe light and audience floodlighting effects.
Carparking on site and it’s the Roedean School stop on the 27 bus route.
October 25/26/27 3.00 pm & 7.30pm
Roedean Theatre
Sussex Playwrights Reviews
Suicide Notes
by David Wells
Atomic Force Productions
Brighton Horrorfest 2019
There have always been stories of hauntings, curses and demonic possession.
Sam and Ali have been charged with disposing of their late neighbour Eric’s papers – without looking at them. So of course, they can’t resist a peek, and are drawn into a strange tale of horror, murder and devotion.
Wells’ script is an intricate and loving exploration of the link between music and mystery, taking in the notion of the musician who sells his soul to the devil, cursed songs and the urban legend of the 27 Club – the roll call of rock stars who met their end at the age of 27. There’s an engrossing murder mystery here too, unfolded through a discovered journal.
Mobiles are used as torches, sources of information and jokes about social media, so we’re firmly in the here and now, as the story delves into the past. Sweetwerks’ simple black box space is well used by directors Mill Goble and Wells, although some action on the floor might be difficult for anyone beyond the front row to see. Projection of social media posts and newspaper cuttings has great scope for more – in contrast, the ‘gore’ of one image sat uneasily with the literary exploration of the mystery’s gradual reveal.
As Sam, Tabitha Wild’s sparky performance is assured and entertaining, with Jack West’s Ali her petulantly funny foil. Gordon Foggo delivers great contrast with strange and otherworldly intensity as Eric, trapped in the terrible truth of his wife’s death, spinning his tale through journal extracts.
It’s an engrossing exploration, and left me with the urge to delve deeper into the weird tales touched on throughout the play.
Suicide Notes
October 23/24 20.00
Details and tickets: https://m.facebook.com/events/525900304887313
