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Writers

An official National Theatre Wales group

Writers who want to be part of National Theatre Wales, share ideas, get feedback from each other, and hear about opportunities

Members: 481
Latest Activity: Jan 30, 2023

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Discussion Forum

Looking for Welsh Playwrights for Scratch Night in London.

Started by CHIPPY LANE PRODUCTIONS LTD. Aug 7, 2016.

Collaborators Needed! 2 Replies

Started by Camille Naylor. Last reply by sean donovan Dec 1, 2015.

Looking for a writer to collaborate on an idea. 2 Replies

Started by Caley Powell. Last reply by Catrin Fflur Huws Mar 3, 2015.

NTW Dramaturgy Project - Beginnings

Started by Richard Hurford Oct 20, 2014.

ONiiiT: The Power of Words

Started by Sophie Chei Hickson Aug 21, 2014.

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Comment by Sam Burns on February 18, 2012 at 2:17

Oh, it was you laughing! Many, many thanks for your kind comments - much appreciated. A friend who was sitting with me said she found the accent a little bit of a barrier, so maybe that was an issue (I'm really happy with the way it was played, I hasten to add, and I think Nicola, the actor, is fabulous). I'll be interested to hear if it has a significantly different reception in Glasgow. Really looking forward to seeing the remaining six pieces tonight.

Comment by National Theatre Wales on February 18, 2012 at 2:04

I think Matt's link to the online collaboration blog is taking you back to the home page for some reason.

Here's the real link again.

Comment by National Theatre Wales on February 18, 2012 at 2:00

Lisa - Well done on the first night of Agent 160.  A great enterprise.  I enjoyed all the work, though of course different writers were at different stages.  You were very well served by the performers too!  I was surprised that there wasn't more laugh out loud response to Sam Burns's piece which I found hilarious and very well written (and performed).  Do you think that the Glasgow dialect was a barrier - or were people just warming up because it was the first piece?

More on tonight everyone - at Chapter 8pm.

Comment by National Theatre Wales on February 18, 2012 at 1:58

Thanks for those leads Kit.  I had a really interesting conversation with Gillian Clarke a few months ago about the similarities between Welsh language competitive rhyming among the farmers and labourers of West Wales and rap battling on the streets of Manchester.  Competitive rhyming is an extraordinary link between cultures - and deeply performative of course.

Comment by Matt Ball on February 14, 2012 at 23:29

How could writers make better use of the tools available on line to collaborate and develop new work?

We've just announced a new project to explore how we collaborate online. This blog explanes more or you can join the Online collaborative space group here

Comment by Kit Lambert on February 13, 2012 at 6:03

John - saw a very good one-act play at Menagerie's Hotbed Festival last month by Benjamin Askew (Necessary Evil).  A two-hander about 17th witch trials in East Anglia, it used heightened poetic language throughout.  Most interestingly, it used rhyming couplets between the two characters during the height of their arguments.  It gave the language a question-and-answer musicality (and urgency), which felt very appropriate for the piece.  Similar to hiphop battling, I suppose, but without feeling forced or twee.  I could imagine the same thing done badly being unbearable, but when written and performed with confidence the overall effect was to enhance the play and the relationship between the two characters.  It certainly inspired me to think about how this could be developed in a longer piece.

Also, I did a project with Kompany Malakhi, working with hiphop artists on a piece of forum theatre.  The initial script was rhymed and the subsequent interventions were performed using improvised (freestyle) rhyme by the artists.  Very exciting, sometimes downright terrifying.  Again, I feel it only worked because of the relationship between the forceful language and the edge this gave to character relationships. 

Comment by Lisa Parry on February 13, 2012 at 5:33

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know this is on at Chapter Fri/Sat - Agent 160 Presents Agent 160

I'm biased, but it is going to be really good! There are six different short plays on each night. Panelists for the Q&A on the second night include Sharon Morgan and Roger Williams. Do come!

Comment by Kenon Man on February 7, 2012 at 5:08

Hi Just to mention that Bethan Marlow's Sgint previews tonight and tomorrow and will continue its run at Sherman Cymru until 11 Feb. Don't forget that there'll be an English surtitled performance on 10th Feb!

Comment by Peter Cox MBE on January 30, 2012 at 0:09

Re this poetry conundrum:  my Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Theatre (Gen Ed Martin Esslin) has no entry for the word 'poetry'.  Instead it refers the reader to 'Verse Drama'.

Once there you are reminded that "From earliest times verse was used in drama to remove the action from the trivia of everyday life and to elevate it to the plane of the mythical, royal or sublime.  Gods, heroes and kings, who were not supposed to be concerned with the minutiae of existence, had to speak an elevated language."

I guess times have changed and contemporary playwrights tend to look more for the poetry in everyday speech - some of Stephen Berkoff's work springs to mind.(Which does have the effect of lifting the content to the "mythical" in many ways, if not "royal or sublime.")

The encyclopedia goes on to give a nod to the use of verse in plays by Brecht and others where the verse acts as "an alienation technique by removing the action from realism."

The entry finishes by reminding us that, "it must be emphasised that verse drama is not synonymous with poetic drama: the poetry of the stage is produced by the conjunction of movement, light, situation and speech - which may be in prose.  Verse drama is poetry on the stage."

Well, that's cleared that up then!!!

Comment by Kaite O'Reilly on January 29, 2012 at 6:25

When I found out I'd been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for new works in poetry last year I was astounded - I don't write poetry and there I was being commended by the Welsh Bard and Poet Laureate for what I perceived as playwriting and dramaturgy in my version of Aeschylus's Persians, which I made for NTW. So I headed off to the ballroom of the Savile Club in Mayfair and very nice it was too, and because I was a playwright and didn't write poetry, I availed myself of much of the very good wine (and very nice it was too), recklessly throwing it down my throat for I was a playwright and not a poet, so I wasn't going to win for a PLAY when all the other shortlisted poets about me were, well, POETS and had written books of POETRY. So I was astonished again - and very honoured - when my name was called out as winner and through the haze of the very good wine I made my way to the front to give a reading from this apparent new work in poetry, muttering under my breath, and then over it, and then even louder, I wrote a PLAY... I am a PLAYWRIGHT....I don't write poetry, that was a performance text, etc etc.

There followed some very interesting conversations with judges Carol Ann Duffy, Jeanette Winterson and Gillian Clarke about what might constitute a new work in poetry - and what might be a poem - and what might be a play - and what may be poetic - and what may be poetics in performance etc, etc... It's a journey I've been on ever since, questioning my own limited capacity for understanding what these terms may mean - and chiding myself for how I was limiting my own work -as well as others' - by thoughtless and perhaps unnecessary pigeon-holing - a habit I loathe - and there I am, doing it. (There's some of this discussion on my blog www.kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com under subtitle In The Republic of Poetry - written around August last year).

My work has always been called poetic or lyrical by critics - Told by the Wind, a piece I co-created with The Llanarth Group in 2010 was likened to a haiku by Elisabeth Mahoney of The Guardian, and the poet Chris Kinsey recently called my current show with the group, The Echo Chamber, which is on this week at Chapter, as 'physical poetry'.

For years I worked with Common Ground Sign Dance Theatre as a writer and director, and I've worked extensively with sign performance (using theatricalised British Sign Language) - reviewed, again by the Guardian, as 'poetry of the body.'

I suppose what this little ramble is saying is perhaps we don't need to pay so much attention to devisions and definitions and poets here and playwrights there -- I think much of it depends on the success of the dramaturgy, aesthetic, and form - and if we get it 'right' and it chimes with the performers and audience (or even judges of the Ted Hughes Award), perhaps we don't need to worry about delineations and categories - or certainly not as much as I used to....

 

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