08 January 2013
Posted in Theatre

By Jan Harris (pictured, below)

The first time I read about The Writers’ Guild’s Plays of Innocence & Experience scheme was in an email from City University where I had received an MA in theatre and film some years ago. It stated this new project funded by the Writers Foundation UK and run in partnership with RADA was to focus on developing plays of great promise.

Opportunities like these usually come with a price tag, so I cast a beady eye over the details and found an unfamiliar phrase ‘out-of-pocket expenses paid’. In my 20 years of being a ‘new writer’ on both sides of the Atlantic I've never received out-of-pocket expenses. I've had profit share where there has been no profit; I once won a $25 third prize in a playwriting competition that charged $20 to enter, and a prestigious award with a $500 cheque attached from a theatre in Connecticut that cost me $1,000 in airfare to collect. Still cynical, I continued reading looking for the hated words ‘open to new young writers’, only to find that this scheme was ‘open to all writers, at different stages of their careers’.

There’s a new turn of phrase.

08 January 2013
Posted in Theatre

Richard Pinner reports on the first ever venture supported by the new Writers Foundation (UK)

Photo: Writer Kerry Hood (left) and her director, Sophie Lifschutz

The Theatre Committee of the Writers’ Guild has been considering the possibility of running script development workshops for some years, but each time these discussions seemed to founder. Either it was because we couldn’t readily commit adequate funding or find the right partner, or because we were aware that other writers’ support groups, like Script (in the West Midlands), Theatre Writing Partnership ( in the East Midlands) and North West Playwrights, were already fulfilling this brief. We were also fixed on the idea that there had to be an end-product, the need to direct this process toward some kind of public showcase. Which, in turn, led to concerns as to where the performances could take place, how would they be marketed and for what audience; not to mention whether we could afford to underwrite such an event.

Then a number of elements synchronised to put wind in the sails of this venture. Firstly, I called to mind James Houghton, the director of The O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, describing with great enthusiasm how this convention, held in Connecticut each summer, was purely a get-together of theatre practitioners; a self-contained community of people focussed on the needs of new work without the pressures and compromises that come with performance. Also, how they deliberately encouraged the discourse of emerging writers with very experienced, accomplished dramatists.

07 January 2013
Posted in TV

Rachel Murrell on writing for an animated series about the everyday issues facing 9-to-14-year-olds 

As a pre-school scriptwriter, I don’t often get the chance to write about periods, snogging and priapic teenage boys. So when Ken Anderson and Sueann Smith of Red Kite Animation offered me the chance to help set up an animated series for tweens about ‘a group of friends on the rocky road to puberty’, I jumped at the chance.

The show in question – then called Girls’ Things – had been devised by director Mercedes Marro of Tomavistas in Barcelona. Ken saw its potential as light-hearted way to raise important issues for tweens about everyday moral dilemmas, difficulties in relationships, trouble with body image, etc. Confident that this would work for the BBC, he agreed to co-produce the show with Tomavistas, Dutch company Submarine, and Catalan broadcaster TVC.

I took one look at the show’s bible, and I was sold. The zingy design felt very original, and the fact that the scripts had to get across accurate information through character and comedy was the kind of challenge I love. And I wasn’t worried about lack of material. My own misspent youth was stuffed with enough accident and embarrassment to drive a fair few stories, and for the rest, I asked around. ‘What does an erection feel like?’ was a great conversation starter at parties.

No. What scared me was the breadth of the target demographic: 9-14 year olds. Kids in this age range have vastly different emotional and social understanding – not to mention different physiological experience. And that’s before you factor in the cultural differences between the three territories involved. Surely it would be impossible to write for all of them?

18 December 2012
Posted in Theatre

Richard Bevan (below) on how aspiring playwrights should approach tough economic times

These are tough times. Arts cuts, corporate money down the pan and theatres that nurture writers increasingly having to tighten their belts - and in some cases cease funding work altogether. Having recently had a play, Cockeyed, cancelled due to the theatre company’s coffers running dry, I can fully empathise with any budding writer who believes their chosen vocation is akin to wading through raw meat in Vivienne Westwood heels.

But despite the gloom and doom there are lifelines out there and opportunities which even though won’t necessarily pay the mortgage, can at least help to keep creative juices flowing and prevent morale sagging to terminal levels.

In June this year a gathering of some of the north’s most vibrant and innovative theatre companies at Leeds’ West Yorkshire Playhouse, encompassing the likes of Freedom Studios, Hull Truck and Northern Bullits, demonstrated that outside of the West End and regional city theatre programming, there is still a healthy hub of activity taking place in fringe theatre.

At a national level, if you browse the BBC Writersroom website it is encouraging to see that even in these lean times schemes and competitions still abound for both experienced and the not so experienced playwright, even if this doesn’t mean receiving piles of cash. Recently, I was shortlisted for the Off West End Awards Adopt a Playwright scheme. Sadly for me I didn’t win the cherished prize but the nomination was a psychological boost.

The BBC Writersroom is often associated with television scriptwriting but its devotion to theatre has been significant from the department’s inception and continues to be so.

13 December 2012
Posted in General

A briefing from the Writers' Guild written for the Performers' Alliance Parliamentary lobby earlier this week.

The creative professions are regarded by some as passions that we are privileged to follow. But those who produce and exploit our work know that acting, music, and writing are crafts, without which they would have no product.

Too often writers, the most invisible participants, are expected to work for not just low pay, but no pay. The Writers’ Guild wants to highlight that this affects not only the young, starting out in their careers, but established writers in their 40s and 50s. Would MPs, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and police officers work for free because they believe passionately in their job? No? Then Let’s Get Paid!

What is happening?

The Writers’ Guild negotiates collective minimum agreements with theatre producers, television and radio broadcasters and independent production companies. However, these only cover writers under contract, who have received a formal commission. In recent years, we have seen a growing trend towards writers being asked to contribute substantial amounts of unpaid work – detailed pitches, treatments, storylines, sketches, research material, even full-length scripts – merely to compete for the chance of a commission or place on an exclusive “training” scheme for an established TV programme.

Writers expect to undertake speculative work on their own projects, which they may sell on the open market. But work done to the brief of others, which can involve months of thought and labour, is a job, which should be justly remunerated.

13 December 2012
Posted in TV

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were given the Writers' Guild prize at the British Comedy Awards in London last night. The writing and performing duo have created a number of memorable TV shows, including Vic Reeves Big Night Out, The Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer, Catterick, and Shooting Stars.

Other winners at the Comedy Awards were:

• Male TV comic - Lee Mack
• Female TV comic - Jo Brand
• TV comedy actor - Peter Capaldi
• TV comedy actress - Rebecca Front
• Comedy Entertainment Personality - Charlie Brooker
• Comedy Entertainment Programme - Harry Hill's TV BurpS
• itcom - Hunderby
• New comedy programme - Hunderby
• Comedy Breakthrough Artist - Morgana Robinson

12 December 2012
Posted in Video Games

Andy Walsh's speech at the Performers' Alliance Parliamentary lobby

 

Yesterday the WGGB, as part of the Performers’ Alliance Parliamentary Group (including Equity and the Musicians’ Union) lobbied Westminster. Issues ranged from arts cuts to not only low pay, but no pay, for writers, actors and musicians.

The lobby was well attended by members of both Houses, including Culture Minister Ed Vaizey and Shadow Culture Secretary, Dan Jarvis. All listened to what we had to say and the Guild, as ever, will continue the conversation.

Andrew Walsh, our Treasurer, spoke eloquently on behalf of the WGGB. Here’s his speech.

Good afternoon, my Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, and it is quite nice to be able to use that greeting in a place where it’s actually applicable. Coming from the games industry I have to say that the Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen here today aren’t as well armoured, or armed and, despite what the tabloids say, as disreputably behaved as the ones I normally spend my days with.

So, a games writer? A bit of an odd choice to send to stand before you today? Games to some people are this strange peripheral thing, a novel industry. To some writers we are still something set on the side, the junior medium. Even though we’ve been around for 40 years. There are those in the games industry who don’t understand the role of writing in games, despite the fact there are games out there with two million or more words in them. And yet. . .and yet. . .

The latest Call Of Duty, the first game to earn more than $1 billion, and it’s only been out a couple of weeks so it will earn more. This game has chosen to put the story, the writing, at the heart of its latest advertising campaign. And why? Because they understand that writing helps to build a brand; it sells.

11 December 2012
Posted in Books and Poetry

An interview with Jan Woolf

Jan Woolf, member of the Writers' Guild Books Committee, originator of the Guild's Off the Shelf at Blacks events and recipient of the first Harold Pinter writers’ residency at the Hackney Empire in 2010, considers herself a late starter. However, her earlier working life: teaching, activism, events production and a brief stint as a film classifier gave her plenty of material. She talks to author and screenwriter Brendan Foley about finding a life in writing and her recent collection Fugues On A Funny Bone.

Brendan Foley: Your writing has been described as ‘quirky’ and ‘eclectic’. If you had to use your own adjectives, what would they be?

Jan Woolf: I’d be happy with pithy or sharp. Also wabi-sabi – a Japanese term for art that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete – a bit wonky, like this answer. But I don’t mean anything goes. I liked Lisa Goldman’s piece in the last issue of UK Writer about breaking the rules and pushing at the edge – but not for its own sake; that’s arrogant. There are no right answers and I think you find your voice when you become present to the writing, the point at which it keeps you company. That’s when you find a style that suits your personality and you become own authority yet listen intelligently to what others say. I think it’s about cultivating a kind of writer’s wisdom, knowing what writing form should carry which idea. My piece about two film censors fancying each other but having to watch porn together found its way into a play – Porn Crackers for the Hackney Empire. My stories about kids in a Pupil Referral Unit needed to be linked – so they were fugues.

08 December 2012
Posted in Books and Poetry

The next one-day residence in the Guild's literary afternoons features poets Leo Aylen (pictured) and Alan Brownjohn on 17 December. Please book with Jan Woolf for a day of coffee, poetry and lunch in the beautiful rooms of Black’s club Soho.

Leo Aylen is an author, film director and prize-winning poet. He will read from his ninth collection The Day The Grass Came, which Melvyn Bragg describes as 'a triumph', Geoffrey Heptonstall as a 'very real achievement', and Simon Callow as 'virile, vital, virtuosic'.

Alan Brownjohn published his first poetry collection, The Railings, in 1961, and has been a major figure on the British poetry scene, chairing the Poetry Society between 1982 and 1988 and serving as poetry critic for the New Statesman. He has also sat on the Arts Council literature panel and has written four novels, two books for children and a critical study of Philip Larkin. His Collected Poemswas published by Enitharmon in 2006.

04 December 2012
Posted in Books and Poetry

Elsbeth Lindner introduces bookoxygen.com

I’m not a writer.

I know this because, even though I’ve published a novel, I’ve learned that writers are only happy when they are writing. And I’m happier reading.

How do I know this about writers? Because I’ve spent my professional life, some four decades now, working alongside them. I’ve edited, published, interviewed and, I hope, assisted writers while working for publishers, literary magazines and now my website bookoxygen.com which, as it says on the masthead, is a ‘breathing space for books and writers.’

I like writers. Not only do they use language with invention and delicacy, but they think for a living. Writers are often prescient, which comes, I assume, from thinking just that little bit harder about what’s going on and where it’s leading than the rest of us do.

Perhaps it was a spark of rubbed-off authorial foresight that inspired me to launch bookoxygen, although in truth I think the notion came from having written book reviews for some years and noticing (especially in the USA, where I lived for a while, but here in the UK too) that with newspapers under increasing financial pressure, space for culture generally and book reviews specifically was shrinking.

03 December 2012
Posted in General

The Writers’ Guild would like to register deep concern at the exclusion of the arts as qualifying subjects in current proposals for the English Baccalaureate. While recognising the importance of certain subjects – such as English, maths and science - we believe that core recognition of cultural and artistic subjects, both appreciation and practice, is also a vital component of a rounded education.

In addition the UK’s education system needs to recognise that culture, the arts and education do in fact contribute greatly to the economy. The creative industries provide six per cent of Britain’s GDP, £16 billion in exports, and employ at least 2 million people.

In particular, the Guild is concerned about:

• The lack of any prior consultation with teachers, students, parents or creative writers before EBacc was brought in
• The disincentivisation of schools to offer arts subjects, through the retrospective recalculation of the school league tables according to EBacc subjects
• The particular impact of EBacc on the teaching of drama, and the knock-on effect this will have on plays, playwriting and performances in schools.

03 December 2012
Posted in Theatre

The Theatre Committee of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain presented its annual awards for the encouragement of new writing at a lunch ceremony at the Royal Court Theatre Bar at the end of November.

 

Awards winners and nominators: Front row: Sayan Kent (writer), Janet Steel (Artistic Director, Kali Theatre), James Hadley (Relationship Officer, Arts Council England), Josie Rourke (Artistic Director, Donmar Warehouse), Stewart Permutt (writer) Back row: Anne Hogben (Deputy General Secretary, WGGB), David James (writer), Robin Soans (writer), Nick Quinn (agent, The Agency)

The awards, the brainchild of the playwright Mark Ravenhill, were set up to give Guild members the opportunity publicly to thank those who had given them a particularly positive experience in new writing over the previous year. This also gives the committee and the Guild a welcome opportunity to celebrate, rather than focus solely on members’ problems.

The winners are:

James Hadley, nominated by David James

At a time when Arts Council England (ACE) is deeply challenged both by funding cuts and seemingly endless restructuring, and one hears a great deal of disquietude from so many ACE officers, James's energy, enthusiasm and commitment to his specialist field of musical theatre is huge. We have worked together for almost three years, and he has guided me through three successful Grants for Arts applications to support the BOOK Music & Lyrics (BML) musical theatre writing workshop programme I founded in 2010. He has answered endless questions, pointed out numerous places where points of argument on the applications could be strengthened, and always had time for another telephone conversation or meeting to discuss not only the applications but the BML programme as a whole and how it is strategically developing as an ongoing asset for musical theatre writers for the foreseeable future. He is a warm, friendly, and stable support for me. We meet regularly, and he has made the time to visit the workshop sessions. James had to take on a very responsible role as the major supporter of musical theatre at ACE in quite a condensed period of time. He also realises the complexity of the collaborative process of musical theatre and how far the British sector still has to go to achieve its full potential. More importantly, he is also aware of how much he himself still has to experience and learn to guide the sector forward most effectively.