Everyword 2011 by EVERYMAN & PLAYHOUSE THEATRES

Everyword Guide 2011 MON 7 NOV TO SAT 19 NOV 0151 709 4776 WWW.EVERYMAN PLAYHOUSE.COM 1

CONTENTS 01 02 04 05 08 10 12 14 15 16 18 20 22 24 25

Welcome to Everyword Monday 7 November Tuesday 8 November Wednesday 9 November Thursday 10 November Friday 11 November Saturday 12 November Monday 14 November Tuesday 15 November Wednesday 16 November Thursday 17 November Friday 18 November Saturday 19 November Introduction to Playwriting Course Booking Information

Everyword 2011 At the Playhouse for the first time

For anyone aspiring to be a writer, wanting to see a new play in development or wanting to work with the UK’s leading practitioners, Everyword 2011 new writing festival is a 2-week whirlwind of events, readings, discussions, debates and workshops. This year, Everyword moves to the Playhouse taking full advantage of the different spaces around the building, including the exciting reopening of the Playhouse Studio. Critically acclaimed High Hearted Theatre has been commissioned to create a piece to celebrate the centenary of the Playhouse Repertory Company on 11 November. Set in different spaces around the building, this performance will be unique to the Playhouse and its wonderful history. Internationally acclaimed new writing company nabokov return to the Everyword festival with Liverpool playwright Michael McLean’s new play Grotesque Chaos. An exhilarating clash of live action and animation, this one man show is an unflinching look at one of Liverpool’s most controversial sons: Derek Hatton. First Words, a creative project with tutti frutti productions, Dukes Theatre Lancaster and

Sheffield Theatres, nurtures and develops writers to create theatre for children aged 3 – 7 years. Six writers will take over the building for one special day and invite children to come along and open their imaginations to the creation of new theatre especially for them. Everyword has seen the first readings of many new plays that have progressed to full-scale productions, which, in the past year alone, include Tiny Volcanoes, Dead Heavy Fantastic, Endz and this season’s The Swallowing Dark. “All writers need inspiration as well as a sense of community. (Everyword) annual festival of new writing offers both.” The Guardian

MON 7 NOV TO SAT 19 NOV

Monday 7 November Workshop: Stories From Your Life

Leader: Sonia Hughes 1pm – 4pm Playhouse Studio

How can we turn the stories from our own lives into engaging, surprising and dramatic theatre? What makes a good story and what makes it theatrical? Award-winning writer Sonia Hughes explores some of the techniques she has used to create work with leading contemporary theatre company Quarantine, rooted in the reality of the lives of the performers, non-fictional but highly theatrical. Sonia has recently worked as writer and performer on the new Quarantine show Entitled co-commissioned by the Manchester Royal Exchange, Sadler’s Wells and The Curve. In 2012 she will be working with Upswing circus/theatre company on their new show Old.

Reading of Work in Progress: Cornershop Homesick Blues By Keith Saha 7.45pm Playhouse Studio

How does it feel to be born into a skin that makes you different from the rest of your family and friends? Living in a small town that you love, but others feel that you don’t belong to, what happens when even the people closest to you start to turn against you? Cornershop Homesick Blues is a bold, gritty and funny story about the changing landscape of multi-cultural Britain and one man’s journey to make sense of where he belongs. Keith Saha is co-Artistic Director of the award-winning theatre company 20 Stories High. He was a member of the Everyman Youth Theatre and went on to work with companies such as Birmingham Rep, Cardboard Citizens, Contact, Leicester Haymarket, Graeae and Theatre Royal Stratford East. His last play, Ghost Boy, toured the UK, winning the 2011 Brian Way Award, and he is currently writer on attachment to the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse. 3

Tuesday 8 November Workshop: Treatments And You Thought Writing The Script Was Hard

Workshop: Exploring Theatrical Form

Treatments. Pitches. Outlines. An informal session designed to take the fear out of writing treatments and story ideas for television.

How might your writing become truly theatrical? What does “form” really mean and why should it be at the forefront of each playwright’s mind? Join award-winning playwright Mike Bartlett to explore what makes a play purely theatrical and how you can experiment with form at the heart of your work.

Leader: LA Productions 1pm – 4pm Playhouse Studio

LA Productions is a Liverpoolbased film and television production company, established in 2000 by producer Colin McKeown. Recent productions include Moving On, created by Jimmy McGovern and Justice starring Robert Pugh, both for BBC One Daytime. The company’s current slate includes a children’s drama series, Stepping Up for CBBC. The third series of Moving On will be broadcast on BBC One this autumn.

Leader: Mike Bartlett 1pm – 4pm Playhouse Stalls Bar

Mike Bartlett’s plays include 13 (National Theatre), Earthquakes in London (Headlong / National Theatre), Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough / UK tour), My Child, Contractions, Cock (Royal Court Theatre). He has also written numerous plays for radio, is Associate Playwright at Paines Plough and is Writer in Residence at the National Theatre.

Wednesday 9 November Workshop: Responding to Site

Leader: Peter Higgin/ Punchdrunk 1pm – 4pm Playhouse Studio

Participants will explore Punchdrunk’s approach to work on site. Using spaces in and around the Playhouse, you will use site responsive techniques to inspire the creation of short performance pieces. Peter Higgin is a core member of Punchdrunk having worked for the company since its inception in 2000. He has worked in many different roles and for the past three years has developed the company’s enrichment department, creating outreach work for schools and communities. Since 2000, Punchdrunk have pioneered a game changing form of immersive theatre in which roaming audiences experience epic storytelling inside sensory theatrical worlds.

Tunnel 228. The Old Vic in association with Punchdrunk (2009)

Wednesday 9 November Reading/ Showing of Work in Progress: Scarlett and the Silent Disco by Colette Kane

7.45pm Playhouse Studio

Scarlett is perfect. She has the house, the thriving business, the new car, even the haircut. But as Scarlett’s 40th birthday approaches, regrets about her perfect past and questions about her foreseeable future swiftly surface. Suddenly the life she has carved out seems void of meaning, and perfection transforms into chaos as she decides it’s time to enjoy the riskier things in life – magic mushrooms, music festivals, sex with strangers and silent discos!

Colette Kane is currently writer on attachment at the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse. Her work has been performed at the Everyman Theatre, Trafalgar Studios, Shakespeare’s Globe, Tristan Bates Theatre, Unity Theatre and Soho Theatre. She was selected for the Paines Plough Future Perfect Scheme. Recently her work includes Ways to Look at Fish which started at the Manchester 24/7 Festival before transferring to the Library Theatre, Bolton Octagon and London’s Theatre 503. Her play Hatch won Best Overall Production at the 2010 Manchester 24/7 Festival and was nominated as Best Play at the Manchester Evening News Awards.

A collaboration between playwright Colette Kane, director Ellen McDougall and choreographer Michella Meazza.

Thursday 10 November Workshop: Creating Environment in your Writing

Reading: The Roses Die and Bloom By Joe Ward Munrow

Leader: Kaite O’Reilly 12pm – 3pm (please note earlier start time) Playhouse Studio

7.45pm Playhouse Studio

How can your theatre work be inspired by your surroundings and conjure a strong and vivid sense of your environment? How might you create new work in non-theatrical settings and use the landscape as your theatre?

Mary’s mind is slowly disintegrating and her two sons, David and Simon, appear before her as two fractured shards, conjuring other people’s personalities, ghosts and whispered lullabies. What happens when memory begins to deceive us and boundaries between the objective and subjective are smashed? As Mary’s condition deteriorates, David and Simon are tossed into a dilemma regarding what is right, what is human and just how much their mother knows.

Kaite O’Reilly has won numerous awards for her work including the Peggy Ramsay Award for YARD (Bush Theatre), and Manchester Evening News Best Play Award for Perfect (Contact Theatre). Her new version of Aeschylus’ Persians was produced by National Theatre of Wales on Ministry of Defence Land in Wales, winning the 2011 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. She is currently working on two pieces for the Cultural Olympiad with National Theatre of Wales and Chol / Sheffield Theatres.

Joe studied at Liverpool John Moores University and joined the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Young Writers’ Programme. His first full length play, The Laundry, won the London Write Now 2 award and was produced at the Brockley Jack Theatre.

Friday 11 November Playhouse Centenary Event: Cheer Up, This is only the Beginning

2pm & 5pm Around the Playhouse

Critically acclaimed High Hearted Theatre are collaborating with the theatres to create a unique piece to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Liverpool Repertory Theatre. Bringing new work by awardwinning Liverpool playwrights including Helen Blakeman (The Morris), Chloe Moss (The Way Home) and Jeff Young (Anthology), the promenade performance will celebrate the theatre companies that have entertained Liverpool audiences for 100 years. Marking moments in the history of the theatre and the city, the performance will take the audience to unexplored and unexpected spaces of the Playhouse, getting even closer to curtain up.

The phrase “Cheer up, this is only the beginning” is steeped in Playhouse history as it was said to the first Artistic Director Basil Dean on the opening night in 1911, as he looked so frightened before making a speech. High Hearted Theatre was formed in 2010 by Liverpool director Gemma Kerr and writer Marcelo Dos Santos. Driven by a desire to create work which explores new ways of telling stories, their first production, Lover’s Walk, was originally produced for the Brighton Fringe Festival and due to popular and critical success transferred to London. Their second production, Births, Marriages & Deaths, was created for the Manor Farm in Ruislip, North London.

Saturday 12 November Playhouse Centenary Event: Cheer Up, This is only the Beginning

12noon & 5pm Around the Playhouse This will go on sale 3rd October Critically acclaimed High Hearted Theatre are collaborating with the theatres to create a unique piece to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Liverpool Repertory Theatre. (More details p10 – 11)

Reading: Fighting Ghosts By Claire Barry

7.45pm Playhouse Studio

“Not all war wounds are visible.” When Chris, Kev and Ashley return from their seven month tour of Afghanistan they expect the worst is behind them. But what happens after the heroes’ welcome, when the party dies down and reality kicks in? Now there’s a new fight – to regain their lives in a place they once called home. Claire Barry studied drama at Liverpool John Moores University and graduated from the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Young Writers’ Programme this year. Fighting Ghosts is her first full-length play.

Performance: Chapel Street By Luke Barnes

9.30pm Playhouse Studio

He’s been let down, belittled and ignored but tonight none of that matters – it’s Friday and Joe is getting smashed. Kirsty has bought some vodka on the way home from school and is hastily shaving her legs with her friend’s dad’s razor. As bottles are drained and the sun sets, the two hit the town, neither aware that soon their lives will irreconcilably collide. After a sell-out critically acclaimed run in London, Liverpool playwright Luke Barnes (nominated for Most Promising New Playwright by Off West End Awards) brings his new play home to Liverpool for one night only. This rowdy, relentless two-hander about modern life and love on the dole is an acerbic yet compassionate portrait of good times gone bad for a betrayed generation. Directed by Cheryl Gallacher. Contains strong language.

“At times hilarious and heartbreaking, and compelling throughout, Chapel Street provides a brilliant mix of poetry and profanity to deliver one of the best snapshots of today’s youth.” Time Out

Monday 14 November

Tuesday 15 November

Reading: The Deafening Silence By Ella Carmen Greenhill

Work In Progress & Panel Discussion: First Words

7.45pm Playhouse Studio

”They dress up, you know – fancy dress – chickens, fairies, rape victims. They make such an effort.” Helena hasn’t said a word since she found out. In the kitchen, Anna washes a never ending pile of bloody clothes. Shaw moves in, but is he as selfless as he seems? A party rages in the living room as the smell of burning flesh becomes unbearable. Democracy has been wounded, perhaps fatally. Ella Carmen Greenhill’s new play explores the imprisonment and torture of political prisoners in Burma and the true meaning of freedom. Ella was a member of the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Young Writers’ Programme during which she developed her first full length play Fallen extracts of which were performed at Hampstead Theatre Start Night. Her short play Unspoken was performed at Everyword and her 14

radio play The Rain Has Gone was broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside. Her play Into the Water received a reading at Everyword 2010 and was shortlisted for the Internationalists Playwriting Competition. She was shortlisted for this year’s Adrienne Benham Award and is currently writer on attachment to both Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and Paines Plough.

tutti frutti productions in association with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Dukes Theatre, Lancaster & Sheffield Theatres. 7.45pm Playhouse Studio First Words is a creative project designed to help writers create new theatre for children. Bringing together six critically acclaimed writers from Yorkshire, Merseyside and Lancashire, First Words presents a unique opportunity to work with a range of artists and early year specialists that are at the forefront of making theatre for young people in the UK. Liverpool writers include Esther Wilson (Ten Tiny Toes and Unprotected), Laurence Wilson (Lost Monsters, Tiny Volcanoes and Blackberry Trout Face) and Kellie Smith (I and Anthology).

This will be an opportunity to see work in progress extracts from each of the new plays followed by a panel discussion with some of the country’s leading practitioners to interrogate and explore what it means to write and create theatre for young people today.

Wednesday 16 November Workshop: The Role of the Writer in Devising

Leader: Chris Thorpe 1pm – 4pm Playhouse Studio Chris Thorpe examines the role of the writer in the devising process. This workshop will look at working with performers and directors ‘live’ in the rehearsal room and the challenges of being a writer and letting go of your own work during devising. Chris is a writer and performer from Manchester, whose work has been produced worldwide. He is a core member of Unlimited Theatre and an Artistic Associate of Third Angel. He also collaborates with companies such as Slung Low, Forest Fringe, RashDash and Soup Collective, with whom he wrote and recorded the piece The Bomb on Mutannabbi Street is Still Exploding, which has been permanently installed at the Imperial War Museum North. He is currently working with mala voadora in Portugal, BBC Radio, Manchester Royal Exchange and has recently collaborated with poet Hannah Jane Walker to create new work performed at the Edinburgh Festival and then Australia. 16

Work In Progress Presentation: There Has (Possibly) Been An Incident by Chris Thorpe 5pm Playhouse Studio

This is a try-out. It builds on the solo pieces that Chris has been stockpiling over the last few years after performing them at Forest Fringe, Shunt, Queer Up North, Soho Theatre and various festivals and venues in the UK and abroad. At the time this brochure went to print, he didn’t know what it was going to be, whether it’ll just have his voice in it or other people’s, or how much swearing will be in it. However, he can have a guess what it might be about. It’ll be a story about cause and effect. And maybe aeroplanes. And maybe politics. And maybe someone trying to atone for a very very serious mistake. And an apology. Come and have a listen. At the moment you know as much as Chris does.

Reading: Desolate Heaven By Ailis Ni Riain

7.45pm Playhouse Studio

“She’s goin’ back there. I can tell. She’s breakin’ her promise. She’s breakin’ my heart. She said she never would.” Desolate Heaven is the story of two young girls burdened with the immense responsibility of caring for their parents. It is the story of their falling in love and youthful idealism. It is the story of growing up before your time yet still being emotionally naïve. It’s a story about fairytales and two girls who run away to start a new life on their own, in Heaven. Ailis is an award-winning composer, pianist and playwright. Her first play Tilt (also known as Beaten) has been produced in Liverpool, Cork, Glasgow and London as well as Gothenburg’s Stadtheater in Sweden and the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.

Her second play Cell was performed at the Manchester 24/7 Festival and at the Library Theatre. She was selected for the North West Playwright’s Annual Mentor Scheme and is currently working with Nina Steiger, Associate Director and Head of New Writing at London’s Soho Theatre.

Thursday 17 November Installation: You Can Take It With You

Work In Progress Presentation: Grotesque Chaos by Michael McLean

Presented by All Across The Telegraphs Until Saturday Playhouse 2nd floor stairwell

Presented by Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and nabokov 7.45pm Playhouse Studio

Three suitcases hold a beginning, a middle and an end. In miniature scenes, music and words, You Can Take It With You is inspired by border-crossing stories from Albania to Northern Ireland and beyond. What traces of the past follow you?

Love him or hate him, Degsy is back, and there’s a few things that he wants to say. Internationally acclaimed new writing company nabokov return to the Everyword Festival with Grotesque Chaos by Michael McLean. An exhilarating clash of live action and animation, this one man show is an unflinching look at one of Liverpool’s most controversial sons: Derek Hatton.

Michael has worked with Paines Plough, London Royal Court Theatre and his play, The Electric Hills was produced at the Everyman Theatre in 2007. nabokov Artistic Director Joe Murphy’s work includes Bunny by Jack Thorne (London, UK tour and New York) and he has also worked at the Bush Theatre, Arcola Theatre, Hampstead Theatre as well as numerous writers including Penelope Skinner, James Graham and Joel Horwood. With Paul McGann as Degsy.

All Across The Telegraphs are an artist collective collaborating across The North, and reaching out beyond. Visual artists, composers, performers and writers tell stories Michael McLean’s last play Ducks, together, always with a sense of first seen at Everyword, recently landscape, be it geographical or played to sell out audiences at the psychological. You Can Take It With Edinburgh Festival. The Observer You emerged from collaboration awarded it Best Double Act at between playwright/dramaturg the Festival – Lindsay Rodden, composer “Michael McLean’s confident, Martin Heslop and visual artist spare script… intricate Julia Heslop, and first appeared language…brilliant.” at the Up the Wall Festival 2011.

Friday 18 November Workshop: On the Lookout

BBC writersroom 1pm – 4pm Playhouse Studio FREE

Ever wondered what happens to your script when you send it to the BBC? How we assess your work? What grabs us and what puts us off? BBC writersroom is always on the lookout for fresh, new, talented writers of any age and experience with an original voice and great stories to tell. Join us for a workshop with the New Writing Manager for BBC writersroom North which focuses on championing writers from across the north of England.

Work In Progress Presentation: Grotesque Chaos by Michael McLean

Presented by Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and nabokov 7.45pm Playhouse Studio

Love him or hate him, Degsy is back, and there’s a few things that he wants to say. (see pages 18 and 19 for more details.)

Saturday 19 November Workshop: Being Brave, Bold and Beautiful

In conjunction with Soho Theatre & Writers’ Centre Leader: Sarah Dickenson 1pm – 4pm Playhouse Studio

A lively workshop focusing on style and theatricality. Through dynamic practical exercises and group discussion, this session will encourage writers to explore strategies for writing exciting and innovative work that really shines. You will look at examples of plays that lead with their sense of style and theatricality (and those that don’t) and explore ways stories can be propelled, enhanced and sometimes overshadowed by a sense of stylistic flair. Sarah will also offer participants an overview of the activity and opportunities at Soho Theatre and generate discussion on writers’ experience of the UK’s new writing scene and how and where to place your particular kind of work. Sarah is Senior Reader at Soho Theatre and has worked nationally and internationally as a dramaturg 21

and project manager with a focus on new writing for organizations including writernet, Theatre 503, Bristol Old Vic, Churchill Theatre Bromley, Ustinov Bath, Plymouth Theatre Royal, Hall for Cornwall, Tamasha, RSC, the Red Room, Goldsmith’s and Apples and Snakes. Soho Theatre is a major new writing theatre and a writers’ development organization of national significance, with a programme that spans theatre, comedy, cabaret and writers’ events. The Soho Theatre Writers’ Centre discovers and nurtures playwrights through a broad range of activity, developing their work towards production.

Saturday 19 November Work In Progress Presentation: The Moment You Stop by Kellie Smith

7.45pm Playhouse Studio

”When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain of anything, about anything at all, not even about himself.” Milan Kundera Mark is a Brand Manager. He needs to make sure that in the endless arms race of gadgets, haircuts, spraytans, iPhones, signature dishes, Bugaboos, property and promotion, his products inspire you. But as Mark’s own life spirals out of control, it’s hard to distinguish between what you want and what really matters, and the true cost of placing products before people begins to emerge. Directed by Elizabeth Freestone in collaboration with award-winning sound designer, Adrienne Quartley. Kellie Smith has worked with companies such as Paine’s Plough, Twenty Stories High, Live Theatre Newcastle, The Miniaturists and BBC Writersroom. 22

She has developed short plays for BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Radio Three and her afternoon play, Can’t Live Without You, was broadcast last year on BBC Radio Four. She has been the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse’s Writer on Attachment during which time she developed her play, Breakwater which received a rehearsed reading at Everyword 2010. She also wrote one of seven site specific plays which formed an Anthology of stories produced by Slung Low Theatre Company and voted Liverpool Posts ‘Production of the Year’. This year she has written a new play in collaboration with the Everyman Youth Theatre, I, which was performed at the Everyman in April. She is currently working on a new afternoon play for BBC Radio Four, Homeowners and is developing a new play for children on tutti frutti’s First Words project (see page 15). Kellie is currently taking part in the Royal Court’s Studio Group.

The Everyman And Playhouse Introduction To Playwriting Course

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For more information visit www. everymanplayhouse.com and to note your interest please e-mail literary@everymanplayhouse.com with “Introduction to Playwriting Course” in the subject line.

Ticket prices All £5 except for BBC writersroom workshop (free) and High Hearted Theatre special centenary event Cheer Up, This is Only the Beginning (£10)

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Sessions will be taught on Wednesday evenings.

Liverpool Playhouse Williamson Square, Liverpool, L1 1EL

Ten intensive workshops will cover the fundamentals of playwriting and will be led by members of the artistic team at the award-winning theatre with masterclasses from award-winning playwrights.

“It was a perfect balance of theoretical and practical. The resource packs were astonishingly comprehensive and the homework revelatory. The course exceeded my expectations but also showed me how terrifyingly difficult writing a play will be. The best teaching I have ever had!”

Box Office: 0151 709 4776 www.everymanplayhouse.com

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Due to the success of the first course in 2011, the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse will be running the Introduction to Playwriting Course again in early 2012.

Where We Are

0151 709 4776 WWW.EVERYMAN PLAYHOUSE.COM 26