In this issue:

Networking Day - update on the day
Two members explain why you should write for Amateur Dramatics groups
Golden Rose of Montreux 2002
The Glee Club - lots of fun
Christine Kelly recommends the Wrong Boy
Your successes


BSCW NETWORKING DAY UPDATE

Latest attendees: Chris Adamson (Film Actor)

Representatives from the following companies have also confirmed their attendance: Channel 4 TV (UK); Eborn & Associates International (UK); Hoffman & Voges Filmproduktion GmbH (Germany); Bill Kenwright Films Ltd (UK); Macoy Media (UK); The Pink Professor Productions Ltd (UK).

The Writers Guild have advertised this event in their e-zine and the Royal Television Society have asked if they can advertise it too. They have over 3,000 members, many of whom are TV Producers.

This all means that the limited set of places left are likely to be taken very quickly. We expect to be sold out within the next ten days.

WHAT AMDRAM CAN DO FOR YOU!
by Anne Knight

I started over 20 years ago, by joining an amdram group. I began with scene painting, backstage work and graduated up the very slippery ladder to acting, then I got the thirst to write.

My first foray into writing for the stage was in partnership with a school head of music. Together we wrote and produced two very successful musicals which have since been performed in different areas of the country. I wrote the book and lyrics, the teacher wrote the music.

Flushed with this initial success, I joined a writers group and had to get used to being criticised and given advice - some of which was not good and not welcome. I then decided to start up my own amdram company and that proved to be the best training ground for me. It is a very tough and ego-centred world and I have often wondered whether working in the professional theatre could be harder.

I have done it now for over 20 years and have learned so much. I have an imaginary rusty metal spike attached my kitchen wall which, when things have gone wrong - and they almost always do - I bang my head on! But the world of amdram has been good for me. I have learned what audiences like, what makes them laugh, and I have learned that there is nothing more exciting than hearing the first laugh from the audience. It's addictive.

I always listen to criticism, even if I know it is more to do with an actor's ego than my script. I'm pleased to say that I haven't put on a play which has failed or been badly received. But, here is the hard bit, the script will have gone through at least half a dozen rewrites via workshop/rehearsals, prior to performance. Then, I put the script to one side, start work on something new, and several months later, go back to the performed script and tear it apart again.

Through this process I have learned about timing and how long an audience will sit before starting to get fidgety and I have learned an awful lot about what actors will or will not do! It has been a long and ongoing learning curve and I have often come home in despair, but I have persevered.

I am now working very hard to break into the professional theatre and TV and have several scripts out and under consideration in both of these areas. But, for somebody who want to cut their teeth on writing for theatre, I suggest going through the amdram route, it's hard, but worth it!

(Anne Knight is a new BSCW member, and a published playwright.)



HOW TO SURVIVE WORKING WITH AN AMDRAM GROUP
Trevor Walker explains some of the problems of AmDram

This one belongs in the "scars that may one day heal" department. I am submitting it on the basis that there is nothing so amusing as other people's misfortune.

I was approached to write a farce for a local drama company. "We will pay you," they said with some pride. I resisted the urge to say, "damn right you will" and just smiled politely.

"That's nice", I said "but I don't really do farce, it's technically quite challenging and has to be constructed in a very definite way"

"Oh well, just make it a comedy then", they conceded, as if they had asked for caviar flavoured ice cream and had to settle for vanilla.

"Oh and could you write it for the whole company."

"The whole company?"

"Yes, and to include the youth group."

"How many is that?"

"Well there's 15 adults and 20 youth group kids aged 14 to 18."

Writing the comedy version of The Ten Commandments did not necessarily appeal but I eventually came up with a format that would use adults and kids pretty effectively provided the Royal Opera House stage was free for the week of the run.

I laboured long and hard (well in fact I did it in background behind things that paid the sort of money that stops a bank manager from taking away your home and deporting your children).

Complete with 3rd draft I rang them to proudly announce the fact.

"Ah we have a snag"

"A snag"

"We have lost our youth group"

"That was careless, but your village isn't that big, they must be wandering around somewhere"

"No, No, I mean they have disbanded. They've all gone to university or joined the army cadets"

"Are there any youngsters left?"

"We might be able to get a couple"

"Just great, what about the adults? Have they all found religion and become nuns and Prime Ministers"

"No, but we do only have 5 women and 4 men"

I sighed and went off to rewrite. Having scaled my epic down to the surviving members. I presented a new draft.

"It's very good"

There was a "but" there you could have stood under the shade of. I waited.

"But we've lost a couple more members"

"Have I strayed into a new series of Big Brother here?"

"I'm afraid we are going to have to put this on hold for a bit, we're looking for four handers at the moment"

Two fingers, I thought bitterly is what you are more likely to get.

"And about payment?"

"Ah, we were going to talk to you about that"

OK, it did not happen quite like that, and I have worked with non professional companies and had a good experience, but they have tended to have be more 'semi-pro', probably a professional Artistic Director and some professional actors.

If you want to help out your local group for fun, great do it. If you want to work with them on a professional basis, and why not? Money is money. Remember a few basic rules.

1. As a writer you are marginally less important than the guy who constructs the stage extension and extremely less important than the people who run the bar.

2. Writing is easy. Any member of the company could do it if they only had the time. One guy told me, without a trace of irony, and I promise I do not make this up, that he could rattle off a couple of plays in an afternoon (who says life does not imitate art). I read a couple of them and I believe him.

3. They are doing you a favour by letting you write for them. If you were not doing this you would only be squandering your work on the BBC or possibly Hollywood. They have saved you from yourself.

4. Money is, of course, a vulgarity that they will not insult you with, however much you might want them to. Do not believe their tales of poverty. I have worked with a group that makes more from the bar (which they run in an extremely entrepreneurial style) than they do from the box office. They cheerfully show a profit every year whilst the local mainstream theatre annually reports a loss. They will pay a musical director £1000 for a 3-night run. Try getting that for writing the show in the first place.

5. Your work is largely dead in the water after the curtain and the shaky set have come down. Professionals are seldom interested in new plays with a cast larger than four. Amateurs want big casts (and actors with big families) that's how tickets get sold.

So you can guess what I will say the next time an amateur group has the nerve to dare to ask me to write anything for them. Yes that's right:

"Certainly, pleased to. How big a cast did you have in mind?"



ROSE D'OR FESTIVAL

Are you planning on going to the Golden Rose of Montreux 2002? If you're thinking about it, you'll want to know all the details.

The festival takes place 23-28 April. Ken Rock, and various others will be leaving on Monday 22nd April and returning on Monday 29th April. Other members will be attending for different lengths of time.

Registration forms, if you haven't already received them, and further details of all the conferences, can be found on the Golden Rose website at: www.rosedor.com The website also allows you to sign up for the newsletter, so you can be updated on any developments.

Current return air fare to Geneva flying with Easyjet is £59.50 max (cheaper if you take early flights) if you book online. (www.easyjet.com)

The hotel where some of the BSCW stay is The Parc & Lac Hotel, 38 Grand Rue, Montreux (Tel: +41 21 963 3738 Fax: +41 21 963 2317) Cost per single room for bed and continental breakfast is 120-130 CHF per day. There is also a form to book hotels online - all prices in Swiss Francs (CHF).

The BSCW "Montreux office" is situated just a few doors away... you'll find it by its usual name - The White Horse pub!



FUN AT 'THE GLEE CLUB'
Review by Diana Moore

The Glee Club by Richard Cameron was at the Bush Theatre, London. Its first night was 20th February 2002.

A new play set in the writer's native Yorkshire. It is 1962 and a group of singing miners - all members of The Glee Club - are practising a number for the local gala. The writer set out deliberately to have an all male cast comprisng, five hard working, hard drinking miners and a church organist, who all sing 'better than just good.'

An all male cast seemed fitting for this truly Northern play. The set was stark and bare and during the first half, two large black doors were opened to reveal even more stark and bare... the shower scene! The cast took turns at removing the day's grime to add the reality of pit life into the story, as well as conveying the 'warts and all' emotional aspect of their lives. Quite a distraction to watch and listen at this point - I could write a story here but to keep this brief let's just say... worth a view!!!.

There was also a very funny rendition of the well-known Italian song 'Feniculi Fenicula'... I won't reveal any more on this; go and watch!

The play was ambitious in that there were six characters' lives to deal with and a lot to assimilate about each character. The play revealed issues and prejudices of the time that would be handled differently almost 40 years later. All credit to this hard-working cast and of particular note was Bant (played by David Schofield who starred in 'Band of Gold') as the leading actor.

I was impressed with 'The Glee Club' because unlike 'A Day In The Life Of Joe Egg' (enjoying a revival at the West End and also set in the early sixties), this play did not seem dated to me.

The music and singing voices, (with tracks from Mario Lanza and Frankie Lane) were a pleasurable part of this gritty, humorous play. Dialogue is 'in yer face' so that elite critics might wish to hear more covert subtext.

The Bush Theatre is small and initmate and 'The Glee Club' worked extremely well in this venue - it might not have the same affect on a big stage.

Well worth viewing. ****


THE WRONG BOY TURNS OUT ALRIGHT
Review by Christine Kelly

The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell. Published by Black Swan in 2001; ISBN 0-552-99645-9

It all started to go wrong after the Transvestite Nativity Play when 'two hundred pairs of eyes watched in stunned silence as Twinky put the baby's mouth to his left nipple and said 'You have a good suck on that Baby Jesus, and when that one's empty there's another full one on the other side''.

Now Twinky's friend Raymond is off to Gulag Grimsby and a job on a building site, pouring out his heart in a series of letters to Morrissey (formerly of The Smiths). Through teenager Raymond we meet his family, including Gran, who eats Garibaldi biscuits because they stand for something and is happiest when on the Positive Pensioners' trip 'Scotland's Suffering. The Sites of Caledonian Misery', and his nauseating cousins 'the sort of children who would make a paedophile eat his own sweets'.

This book is comedy writing at its very best. Extraordinary characters, a plot that keeps you guessing and lines that made me want to have Willy Russell's babies. I laughed out loud and cried many times (dead embarrassing on the Underground); it is very funny, deeply moving and a cracking read. Enjoy!


YOUR SUCCESSES

John O'Byrne reports "A recent edition of BBC Radio 4's "Puzzle Panel" featured one of my puzzles, a 'triple punundrum' which succeeded in tormenting the studio panel. Also, I was a winner in The Spectator magazine's humorous 'Desert Island' competition (published 9 February); and a runner-up in the Washington Post's monthly Neologism Contest."


SAD NEWS

The BSCW is deeply saddened to have to report the death of Spike Milligan. He died on Wednesday, aged 83, after a prolfic writing career. During his life he struggled with depression, yet still managed to produce not only the Goon Show, but a great deal of poetry, and fascinating, highly amusing chronicles of his war-time service. He once said of heaven "I'd like to go there. But if Jeffrey Archer is there I want to go to Lewisham." We trust he enjoys his stay, wherever he ends up.



NEXT MONTH:
- We report back on a recent course on "Writing for Doctors" - the daytime series, not prescription skills!
- Lots more of your reviews, and your successes, if you'll be so kind as to e-mail them all to me - gill@bscw.co.uk