Different Stages: If you build it, will they come?

It’s mid-February and the opening of the Different Stages new writing festival is looming. The final bits of the jigsaw are being put into place with the dexterous use of a pair of scissors and a rubber mallet. The publicity is out, the opening event invites are sent and the final e-flyers are ready to go. I’ve found that if you stare at the brochure long enough, tickets go flying out the door.

We’re very excited to have assembled such a stellar cast of theatre practitioners for the three week programme. We’ve got the two emerging artist Bursary Winners already using space in the building, and we’re looking forward to seeing their creative use of sound and text (Sawdust and Stardust by Beccy Owen and Laura Lindow) and the innovative use of the old gallery space, with technological innovation and audience interaction (Office 925 by Match Theatre).

This week we’ll be booking actors for the variety of rehearsed reading events and script-in-hand performances. It’ll be great to welcome back some familiar faces and, as The Pitmen Painters has just finished its national tour, we’re hoping some of the actors in the production can fit us in en route to Broadway. The pieces chosen by Richard Bean in his Desert Island Plays include a few American plays (including work by David Mamet and Sam Shepard) so they’ll be able to acclimatise here beforehand.

Friday is also the deadline for the second draft of scripts from our Writers’ Groups for the festival. Having read and provided feedback on 27 first drafts, members of the Literary Department are bracing themselves for the next wave. The scripts chosen will form part of our two evenings of work by the two groups: (The 2010 Writers’ Group on Wednesday 10th March to be directed by Festival Co-ordinator Tess Denman Cleaver and the Live Writers’ Group on Tuesday 16th March to be directed by Live’s Literary Officer Rosie Kellagher).

We’re all planning to draw breath again after the festival’s final event: Your Favourite Live Theatre Short Play. This event gives you the chance to cast your vote. Please have a look at the candidates and choose which one you’d like to hear again. It’s the first time we’ve tried something like this online so we’re really interested to see how things turn out. Have a go because, as they say on all TV audience phone poll programmes, the voting is incredibly close.

That’s it from me. Next week it’ll be the New Writing Administrator, Degna Stone blogging our weekly Different Stages update. Make sure you check out the other events in the festival programme - we hope there’s something for everyone. I’ll get back to the scissors and mallet.

Gez
Literary Manager