http://www.robertwarrington.com en-gb robertwarrington.com 2011-10-21T00:00:00Z robertwarrington.com http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#105157 Its been a while hasnt it Even by my blogging standards. Im currently creating a new website for Big Script which will eventually replace the old one. The group performed at Artsfest again this year and Im planning to put some images from that show up on our new site as well as on my own. Meanwhile heres an audio extract from the Black Country Blues show in January my cowrite with Suzan Spence. Thanks again to Nikole Reygan Corinne Jarrett Rory Nolan and Luke Mason for filling the roles at such short short notice. 2011-10-21 23:03:34 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#84624 After a period of uncertainty Suzan and I have been awarded some Arts Council money for our play Black Country Blues which were still in the process of cowriting.Were both hoping to be able to stage a fullblown production of the play at some point. In the meantime were using the money to fund a scriptinhand preview which will be free to the public. Therell be an open rehearsal on the 26th January and an hour long performance on the 27th January both at a venue in the centre of West Bromwich. Weve started a blog with more details on the piece. Heres the link httpblackcountryblues.wordpress.com 2011-1-14 20:04:05 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#77543 ArtsFest went pretty well for us and the rain kept off just long enough. A few minutes after the end of our show it poured down and emptied the courtyard. Most of our audience had drifted away by then however and it was the people whod turned up afterwards who got wet. There should be some images from the show up on he site quite soon. It looks as if Suzan and I will be given a free venue by Sandwell Council but not much else. Weve also been offered a small amount of money enough to pay an actor for one and half days work. As we need four actors for two days work and preferably also a director this could present a problem as were both currently broke. The councils pencilled in the show for early next year to give us time to try and raise what we need. 2010-10-10 18:57:45 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#74606 Big Scripts been given a half hour spot at this years ArtsFest. As Rachels moved on it fell to me to choose and edit the material this year. Ill probably photograph or video the performance as well anything to avoid actually taking part. This year we had to devise a show based on the venue we were allocated so its all been a bit last minute. The venue is interesting the courtyard of the last remaining back to back houses in Birmingham but its also in the open air so lets hope the weather doesnt do anything too British. Suzan and I are still waiting to find out if we have a venue and possibly funding for Black Country Blues. 2010-9-3 17:51:33 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#73240 Have been discussing things with Suzan. The outline of a viable play is gradually emerging. Rather than tout it around weve decided to try and stage it ourselves. Our plan is to put on a scriptinhand version of the play or part of the play later this year as a precursor to a fullblown production next year. What were hoping is well be able to do a trial run at a local venue a converted shop unit in October or November. At the moment its not clear whether the venue will be available to us but well do our best to get hold of it. 2010-8-19 19:37:58 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#69972 I spoke to Suzan Spence recently about the possibility of us writing a play together. Weve decided to see what we can come up with. After a couple of meetings we know who our characters are but we still havent worked out quite what to do with them yet. I have high hopes for this project though. I think well end up with a strong and interesting play by whatever convoluted means. 2010-7-9 18:44:16 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#67091 I think its probably time I wrote another play. Ive kept my hand in with short dramas the most recent being The Science of Prophesy for Blossom Theatre but its now two and a half years since Zak in the Box. This time though instead of writing the script on my own I feel Id like it to be a joint effort. Hopefully Ill have more to say about this soon though Im aware my blogging habits are almost as intermittent as my playwrighting habits. 2010-6-5 22:11:38 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#63741 Last Saturday I was in Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham. Id been invited to preview part of an audio trail devised by Charlotte Goodwin and Kate Chapman. This will be up and running on May the first to coincide with the reopening of the midlands arts centre the mac which has been closed for about two years.I think some of the listening material may be factual but on this stretch of the trail the audio was more of an imaginative experiment. The idea was that people would be walking from one bridge to another listening to ambient music with lyrical fragments. Whenever they reached a bridge theyd be told some kind of story either in the form of a drama or a poem or some hybrid form. The driving forces behind this project are very much Charlie and Kate. Myself and other writers were asked to submit material for them to select and shape. My main contributions were a poem for one of the bridges and a suggestion that all the bridge pieces including mine be cut to about five minutes. Apparentl... 2010-4-24 23:20:29 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#61022 Raymond Mason died recently a Birmingham born artist based in Paris. Mason had an international reputation for creating public sculptures. He often worked on a monumental scale but always in a unique and idiosyncratic style. Not everyone appreciated what he did but personally I found it fascinating. The first play I ever wrote used a statue of his as the central image of the play. I dont know whether he was aware of the play or would have liked it but thats not the important point. The point is the statue captured my imagination. The piece in question was called Forward and stood in Birminghams Centenary Square for twelve years. Like most of his works it was a sort of tableaux of tightly packed figures difficult to adequately describe. The figures were depicted as moving forward in time as well as space with the ones at the front in contemporary clothes and the ones at the back in the clothes of the industrial revolution. Most of them were generic ordinary people but famous historical... 2010-3-21 15:56:30 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#58006 It seemed like a long January to me especially the first part. A trudge and drudge through a snowbound UK. Writingwise it started well though relatively speaking. Finally won one of Leafs competitions instead of just being commended or coming nowhere. They sent me a cheque for a nanopoem a tiny little thing called Open Day. I wasnt expecting this at all. Getting paid for poetry isnt a thing that happens to me often. The last time was when I had a poem picked up by Contrary Magazine. 2010-2-8 19:47:18 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#55064 Some members of Big Script taking a break from rehearsing the Christmas show. Doreen centre seated has now left the group leaving fifteen of us in total. 2009-12-28 01:27:29 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#54035 The Big Script Christmas show is looming. Rehearsals start on Thursday. Ive designed the flyer and I may film the event. I think that may be the extent of my contribution this year. I feel gulity about this as I know there are people in the group whod like me to perform in the show. Several members of Big Script are trained actors. Others have a background in amateur dramatics. Its not that big a deal for them to be on stage but for me it is. Basically its a nightmare for me be in the spotlight. In order to be there I have to get myself in to a place which is very unlike my normal state of mind. Sometimes I just cant do it. The amount of psychological preparation required is ridiculous and out of all proportion to the psychological rewards which for me are minimal. My temperament seems all wrong for acting even though Im supposedly good at it. In my case this applies to quite few things I think. Youre supposed to enjoy what youre good at but it doesnt seem to work that way fo... 2009-12-6 19:29:34 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#49741 Todays the deadline for Leafs book cover design competition. Dont think Ive got a cat in hells chance of winning but heres one of my three entries 2009-9-30 15:24:29 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#48698 Strangely enough I did go to the show. Someone from the media office got back to me on Friday and gave me the okay to film in the gallery. I went in to Birmingham on Saturday afternoon and took my video camera. ArtsFest was a bigger deal than I thought it would be. The city centre was crammed with people attending ArtsFest events. The Museum and Art Gallery was busier than Id ever seen it with stuff happening all over the building. I was sort of expecting people to be coming and going stopping to watch and listen to things for a few minutes. Although there were still people passing through the galleries most people in the room were actually attending the events and seemed intent on staying from start to finish. When I got to Gallery 21 several rows of chairs had been put out on one side so it was set up like a conventional theatre space. Again this was something I hadnt quite anticipated. I dont think Rachel had either but she seemed to take it in her stride. The public began to a... 2009-9-14 15:37:53 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#48447 Big Scripts started meeting again. Our last meeting was partly a rehearsal for ArtsFest. The venue is Gallery 21 and the slots four thirty to five o clock on Saturday. The performance is being directed by Rachel and the pieces have all been chosen by her. Most of the pieces are minidramas with one of my poems being read at the end. I havent yet decided whether to go or not. If I go Id rather film it than just watch it but you need permission to film in the gallery. Ive been on the phone today trying to get this and am not very hopeful about the outcome. If the gallery doesnt give me permission to film the show Ill probably give it a miss but like most things it will all depend how I feel on the day. 2009-9-9 17:10:37 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#46647 I see Ronnie Biggs is back in the news. Hes now dying and has been released from prison on medical grounds after all the usual arguments. Ive no opinion on Biggs but I used to know someone who grew up near where he lived in South America. Her father helped run some kind of Catholic mission for street kids. For a while her father had been behaving strangely and out of character. One night he turned up at the house with Biggs. He was trying to get Biggs to buy her sister. It wasnt even a sick joke he was completely serious. What Biggs made of the offer I dont know but she saw blood red and went for her father with a kitchen knife. She was holding it to his throat when she saw the look of fear in his eyes and helpless insanity. Whether Biggs was ordered to leave or left of his own accord I dont know either but I think that was the end of the Biggs connection. Shortly afterwards her father disappeared. Eventually the police caught up with him somewhere. Hed been travelling t... 2009-8-9 23:48:20 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#46085 I recently or not so recently joined a website called Writers Prizefighters and Caffeine Inspired AllNighters. Its a social networking site for writers with an emphasis on posting material and getting critical feedback. Every now and again I post the odd piece or add the odd comment. The quality of the material is wildly uneven and sos the quality of the feedback and some people abuse the site by pushing products that have nothing to do with writing but it appeals to me anyway. I like the way the sites been designed by the husband and wife team who run it the thought and care thats on display and the personal touch in things like the hand drawn banner. Their love for what theyre doing and for each other comes out in the way the sites been put together. 2009-8-2 01:03:59 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#45957 Big Script met last night our last meeting before the summer break. We wont officially meet again until September when well start preparing for our next project. This will be ArtsFest a city wide event that takes place in Birmingham every year. One of our members Rachel Sambrooks suggested Big Script should apply to participate this year something weve never done before. We recently heard the organizers have given us a half hour slot in the Museum and Art Gallery. Well probably fill it with several bitesized pieces of drama and possibly some short bursts of poetry. Whatever we decide to do the performance will take place as the public are walking through the gallery. Some people will stop and watch it but probably only for a few minutes so the thing will have to be designed with that in mind. The piece will be performed by a mixture of Big Scripters excluding me and actors we know. Ive already submitted my material and probably wont have much more to do with procedings.The job ... 2009-7-31 18:00:54 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#45799 Had a dream last night. The police turned up at my flat. It was a delapidated cavernous kind of flat not a flat Ive ever lived in though it was a bit like one I once looked at. They arrived in force and told me Id been on a killing spree. They didnt say how many people Id killed or how Id killed them but they said Id done it yesterday or the day before. I didnt disbelieve them I just couldnt understand it. I had no memory of doing any of the things they were talking about. Then I started to vaguely remember something getting messages on my computer telling me to kill people. The police looked at my computer and found what could be messages but they all had a strange alphabet and weird symbols. I said they were messages from outer space I could read them because I could crack alien code. The next thing I knew I was back at home. I seemed to have given the police the slip but I was expecting them to catch up with me again at any moment. I was quickly but calmly explaining to my mot... 2009-7-29 16:17:40 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#45537 Just been reading Ada and more NanoFiction a book of hundred word stories by assorted writers. I have a piece in this book. My contributions a thing called Rat Boy. I like Leaf Books I think they do a good job. The content of their books are the result of the competitions they run. Even though Ive never been an overall winner things by me are included in several of their anthologies. They were the first people to ever put anything by me in print. Their current competition is to find a cover design for their next book. I might have a go at that. See if I can come up with something striking. 2009-7-24 22:57:04 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#45242 Re the summer show we took over five hundred pounds on the door which is more than I thought wed get but the real cost of putting on the show was also higher than my estimate so were still going to end up several hundred pounds down even when get our deposit back. The general consensus seems to be these shows are worth doing despite the losses but next time we need to do everything possible to reduce the overall cost to the group. Various suggestions were made but nobody really knows how we can bring down our costs. The actors and director have to be paid something vaguely reasonable and whatever venue we hire has to be hired at the going rate. Basically in order to do the summer show for less we either have to direct and perform it ourselves which nobody wants to do or stage it in a venue like a church hall which nobody wants to do either. Given that theres no obvious alternative to our current practice which is what its always been building up our own finances in the year so we... 2009-7-20 16:46:01 http://www.robertwarrington.com/page2.htm#44890 Big Script finally put on its summer show last week. About fifteen short plays were performed scriptinhand over two evenings. The actors were brought in from outside the group to do the show so none of us had to appear on stage as we sometimes do at Christmas. Finding the actors was left to the director we hired so it was the same formula as on previous summer shows. The only difference this year was the venue and the fact that we had a projected backdrop courtesy of David who was helping out as a favour and did a very good job for us in less than ideal conditions. In fact as usual everyone who got involved did a pretty good a job paid or not. From the point of view of the people who come to see them I think our shows are pretty successful. The problem from our point of view is the number of people who come. Its always too small. Financially putting on these shows has never made any sense. The main reason we do them is because it gives everyone in the group the chance to work o... 2009-7-13 22:44:30