Always my problem – I have too many projects going on at the same time, round which I have to fit living, breathing, having time for people and family and walking the dog. The latter at least means that I have half an eye on breathtaking nature, the water birds on my next-door reservoir and …
Must do more blogs! That’s one of my New Year resolutions… I always feel a shaft of joy to greet a new year, no idea why since mostly things just settle into the usual rhythms: writing [too many things at once, usually, which means slow work on them all and divided time – not really …
In 2005, when Dramaworks was already flourishing with my own practical resources, I decided to start housing plays too. I commissioned teachers in schools, youth groups and others known to me to write plays suitable for young people. I rejected many and only kept the best. Then I signed on with Nielsen, the depository for …
Despite the name of my new site, Plays for Schools, other Drama Teaching Resources for Schools can be found on there. There is ‘Exploring Theatre: Stanislavski’ a great big Stanislavski file, which I wrote during lock-down, which is more complete and expansive than any previous ones. It also uses completely new exercises for each component …
The Dramaworks site is no more but I have retained the plays written by myself and other teacher/writers and put them on a new site called Plays For Schools. The plays have always been popular though I am aware that some were written a while ago. For that reason I am busily writing new plays …
It’s been a long time since I’ve put anything up on this site, mea culpa. The closing down of Dramaworks and the last weeks of trading as much as I can were all consuming. Out of the window has been anything resembling a novel, though I am part way through a number and will return …
With Digital Theatre still wavering over whether to allow me to carry on trading for a while, I’m opening the new site for the plays sooner rather than later to be on the safe side. Once called Plays for Student Performance on the Dramaworks website it’s now allowed its very own bespoke site called Plays …
Yes, joy! Because that is where for the last six months I’ve been heading with the story of Hades and Persephone. There is nothing like the feeling of being able to say THE END, even though there are weeks of editing, cutting, rewriting, reducing to come. Yesterday the final sentence before plunging out into the …
Last week I had the pleasure of supporting an old writing friend of mine at the book-launch of her first novel. It was particularly satisfying because many years ago I was part of a small group of writers – four of us – in which she, Kath Morgan, first began work on her novel The …
For those who aren’t writers and still in the lovely rosy world of ‘you write a book, find an agent and get published, surely?’ this is an eye-opener on the new world of writing. Book-publishing has changed enormously. Many publishers are now only interested in the kind of books that you’ll find in Asda, Sainsburys …