Nine Months
The clue for this course was in the title!
Nine Months Hard Labour was aimed at emerging writers who were committed to completing a full-length play...in the space of nine months.
The tutor for the course was playwright, dramaturg and director Charlotte Keatley, perhaps best known for her play My Mother Said I Never Should, and the six participants were Kevin Cuffe, Julia Hogan, Paul Kelly, Richard MacSween, Yvonne Sewell and Kim Wiltshire. They had a series of group meetings, dramaturgical sessions, distance mentoring with Charlotte and peer mentoring with other members of the group.
The participants' plays went through a series of three drafts altogether over the nine months, and at the first draft stage there was a weekend workshop at the Waterside in Sale, Cheshire, with directors David Salter and Tina Earl.
The course culminated in a hugely successful showcase at Oldham Coliseum's Wordsmith new writing festival in July 2008. At the final showcase the plays were given some workshopping time before a rehearsed reading of extracts in front of a packed audience in the studio theatre at the Coliseum. A company of twelve professional actors were directed in the showcase extracts by Ian Hastings, Kevin Shaw and Joyce Brannagh.
This course was very much a pilot for NWP. We hope to run a similar course in the not-too-distant future.