Rough Draft - actorsworkshop's Script-in-Hand night
Established in March 2003 to coincide with our 2nd anniversary, Rough Draft is a continued resource for actors, performers, directors, technicians, and most of all new writers. It's a platform for new work. A place to explore scenarios, find characters and tell stories. The event, which takes place every few months, is an open forum for new projects to be tested - a great place for writers to get active feedback from a regular theatre-going audience. Actorsworkshop provide writers with everything they need to make this happen - A team of continually trained performers, Stage Management backing (for all their sound and lighting requirements), Director (or Assistant Director), Marketing and Box Office!
The Rough Draft series in 2003 and 2004 consisted of:
Meat and Two Veg
A high street butcher entertains his customers the only way he knows how. A story of love, jealousy and recipes of lamb. Guaranteed to get the juices flowing!
Quality Time
Imagine a not-too-distant dystopia where you have to really prove your commitment in order to get married. A test to see whether you really can live with someone for better and for worse. A year with your intended in a room. No outside contact, no distractions, nothing to do except be with your partner 24/7. Does that sound like a breeze to you' Or is there a point where too much intimacy can drive people apart'
See No Evil
An exploration of memory, an account of the unknown, the things we fear most, the things that go bump in the night, recent and past history that make and shape the way we see / fear our existence.
Pecked to Death by Ducks and Other Stories
It's the petty little violence that matters. The stuff we do to each other that wears us down day after day. It's a form of abuse and nobody seems to care. The look you can't read from the bloke in the car next to you. The snippy statement from your partner that cuts deeper than you can ever say. The years of trying to remain safe and sane at school, at work, at home. It's like being pecked to death by ducks.
M3
Rough Draft is all about going back to basics. Exploring the fundamentals of theatre. A script, a few basic props, set, costume and an audience. So what we've done for this Rough Draft is capture this simplicity completely by having one actor on stage. We have brought together four contrasting playwrights for an evening of monologues.
Bruise
"An explosive piece of writing, exploring the destructive forces that compel two opposing characters to stay united in a complex, bitter, yet somehow loving relationship"
Death In Greenwich
In their squalid London flat, Dylan and Patrick contemplate their financial problems. Their erstwhile employer, an unsavoury man called Mitchell, has decided to put his business on hold due to a recent crackdown on organised crime in the city of London, perhaps made more urgent by the recent activities of a serial killer known as "The Clock". The modus operandi of this killer is particularly distinctive. As escaped convicts, Dylan and Patrick rely on courier work from Mitchell, and resolve therefore to live more frugally. They have one more package to deliver before their contract expires, which on close inspection appears to contain some kind of creature. Dylan persuades Patrick to open the package and examine the contents...The rest may well be history…
