Development
Script Space
Script Space V | 2012
The deadline for submissions to Script Space V has now passed.
We received a record 573 submissions and from now until May our dedicated team of readers, comprised writers, directors, dramaturgs and producers from the South West and further afield, will be whittling them down first to around 100 and then around 12 shortlisted plays. Keep an eye on the shortlisting process via our new Script Space V blog.
About Script Space IV
The winner of Script Space IV was Martin Lytton for The Girl from Sparta Road. Set on two warring housing estates, Martin’s play is a kind Greek tragedy for the Skins generation. Lennie has left Sparta Road to be with her new boyfriend. Her old gang are having none of it and will come after her to bring her back, no matter what. It’s a tale of choice versus inescapable destiny from the age of bronze told in the age of silicone, and it was chosen from more than 300 submissions.
“I was tremendously excited to be shortlisted for the Script Space 2011 Prize, and for a minute, when they announced that I had won, it didn’t quite connect - can that really be me? Of course one hopes, but writing is a business which involves many pitfalls, many stunted expectations. But not this time. Winning this prize, and having the chance to have my work shown in some form in collaboration with the marvellous Tobacco Factory Theatre, will be a step further along the road to independence.” Martin Lytton, Script Space 2011 winner
Tobacco Factory Theatre Director, Ali Robertson, said: “Martin’s script stood out straight away. It’s hugely ambitious in scope and vision and we’re excited to have discovered such an original new voice.”
Three plays made it through to the final, from a shortlist of just ten whittled down from over 300 submissions. In second place was Digits, a slick and fast-paced black comedy with a great central double act and compelling unreliable narrator, by Berlin-based journalist Tamsin Walker. Highly commended was The Kittens in the Bag by London-based playwright Kitty MacDonald.
Script Space Coordinator, Sophie Lomax, thought this year was particularly tough to shortlist due to the high standard of submissions. “Getting it down to the final three was agonising. The quality of writing this year was outstanding and we feel really lucky to have found two so very different and very promising plays that we want to develop further.”
The Tobacco Factory Theatre’s forum for the development of new writing has gone from strength to strength since its inception four years ago. So far the initiative has worked with over twenty emerging and established writers, bringing their new plays before an audience for the first time. Script Space 2011 took place in collaboration with Bristol Festival of Ideas and realised a new capacity for and commitment to bespoke development opportunities for new and emerging writers. In Autumn 2011 we produced a run of lunchtime performances of Tamsin Walker’s play, Digits, one of the finalists in Script Space 4, and carried out a week of development work on The Girl from Sparta Road with director Lee Lyford and students from City of Bristol College.
The Script Space results were announced at the Bristol Festival of Ideas Book of the Year prize-giving. Introducing the evening’s events, BFI’s director Andrew Kelly talked about both organisations’ commitment to new writing and expressed excitement about the future of the collaboration, which will continue into 2012. The evening’s panel discussion of this year’s short-listed titles was preceded by a presentation of an extract from Digits, giving audiences a taster of what to look forward to in future months.
Read the Script Space IV blog.
Script Spaces past…
Script Space 2009
We received over 200 submissions to our Script Space 2009 competition and 4 of these received rehearsed readings here at the Tobacco Factory:
This Things of Darkness by Emma Spurgin Hussey, dir. Emma Earle
Water’s Not So Thick by Gill Kirk, dir. Alan Coveney
Doggerland by Debbie Kent, dir. Sam Berger
The American Hotel by Jacqueline McCarrick, dir. Andrew Hilton
Script Space 2010
This season’s 3 Script Space rehearsed readings were selected from over 250 submissions.
Zulu Wedding by Joseph Wilde
Nice Little Fortress by Stella MacDonald
A double bill of unsettling revelations and confounded expectations.
Dry Spell by Phil Booth
The once-arable land is awash, government help is nowhere to be seen: is this the end of a way of life for the farmers of Lancashire’s Mere?
Ache by Gareth Jandrell
The Most Beautiful Man in the World by Katherine Mitchell
Beatle’s Big Date by Annie Franklin
Cry by Andrew Scott
This bundle of love stories, break-up stories and don’t-want-to-be-alone stories all tackle the thrills and miseries of romance head-on and question what it is we really want.