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LT26.7 A Festival of New Writing · The Downing Arts Podcast

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  Welcome to the downing arts podcast.
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  Daffodils are in bloom across college and it's been another week of fulfilling
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  creative endeavours. On Saturday, we were treated to a fantastic concert
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  from student pianists performing alongside Danny Driver, which was truly an evening to
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  remember. And the cast of the Freshers Play enjoyed appreciative audiences
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  for their performances of After Juliet. The new exhibition has opened
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  in the gallery. Stay tuned to hear from the curator of Tudor Contemporary in next
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  week's episode. Over in the chapel, we've been lucky to have had a beautiful Eucharist
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  service featuring birds Mass for four Voices, which the chapel choir then sang
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  again for our friends from Fisher House on Monday.
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  Something we're very proud of in college is the Festival of New Writing, which this
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  year takes place the 12th to 14th March in the Howard Theatre. Here with
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  me in the studio to chat about it are Jude Hughes and Charlotte Payne.
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  Welcome to you both. Hello. We're very excited to
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  be here with a Festival of New Writing officers. So we're in charge
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  of handling all the writers, helping, making sure they have access
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  to rehearsal spaces, making sure the event runs
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  smoothly. Brilliant. And Jude, are you involved in that capacity
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  as well? Yeah. So we both are involved in running and organizing the
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  festival. It's been a really rewarding and brilliant experience so far,
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  working with all the writers on their directors.
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  Perhaps you could just explain a little bit about what the festival actually is and
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  what it involves. Yeah. So this is the 12th year of
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  the festival in New writing. It was established in 2014.
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  Essentially, we get sent loads of scripts that
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  are around 20 minutes long. We don't want them to be too long and
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  we select from the ones that we think have potential to be worked on,
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  especially if it's like, from someone we can tell is trying to
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  write a script for the first time. And we'll try and develop that with
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  them, get them experience of working with a director and
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  we'll put about maybe nine of these scripts onto the
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  stage. Brilliant. And are these film scripts or plays or television
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  series or what are they?
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  Generally they end up being adapted for plays or,
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  like, for stage plays. Often when we get them coming in,
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  they can feel quite cinematic or potentially like
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  they could be adapted for other forms of media, but they will be adapted
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  for the stage initially. And who acts in them? I mean, do you have a
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  number of students who are kind of lined up ready to take on anything,
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  or do the writers themselves organize all that? So the
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  writers and directors themselves, do you organize that part
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  of the idea of the festival? Is to help people enter into theatre, which,
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  especially in Cambridge, can be quite a scary space or seem quite high intensity.
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  So the festival allows a much more relaxed way for people
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  to come up the first time, writing, directing and kind of seeing their work
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  come to life. Is this something that you've done in previous years? I mean,
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  now, obviously you've got quite a big role in it, but did you take part
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  yourselves with scripts? Yeah, both of us submitted scripts last year and had them put
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  on the stage and that was really exciting to do. So it's really rewarding
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  being on the other side of that this year. Wow. And how do you sort
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  of rehearse them all? I mean, you say there are nine. Is it nine?
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  I mean, that's quite a lot to perform in a short space of time.
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  And, yeah, I suppose if they're only 20 minutes, even so it's
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  still quite an undertaking. So how does it all come together?
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  How do you fit it all in? It can be quite intense with
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  the time period that we're working with. Normally this gets handed off to directors.
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  When I was doing it last year, I sort of left everything for
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  my director once I'd got them to do it. And they were amazing
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  at just making sure that they had enough rehearsal time. They got their
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  friends to be in the cast because they knew them and they knew that they
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  would be good at a certain role. But it is quite
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  intense. It's amazing what you see that the people
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  we've selected can pull out with a short space of time that they have and
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  we're there to support helping them get access to rehearsal spaces
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  or find. Find props or something like that. Wow. And is it
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  just. Oh, I say, just in inverted commas, acting, or is there music involved
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  as well? Or any. Any other kind of media? So this year, I think
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  we have at least one script that has the potential to
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  have some music added into it, because it was quite a cinematic script
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  when we first read it, and there's a lot of pauses and silences. So we've
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  been working with Downey music to potentially add
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  a, like, score piece in. And also we have another
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  piece that's very folky and that has an accordion player,
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  so that's quite exciting. Oh, wow. Gosh. Do you. Do you put the.
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  I mean, I know our director of drama, Steve Bennett, is involved, obviously very
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  heavily as well, but how do you. Do you sort of curate the whole thing?
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  Because you said there were nine performances and it's over three nights, so is there
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  some aspect of kind of thinking how the Plays relate to each other when you're
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  putting it together. We've decided we want a comedy
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  every night at least, especially to lighten the mood because
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  we are dealing with some quite interesting and intense topics with some of our
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  other scripts. But we have, we've. This year we've
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  scheduled it. So there's three plays each night. One of them is a comedy to
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  lighten the mood and I'm excited to see how that comes about.
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  Are you allowed to give any kind of sneak previews of what
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  might be on offer? We have lots going on.
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  We have a plow Jag that's going to happen on the closing
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  night, which is a folk play that's normally performed
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  on the streets of like a town. So that's quite exciting.
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  And we have a couple of monologues,
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  hopefully that will be interesting as well. So that will split it up
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  a bit. And at the end,
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  every script writer gets interviewed by a panel or
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  ask questions or given feedback. Oh, wow. Gosh. And that
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  happens in front of the audience? Yes, Gosh, that sounds potentially very
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  useful, but also quite terrifying.
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  Yeah, it can be. But it's really useful to hear what
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  different people think about your play, especially for first time
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  script writers. There's sometimes technicalities that you can learn from
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  it and other times you can consider what people have
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  taken away from your play and how closely that relates to what you
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  intended. Is there much help in the way of workshopping
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  or anything like that before they actually get performed? Sort of in the rehearsal process?
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  Yeah. So we do. Steve does help to
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  read over the scripts. He has a lot of experience in TV
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  and in theater and as a script editor. So that's one really helpful part of
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  the workshop and process. But a lot of it is independent and
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  we do like to emphasize for the writers to like work with a
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  director, work with an actor and see how things naturally unfold.
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  It's really get a lot of creative freedom process. Are there any
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  parameters that you set down in the right, like right in the beginning before people
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  send in their scripts? I don't think we do. I think we're very open to
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  hearing from lots of different people, lots of different backgrounds.
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  We were quite keen this year because we had quite a few people from different
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  parts of the world. Like we have a Venezuelan play
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  which I think will be interesting.
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  So we were trying to think about expanding
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  our views a bit. But yeah, in general it's so open and
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  I often think the newer the writer the better.
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  Because it's for new writing. Yeah, yeah. Losing the title isn't
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  it? Is there anything that is completely off limits? I mean, I suppose
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  there must be some things that are, I don't know, perhaps not possible in the
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  theater or. We have to work with the limitations of the theater.
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  I mean, we did have to turn down scripts. We were sent surplus scripts.
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  So we did have to consider how feasible certain plays were to be
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  adapted for the stage, and we turned some of them down as a result.
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  And I know we have a great tech team at Downing, you know,
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  helping with AV and lights and all of that kind of stuff. How involved
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  are they with the whole process? Well, we've actually trained up quite a few of
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  our own students, so we have one fresher in particular who's very
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  keen and very good at working out how to program
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  lighting and stuff. So we're very excited for, when we get to the tech rehearsals
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  to program for different people's lighting
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  effects and also sound effects. Normally they have to work on
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  finding their own sound effects, but we will play them
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  that for them. It was interesting for me last year, actually, because I had to
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  make my own train announcement because it was meant to be. So that
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  was quite fun, working out how to create just the right sound of
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  muffling a train announcement. I think I could be quite a good Foley artist,
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  maybe. So how did you do it? How did you do it? It was
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  interesting. I had to balance my laptop while
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  it was recording on the side of my window ledge, so I'm. I could
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  have the sound of people walking outside on the gravel to
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  muffle it even more. And then I had cotton wool in my mouth
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  and I'd spoke into a mug, so I was
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  really muffled. But it worked quite well. Everyone believes it
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  sounded like a believable muffled train announcement. So that was
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  a learning point for me. And I hope other writers get to
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  learn similar things this year. And of
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  the people, people who've taken part in the past, have they gone on to do
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  more writing and have they sort of gone into film or
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  stage writing or whatever? Oh, yeah. So my plan from last year
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  that debuted at the festival, we'll be going to Camden this summer
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  in August, which is quite exciting opportunity.
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  Wow, that's amazing. Brilliant. So is
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  that your summer gone? Is that your kind of summer project? I mean,
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  it runs for a week. Yeah, it will be my summer project, definitely.
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  I mean, it was also. It's going to be in Cambridge next term as well,
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  which will also be really fun. So, yeah, at Downing or somewhere
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  else. It'll be on in Corpus. Corpus Playroom.
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  Wow. Well, congratulations. That's really cool.
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  Quite a few people have used the festival to show like
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  provide excerpts for a script or like workshop an idea and
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  then have taken it on to provide full length plays, which is really exciting.
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  So Jude is one example, but we've had many others as well.
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  Fantastic. Well, yeah, it's certainly a brilliant thing
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  and something that we're very pleased to have in college and yeah, looking forward
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  to it. So it's the 12th to 14th of March. Is it 7:30 every night?
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  Yeah, I think. Doors at 7:15. Okay, cool.
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  Doors at 7:15, shows at 7:30. Great. And I'll put all the information,
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  ticketing and all of that kind of stuff in the show notes, so if anyone
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  would like to come along, it'll all be there. Great. Well, thanks for coming on
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  the show. It's good to have a little snap shot into the sort of behind
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  the scenes. Haha. And yeah, I look
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  forward to seeing you soon. Thank you. Thank you.
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  This week in College today at 5pm
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  There's a special evensong service in the chapel with our own choir singing alongside
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  pupils from King Edward VII Academy in King's Lynn. This is part of the
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  Downing Arts Widening Participation Program and we would love to have a sizable congregation to
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  support them. If evensong's not your thing, there's a recital of violin and
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  piano music happening in the assembly room also at 5, hosted by the Music Society
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  and the Assembly Room is also the venue for the Percussion Extravaganza
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  concert on Saturday at 5. Entry is free for Downing members, but we'd
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  be grateful if you could register for a ticket beforehand. Details in the show notes.
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  It's going to be an unusual and fantastic event, so do come if you can.
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  The chapel choir sing the final Evensong of term on Sunday at 6.
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  Come along for a sneak preview of some of the music from the forthcoming Mozart
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  Requiem performance.
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  Next week I'll be joined by Dr. Christina Faraday, curator of the current Tudor
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  Contemporary exhibition in the gallery. Stay tuned for an intriguing snapshot of some
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  of the stories and thought behind the artwork currently on show. Thanks for listening.