Dramatic Writing Students Staged Readings

  29th November 2011

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While prose (and some poetry) is primarily designed to be read on the page, plays are written to be performed. The best test of a play, therefore, is for it to be read by professional actors. As part of the Creative Writing degree at the University of Gloucestershire, second year Dramatic Writing students last May hosted a day of table-top and staged readings with Cheltenham’s Everyman Theatre’s Artistic Director, Paul Milton, and a group of the theatre’s creative associates and actors. Twelve plays, written over the course of the year, were rehearsed in-house by Paul and his team. The variety of the work offered a real challenge; there were plays about Afghanistan, an adaptation of an A.E Houseman poem, issue-based drama examining sex trafficking in Cheltenham, an NHS critique, a feminist piece on the death penalty and stylistically interesting work moving between high-realism and experimental challenges to traditional drama. Actors commended students’ ability to write for performance and it was great to see the scripts brought to life. You can watch a sample of the readings via the links below (many thanks to Luke Dean for arranging the recording):

Script by Tatia Nichols-Arles
Script by Rachel Kelby
Script by Keely O’shaughnessy
Script by Jenny O’Mahony
Script by Holly Brown
Script by Claire Leek
Script by Claire Holland
Script by Chris Bryant
Script by Luke Dean