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Theatre

Aug 23rd, 2008 by David

I’ve spent most of my professional life writing for performance. Much of this work was for Lumiere & Son Theatre Company (1973 -1992) which I co-directed with Hilary Westlake. With some exceptions, Hilary directed the performances and I wrote them. For twenty years we received an Arts Council grant to tour our work. Including commissions from solo performers, I’ve written about forty shows. Lumiere’s work played mostly in studio theatres but we maintained a presence on the streets, in site specific work and, especially over the years since I withdrew from co-directorship and took commissions from the company, mounted a number of large-scale outdoor public events.

My intention is to put excerpts from some of the scripts of some of this material online. Theatre script layout, however, exposes the merciless disposition of html, even in the versatile web authoring package I’m using. A great deal of data entry is required to make scripts on the page look like I want them. At the moment they look okay but they’re not as reader friendly as they might be. Much of the earlier, pre-word processor, work is packed in folders in binliners secured with gaffer tape and piled in a friend’s attic. These scripts will have to be scanned sheet by sheet and decisions made as to which of the many handwritten overwritings on rehearsal texts are to be considered definitive. I thought this might be good mindless fun but I suspect it won’t be.

For the time being I am opting for a simpler solution. I have been a visiting lecturer at Wimbledon School (now College) of Art since 1994 and over the last six years have been asked to direct short plays for student theatre designers in the Theatre School. I’ve written twelve 20 minute pieces since 2002 and the scripts of some of them, accompanied by introductory notes, are to be found just a click away. Also available is a piece on ‘Tip Top Condition’ (1973), Lumiere & Son’s very first theatre show, a couple of contextualising essays written for theatre programmes for the show ‘I Am Dandy’ (1999) plus some episodes from that play. In addition I’ve included the texts of some one-off commissioned pieces.

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