Short Attention Span Theatre Newsletter September 2019

This is the twenty-first edition of the monthly newsletter from Short Attention Span Theatre. It features news about our shows, opportunities for writers and creatives that we've seen, plus plugs for other shows and anything else of interest. If you have anything appropriate you'd like us to include for future drop us a line at info@shortattentionspantheatre.co.uk.

10 Things Worth Sharing

Here are ten links we've seen that are worth sharing.

Inside the Friends writers room from Vulture is an entertaining look at what went on in writing one of the most popula TV series of all-time. The squabbles and absurdities of the writers’ room found their way into scripts as well. On one occasion, a late-night session was interrupted by someone from the show’s office, who poked their head in to tell Greg Malins his fiancée was on the phone. After Malins left the room, writer Michael Borkow said, “Huh. Wapah!” All the other writers turned to Borkow, confused. He responded, “You know. He’s running out to take a phone call. He’s whipped. Wapah!” The joke was less about Malins’s being “whipped” than a kind of meta-joke about the Stockholm syndrome of the room, in which even taking a phone call felt like a major retreat from commitment. What was funny, though, was the sound that came out of Borkow’s mouth. Chase responded, “That’s not the whip sound. This is the whip sound,” doing a more traditional “hoo-pssshh” crack of the whip. Borkow agreed: “That’s what I just did. ‘Wapah!’” Borkow’s inability to make a convincing whip-cracking noise became Chandler’s struggle in the fourth season’s “The One with All the Wedding Dresses.” Also from Vulture, the writers of Saturday NIght Live talk about their 44th season.

This is a 69-minute video from 2009 from Emory University. Playwright Edward Albee, who passed away in 2016, discusses Samuel Beckett, his own plays and his thoughts on creativity.

The New York Times looks at Amazing Books in Pittsburgh. Browsing at Amazing can be pleasurably disorienting. Standard sections like biography and literature are alphabetically organized, but other shelves have a logic all their own. On one, a Calvin and Hobbes compendium sits next to William Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch.” In the vinyl racks, “The Greatest of Nat King Cole” is one flip away from Elvis Costello and The Attractions’ “Goodbye Cruel World.”-

In this Medium series twelve authors talk about the day jobs they worked while writing their books. Here's author of The Martian Andy Weir: You were posting chapters of ‘The Martian’ as you wrote them and inviting people to give feedback? Yes and no. I was challenging anybody to find scientific inaccuracies. All the little nerds cracked their knuckles. That was like having 3,000 fact-checkers, which is awesome. They’re not gonna let you slide on shit. They found a lot, and that’s exactly what I wanted. However, I didn’t take any advice on the story. I wasn’t interested in that. Also on the subject of day jobs playwright Kari Bentley-Quinn advises playwrights not to quit their 9 to 5.

We put a show on in March of last year at Leith Depot in Edinburgh. They've had a fight on their hands to prevent the pub being demolished by a property developer. Here's a short film that's been made on their story.

GLOW and Supergirl writer Rachel Shukert speaks to Omaha student newspaper The Gateway about her career. “It’s not so much strong female characters but complex female characters,” Shukert said. “It’s easy to write someone who never screws up and never makes a mistake—the network shorthand—a woman who is ‘a great mom and great at her job.’ That’s not interesting to me. In a way, it’s its own kind of sexism because it distrusts the idea that anyone will still like a woman if she has a flaw.”

The Atlantic's series By Heart has authors sharing and discussing their all-time favorite passages in literature.

On The Bruntwood Prize's website Catherine Love gives us advice on writing for theatre audiences. 'When writing a play, it’s easy to focus on the page. But scripts are one of the crucial building blocks of a live encounter with an audience. Unlike film or television, theatre’s audience exists with it in the same room – a fact that poses both challenges and opportunities for the playwright.'

The Writers and Artists website has advice for writing musical theatre from Pitch Perfect. 'At its core, the key is in the name; musical theatre is simply storytelling through drama and music, a tradition that goes back through the centuries, starting from when stories first started being told. It’s a powerful form and more versatile than many people realise as it uses that unique fusion of music and lyrics to immerse us in a story, developing plots and characters while capturing their inner lives through song. And musicals don’t have to include large ensembles but can also act as fascinating, intimate character studies.'

Dummies.com has some neat little cheat sheets for writers who like a structural comfort blanket.

We spent some time in Edinburgh over August.

At the Book Festival, we saw David Goldblatt the football writer and sociologist. He was discussing his new book The Age of Football. Covering the last twenty years or so of international football, it was an interesting talk, enlivened by the many clued-up audience members who asked questions afterwards.

Stuart Goldsmith presents the excellent Comedian's Comedian podcast. We saw him in his work in progress show at the Monkey Barrel. Watching him work was interesting. He had a screen displaying a slide of all the topics he had been working on each show, with them all being clour coded as to their progression as his run went on. He's an amiable performer and delivered a decent hour of solid laughs and rough workings out.

Honey by Tove Appelgren featured a tour de force performance from Sarah McCardie in the title role. Playing a single mother juggling four and a half kids, a domineering mother and a handful of ex-partners Sarah perfectly conjured up the chaotic life of the title character.

We went to see the one woman play Testament of Yootha at Gilded Balloon Teviot, written and performed by Caroline Burns Cooke. It's an endearing, physical, tragi-comedy that took its inspiration more from Yootha's Theatre Workshop days than her latter 1970s sitcom fame. At times it was muddled, and the performance was startlingly ropy, but it had an intense, nostalgic, charm.

At Pleasance Courtyard we saw another one woman play, I'm A Phoenix Bitch, by Bryony Kimmings. It started late and overran, which didn't impress us at the time-poor Edinburgh Festival, but it did lead to some entertaining tantrums in the audience, and the show itself was triumphant. Part stand-up, part Ted Talk, part musical parody, part folk horror, this stunningly visual show did make us wonder why she was so niche. It's a debunking romp through her career, marriage, motherhood and a breakdown when all of those things fell apart. There was a hint of contrived coldness about it, but it's undeniably beautiful and gripping.

One of us (Karen) hated Baby Reindeer, written and performed by Richard Gadd, so much she can rant about it for hours more than a week later. She's unsure if she's being unfair and over-sensitive or if it really is a violently sexist horrorshow with a value system so warped that it sees an award as redemption for abuse and having a great bum as a climactic revelation. Anyone who sees it, please email your thoughts.

Playwriting
by Stephen Jeffreys

On the surface this seem like an average nuts-and-bolts 'How To' Guide but it's packed with the kind of unusual insights that only someone with a great depth of practical experience and knowledge would think of. It focuses on structure (how to handle story, time and place), character, how to write (logic, subtext etc) and what to write (types of play, material, endings etc). There's a strong defense of the dialectical play, which advises us to confront, out-argue and overcome ideas that we oppose; a vital and dying skill in our algorithm-dominated, echo-chambered times. When discussing subtext he tells us to be aware of the physical, emotional and intellectual details of a scene. And while we should plan our plays, we should also be open to exciting changes. And he ends by reminding us that categories are there to be springboards for our fresh stories. Quietly and carefully this became essential reading.

The best of the writing and theatre related Twitter threads we noticed in August.

Comics writer Sean Kelley McKeever talks about his long process of breaking in.

Writer Jennifer Riddalls asks for advice on how to get back to writing and receives lots of good replies.

Director and playwright Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir provides her thoughts on the Edinburgh Fringe.

Author Holly Seddon shares some advice from Seth Rogen.

How often do writers write? asked author VE Schwab.

Here's our tips to for what to see in the next month.

Tandem Writing Collective are back at The Tron on Tuesday 3rd September. It's always a god night of great new writing with a terrific cast. The added bonus is they always have a great musical act on. At £5 it's a total bargain.

Martin McCardie's From Paisley to Paolo is back at Oran Mor this week as part of Play, Pie and a Pint. This run features Michael NcCardie who was in our March 2018 shows.

Lorenzo Novani's Cracked Tiles is at Webster's Theatre on 1st October. The show's had rave reviews wherever it has went over the years. Get along to see it if you can.

BBC Scotland began six Sunday nights of screening shows from Play, Pie and a Pint last night Sunday 1st September. The run begins with Stuart Hepburn's Chic Murray: A Funny Place For a Window which is available on the BBC iPlayer, along with a repeat showing of 2014's documentary on P,P & P's tenth anniversary.

The following are creative opportunities we've noticed over the last few weeks.

The Scottish Poetry Library's website has this interesting poetry commission.

Gutter magazine's submission window is currently open.

If you're over 40 you have until 18th September to apply for the Scottish Book Trust's Next Chapter Award.

Opportunity to devise some gig theatre with Middle Child.

Third-party opportunities disclaimer

Please note that third-party listings and links to third-party websites listed on this website are provided solely for your convenience and not as an endorsement by Short Attention Span Theatre. We are not responsible for the content of linked third-party sites and make no representations regarding the content or accuracy of materials on such third-party websites. Additionally, Short Attention Span Theatre does not provide or make any representation as to the quality or nature of any of the third-party opportunities or services published on this website, or any other representation, warranty or guaranty. Any such undertaking, representation, warranty or guaranty would be furnished solely by the provider of such third-party opportunity or services, under the terms agreed to by such provider.

Here you'll find what some of the writers of our previous shows have been doing and what they have coming up in the next month or so.

Fraser Campbell - Fraser's new comic Heart of Steal was successfully funded on Kickstarter.

Chris McQueer - The Audible version of his short story collection Hings is now available to pre-order. His latest short story collection HWFG is available from all good bookshops and publishers 404 Ink.

Kat Harrison - Kat has narrated the audio version of Karen Gray's book For King and Country. You can get it on Audible.

Elissa Soave - Elissa will be pitching at Bloody Scotland's Pitch Perfect event in Stirling later this month

Julie McDowall - Julie was on Dan Snow's podcast History Hit twice in August. The first time talking about Chernobyl and the last week speaking on how the Brtish prepared for nuclear war. Julie's own podcast on how we prepared for nuclear war is called The Atomic Hobo.

Tom Brogan - Tom has an article on Scotland's semi-professional football team in September's issue of Nutmeg magazine.

Hello

August's SAST Show

What We've Been To See

Things to Read

Twitter Writing and Theatre Chat

Things Coming Up We Recommend

Opportunities

What Our Previous Writers Are Doing Now