ANNUAL REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF WRiTEON

1stApril 2015 to 31stMarch 2016

  1. Introduction

Over the past financial year, WRiTEON has continued to provide support and services for writers to develop their writing. We offered a range of opportunities for writers to get plays or scenes written, have their work staged, hear it read in a workshop setting or receive oral feedback on their writing from both, general and expert audience.

  1. Projects

Below is a list of projects we have produced, some of which have started in the previous financial year and only came to its final culmination between April 2015 and March 2016, whilst others were conceived and started in the financial year this report refers to and continued well into the next one. Please note, that the aim of this document is to give WRiTEON members an overview of what was done over the past financial year, so my reports on these projects are kept brief. I also avoided giving personal evaluations as that is not my role.

List of projects completed between 01/04/2015 and 31/03/2016:

  1. Polar Inspiration
  2. Monologues Writing Course
  3. MaD season
  4. Improv Courses and Workshops
  5. Playwriting courses Write That Play and Right for the Stage
  6. Directing Workshops
  7. Monthly Feedback Group Meetings
  8. A Summer and a Winter party
  9. Two Fundraising Quizzes
  10. First Stage season
  11. Butterfly Effect
  12. Capability and Beyond at Wimpole

Polar Inspiration (an evening of short plays staged at the Polar Museum)

WRiTEON’s collaborative project with the Scott Polar Research Institute culminated on 13th April 2015 in the script-in-hand performance of 3 short plays at the Polar Museum’s Lecture Theatre to a sell-out audience of 85 persons, followed by a guided tour of the Museum’s exhibition and a social event where the audience had a chance to give informal feedback to the writers, cast and the production team.

The projects artistic directors and producers were Kim Komljanec and Trish Rawson. Amongst the audience of the show were two National Trust representatives who, on the basis of seeing our production, invited WRiTEON to take part in a collaborative project at National Trust’s Wimpole Estate. More about this below.

Monologues Writing Course …

… was offered to writers prior to the submission deadline for our MaD season. This was a four week course produced by Julia Bolden and led by writer Gemma Langford who held four weekly sessions (Tuesdays, 21st & 28th April, 5th & 12th May 2015),for two groups of 10 writers at Cambridge Junction. The facilitator also gave writers individual feedback on their writing and many of the scripts developed in the workshop were indeed performed in our MaD 2015 season.

MaD (Monologues and Duologues, a season of script in hand performances)

Our 2015 season of Monologoues and Duologues held at the ADC Theatre Bar consisted of 4 evenings (Sundays 5th, 12th, 19th & 26th July2015) of script-in-hand performances. We put on 22 pieces by 19 writers and the shows were sold out on more than one occasion.

We also took the opportunity to showcase 5 of these plays at the Menagerie’s Hotbed festival in Cambridge Junction on Thursday 9th July.

Improv Courses and Workshops

Alongside our writing courses and productions, we also ran improvisation courses for beginners (level 1) and improvers (level 2). Over the twelve months covered by this report, facilitator Melanie Taylor ran five of these eight weeks long courses, 3 for beginners and 2 for improvers, all at Ross Street Community Centre. Beginners’ courses starting dates were 13th April 2015, 5th October 2015 and 18th January 2016and Improvers’ start dates were 29thApril and 14th October 2015. Improvers’ courses also resulted in end-of-course productions which took place on 24th June and 13th December 2015 at the CB2 cafe.

In the summer, on 20th July we also offered a one day improv taster session.

All courses and the taster session were well attended.

Playwriting courses Write That Play and Right for the Stage

Our playwriting course Write That Play, which started in the previous financial year (Tue 17th February), continued through into April 2015 with its final of the eight sessions taking place on Tuesday 14th April 2015.

The course took place at Cambridge Junction, was attended by 12 writers (the maximum capacity) and was led by three facilitators, Julia Bolden, Kim Komljanec and Richard Peoples. As part of the course, we also offered the writers a workshop session of trying out scripts with actors and directors.

Furthermore, three chosen writers were given an opportunity to showcase extracts from their plays at the Junction’s evening of new work Views From the ‘Bridge. We organised rehearsals, cast the plays and assigned directors, and took care of all the production side of this showcase, so on 1st April, WRiTEONshowed three play extracts on the J2 stage of Cambridge Junction.

In the autumn of 2015 we ran another playwriting course, this time called Right for the Stage. This was an 8 sessions long modular course which took place at the Rock Road Library, was run by the same three facilitators mentioned above, each session run by one or two of them. The course was well attended (between 8 and 12 participants each week). The dates of the sessions were Mondays 18th and 25th Jan, 1st, 8th, 22nd and 29th Feb 7th and 14th Mar 2015 and the course resulted in attending writers taking part in some of the other WRiTEON projects, such as Acting Up sessions and Butterfly Effect.

Directing Workshops

… were run by Julia Bolden prior to the two productions seasons, namely on 31st May and 27th September 2015 at ADC Theatre’s Corpus Playroom. Both were well attended (ADC’s venue and website listing helped with this) by a mixture of people new to WRiTEON and those who have directed for us before.

Monthly Feedback Group Meetings

Feedback Group was held once a month up until 17th February 2016, mostly coordinated and hosted by Julia Bolden, though other members have offered their homes to host the meetings, too. Over the last few months of the running of Feedback Group, the coordinator and hosts have found that the meetings were becoming less well attended and that there was not a core of regular attendees but rather a random number of writers and actors showing up each time. This made the group hard to facilitate and its goals of offering consistent and honest feedback harder to achieve. Even the results of the online survey did not help the committee determine how the Feedback group could be made more efficient or serve its purpose better, so having thought about it long and hard, the committee decided to suspend the meetings and replace them with quarterly Acting Up workshops.

(These will still be offering writers a chance to hear their writing read in a safe and encouraging environment but are more structured and allow the facilitators a chance to give more in-depth feedback by asking the writers to submit their scripts in advance.)

The idea of informal feedback evenings for writers remains something WRiTEON may bring back in the future should the need arise.

WRiTEON’sWinter party

… took place on 10th January 2016 and was… fun!

Some faces new and old attended, so this was one of the ways forward to recruit new writers, actors and/or directors as well as give existing ones a chance to socialize.

WRiTEON would like to thank the hostsCarolineand Andrew Shepherd for opening their homeand welcoming WRiTEON’s members and supporters at this event.

Two Fundraising Quizzes

The committee has been discussing the idea of developing a programme where longer plays could be developed by writers but this idea was always met with concerns about the costs of such a programme. With this in mind, two fundraising quiz nights were held on 9th of May at St. Augustine’s church Hall and on 27th November 2015 at St. Philip’s School. Both nights were successful in raising funds and providing a fun social evening. A big thank you goes specifically to Richard Peoples for organizing and co-hosting these, as well as all the committee members and other WRiTEON members for supporting these evenings in various capacities. The group of improvisers who provided entertainment in the intervals deserve a special mention and a thank you here.

If or when the need to raise more funds in order to deliver a longer plays development programme arises, WRiTEON may put on further fund-raising evenings like these.

First Stage (season of short plays performed script in hand)

The First Stage season ran on Sundays 25th October, 8th & 22nd November & 6th December 2015. There were two submission deadlines prior to the season, allowing writers to resubmit a rewrite of a previously rejected script. Likewise, Its artistic director and main coordinator was Richard McNally. During the season we put on script-in-hand productions of 14 short plays by 13 writers. The audience were asked to give written feedback and a discussion was held at the end of each evening. Shows were well attended.

Butterfly Effect

This was a collaborative writing project conceived and started in the financial year 2015/16. The preparation stage started in December 2015 and the initial writing workshop was held on 6th February at Ross Street Community centre by facilitators Richard McNally and Kim Komljanec. The workshop was attended by 25 writers who all submitted one or more scenes out of which the project facilitators selected 10 that were included in the script. The writers were given feedback and mentoring support by Kim Komljanec as well as two table/staged readings until the play was completed and ready for rehearsals with director Richard McNally.

The play was later (April 2016 onwards) rehearsed, fully staged and performed at the ADC Theatre’s Corpus Playroom over a two week run (9 nights in total) with one director, one dramaturg, , 2 producers, 2 assistant producers, a cast of 9 actors, 2 techies and a team of front of house volunteers.

The project received extremely positive responses in the press and with the audience and was recorded by Cambridge TV (recording to be used for promotional purposes of further WRiTEON projects).

The play script was also published in a paperback format and is being sold through the WRiTEON’s website.

Capability and Beyond at Wimpole

This was a collaborative project between WRiTEON and the National Trust who invited WRiTEON to produce two evenings of original drama inspired by the life and work of Capability Brown. The project preparation started in the summer of 2015 and the initial event was held on 6th September 2015 at Wimpole Estate’s Old Laundry where facilitators Gemma Eglinton (historian) and Julia Bolden (writing mentor) offered the attending writers a workshop to start their writing process. Later, the two facilitators joined by another writing mentor (Kim Komljanec) all offered feedback to the writers on their first and/or second drafts. A staged read-through of the early drafts followed on 11th October 2015 at Wimpole and another set of feedback was given to the writers following this event. On 28th February 2016 a second read.through of more advanced drafts was held at Ross Street Community centre and further feedback followed to help writers finish their final drafts of their short plays, ready to be cast and rehearsed later in the year (May and June 2016).

(The 9 short plays written by 9 writers were rehearsed and fully staged with live music at Wimpole’s Old Restaurant on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th June, each night followed by a Q&A with the writers and cast members present. Both nights were sold out and the plays were received well with the audience and in the press.)

  1. Membership Count

The number of paid-up members of WRiTEON was exactly the same at the beginning and the end of the financial year this report refers to, that is 68. The membership take up varied through the year with increases in the months of April (when reminders to renew membership were sent out to members via e-mail), August /September (prior to the beginning of Capability and Beyond project) as well as in January 2016 (prior to the start of Butterfly Effect).

Of course, these numbers only refer to paid-up members whilst the number of supporters and participants is much much bigger. Our newsletter is currently (September 2016) being sent to 679 subscribers (648 in July 2015), we have a large pool of actors, directors, producers, techies and other creatives who have not necessarily paid membership but have taken an active role in various projects we put on in the past and/or are running regularly.

  1. Committee Membership

The long-standing chairperson Julia Bolden announced her resignation in November 2015 and stepped down in late February 2016 when Kim Komljanec agreed to take her place. Kim has been Acting Chair since and has yet to be officially confirmed in her position by the AGM.

Julia remains an active member, helping with the running and delivering projects in various roles, creative and administrative for which we are all immensely grateful, just like we are for all the work she has done for WRiTEON in the years she was its Chair.

WRiTEON’s committee currently (September 2016) consists of 8 members, some of whom have got specific titles and roles, others pick up whatever needs to get done. They are:

Richard Peoples (helps with running of projects, publicity design and distribution)

Richard McNally (Publicity co-ordinator, Facebook and Website content manager)

Trish Rawson (helps with running of projects, with admin and often organisers FOH volunteers)

Leigh Chambers (usually takes minutes)

James Stedman (until recently our Improv Liaison)

David Monksfield (deputy treasurer)

Izzy Rees (Treasurer, taken over from Mary in January 2016)

Kim Komljanec (Acting Chair and Newsletter Editor)

We also get a lot of support from some of our members, specifically Richard Latham, who is in charge of our PayPal Account, manages membership register and maintains our website.

  1. Year ahead

At the time of writing this report, we are well into the next financial year, so it makes sense to say that after the successful completion of Butterfly Effect and Capability and Beyond projects, we are currently running quarterly workshops for writers called Acting Up, we are about to launch our new collaborative project with the National trust at Wimpole Estate, we are planning a workshop for actors and are preparing for the First Stage season, another playwriting course and other projects and ideas which are still in development.

And last, but not least, I would like to say thank you to everyone who is helping out with WRiTEON’s projects, from committee members to directors and actors, improvisers, workshop facilitators, techies, producers, website managers, front of house volunteers, costumes’ and props’ designers as well as everyone who comes to see our shows and supports us in that way. So many give away their time, skills, expert knowledge and work for free just to make our projects happen. None of what we do would be possible without them. And, of course, a thank you also goes to the writers, without whom and their courage to write there would be no point in us existing.

Kim Komljanec,

acting chair of WRiTEON,

September 2016.

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