Flipping the Script

LIVE STREAMED NEW PLAY READING: WHITE PAPER, by Stevie Amuzu – 8^TH SEPTEMBER @ 7PM eventbrite event here, hashtag: #scriptflipping

This is just a quick blog post asking you all (arts folk or no) to get involved in a new writing theatre event next Tuesday (8^th September) at 7pm. You can do so entirely from the comfort of your own home, because Theatre Writing Partnership (TWP), Talawa and The Young Vic are going to be working together to live stream a new reading of a piece of theatre. Watch it, comment on the stream, tweet about it, the hashtag for the event is #scriptflipping.

I have been doing some work with TWP (@TWPGoSee) this summer,  and am really excited to be working with them on a couple of very cool projects aiming to bring the arts world into the digital one. I’m not blogging on behalf of them right now though, this is just me asking you to tune in. Pioneering events like this need uptake, if people don’t participate; arts orgs just become more and more reluctant to be involved.

Theatre and digital tech are the basis of my PhD, I love both worlds, I think theatre plays a massive role in showing us the society we live in, in exploring big political and intimate personal questions, but I don’t think it will be able to continue to do so if it resists involvement in the digital world(s). I think the ethics emerging from the digital world(s) will have a lot to do with changing the way things work IRL (politics, media, collaboration and distribution) and I think the arts need to be at the forefront of these new worlds, pushing and questioning these new ways of creation, proliferation and collaboration.

Live streaming readings provides work in development with a very cheap and instant audience, it provides a new work with feedback from all over the world (breaking down that London-only barrier of the majority of the new theatre writing world), and opens up the writing process. This allows a theatre and a writer to make new work less of a risk, and at the same time engage with potential audiences.

These kind of events are still very new, and experiments more than anything, so that’s why I’m asking you to be one of our early adopters and get involved.

Let people know about the event, or add it to your diary via our Eventbrite page from there you can push it to various social networks, or email your friends.

And after all that: here’s the blurb about the piece being aired!

Talawa presents an exciting development in its ‘Flipping the Script’ readings at the Young Vic. Live streaming of the readings will allow writers across the UK to join in and comment on what we consider to be the best untold Black British stories as Talawa continues to pursue a UK wide discussion around Black British work.

The series has always proved to be a sold out success but has been limited to London audiences.  Now, Talawa wants the writers of Theatre Writing Partnership to share in the rich abundance of plays reaching Talawa’s offices and that would otherwise remain unknown.

The first play, WHITE PAPER, by Stevie Amuzu, is a heart-rending and wickedly funny investigation of generations of a mixed race family and the false loyalties of parentage. Its style is unusual – subtle story telling emerging from a storm of words – and we’d like your comments.  Does this approach represent a new direction in story telling?

Please join us on September 8^th at 7 p.m. at  http://www.livestream.com/talawabroadcasts for live streaming of the event and join in the continuous online chatroom feedback. It’s time to talk to each other.

As soon as I can release the details, I’ll let you know about the other exciting things I’ve been working on, in the meantime, get involved with Flipping the Script. I’ll be blogging, tweeting etc., from TWP in Nottingham (if any local bloggers/twitter folk want to get involved, let me know). See you then.