Pens in Pubs: The Story continues

FEEDBACK FROM THE PENS IN PUBS MEETING, 10TH JUNE @ KINGS ARMS

Six people attended the meeting, (one sent apologies and several were on holiday or had other commitments). Because of the numbers, we did not make too many concrete decisions on how to move forward. Brian, Peter, Pippa, Barbara and Faith, who are not really performance writers, agreed that the benefits of being in the group would be to share work, to learn from each other, to hone our skills, and to work towards deadlines (e.g. competitions) to focus our minds. Most also wanted to earn money from their writing. Gillian, the only ‘true’ performance writer in attendance, wanted inspiration as she seeks more opportunities for her work.

DECISIONS MADE: To meet on the 2nd and 4th Monday in the month, starting at 7.30pm, not 7pm.

Next Meeting: Monday 24th June @ Kings Arms, 7.30pm start.

FUTURE VENUE: All in attendance travelled a fair distance (some 20 miles) to the Kings Arms, and we will be researching pubs in and around Congresbury as possible venues moving forward.

Last but not least, a writing challenge/some homework (not compulsory): 150 words on LOST?. Could be a poem, a story idea not fleshed out, a piece of flash fiction or a complete short story? N.B. Lost is the subject for entries to the North Somerset Short Story Competition (1,500 words maximum, deadline 31st August). If something else inspires you, fine, bring that in.

Pens in Pubs 13 May

Tonight was the last of our 4 writing sessions, here at the King’s Arms in Easton in Gordano. Last week I couldn’t attend the session because my steel pan band were playing at the Redland Green Fair (we’re called Pan Sonic). On that Monday night I had a bad case of FOMA (= fear of missing out).

I did miss out.

I gathered, from ear wigging snippets of conversation throughout this evening, that I missed a great exercise where you create a character from the outside in. Writing on a (badly drawn) outline of a body, the writers described a piece of clothing, an accessories or a hair-do to create a part of a character. Then they passed the picture around the table. Using these styles, props and tics they wrote a monologue about these characters. As I said, I wasn’t there…a bad case of FOMA indeed.

I also missed a new member joining our group. Tonight we had 13 writers attending. We have never had the same collection of writers on any one night, but most people have attended at least one session. Some people have attended most sessions. I’m sure there is a brilliant formula (or statistic) for this. All I know is that the feedback has been excellent, the sessions have been inspirational. And we all love David Lane.

Back to tonight. The evening was divided into two sections.

In the first section David offered us a catalogue of top tips on how best to give helpful and constructive feed back, without too much collateral damage. He did this by asking us some pertinent questions, which included thinking about our attitude as writer’s to our work, then our attitude as respondent’s (readers) to the work, and finally our attitude as mediators to the work. He made us think about the relationship between these roles too (e.g. the writer to the respondent, the respondent to the mediator, the mediator to the writer etc). After much discussion, he suggested using a mediator in a writing group to chair the feed back session; this enabled it to be constructive. Eventually he showed us a diagram, which represented of all these relationships, with accompanying notes. Another writing group compiled it.

And then we made our own.

We went on to discuss ways in which this writing group could continue, without him chairing the proceedings, but with the support of Theatre Orchard, if necessary.

Becky Chapman, the producer of The Theatre Orchard, led the second half of the session. She told us about The Theatre Orchard’s community based arts projects in North Somerset. Her wish was to find and encourage creative and performing artists in the area, hence her idea of setting up these writing sessions. Also, she explained the importance of using local pubs for the venue. Pubs are in threat of closure, and yet they are an important public meeting place. She asked the writers how they wanted to proceed from this point onwards, and in what way did they envisage The Theatre Orchard supporting them.

It was agreed that a fortnightly meeting here at The King’s Arms would be appropriate. Becky awaits further instruction as to how best to support this group….

So the final session was very different from all the other sessions. We didn’t write. But in a way it felt right, we had to discuss the future and think about How To Be. These writers need to support each other and to carry on writing.

This writing group has to find its own feet.

This writing group has found its own feet.

Emma London

Pens in Pubs is a new initiative from The Theatre Orchard as part of our project to Landscape the Arts in North Somerset. We want to find out where the writers are in North Somerset, support the development of their work and find ways to share their creativity with new audiences in the region. Pens in Pubs will culminate with a rehearsed reading of new work on Monday 20th May 7pm at The Kings Arms Easter-in-Gordano BS20 0PS

Pens in Pubs Monday 29 April

Monday was number two of Theatre Orchard’s four writing sessions, here at the King’s Arms in Easton in Gordano. Mostly the same writers turned up, a few couldn’t make it. A few were a tad late, but eventually we had a total of 12.

David spent time laying white paper across all the tables (a table cloth?) for later use….

The theme tonight was ‘Leaving Things Out & Letting Audiences In’. Allowing the brain to join the dots. Firstly, we constructed a narrative, which made sense by making great leaps of the imagination.

We wrote 10 novels in 10 minutes.

This is how we did it. David asked us to imagine a book. It is unread. What’s it like on the outside? Where’s it from?

We wrote a short sentence describing this book.

We then wrote the first 3 sentences of the book.

We then wrote 3 sentences from a third of the way through the book.

We drew an illustration from three quarters of the way through the book.

We then wrote the last sentence of the book.

Lastly, we gave our book a title.

The 10 condensed novels all made sense, had a story, a purpose, some conflict. They had beginnings, middles and ends. In other words they sounded like extracts from real novels, because the brain fills in the gaps.

For our next exercise we were given a ‘Sharpie’ coloured pen (never heard of them before) and told to write whatever came to our minds on the tablecloth paper. We were to honour every new thought even they were not full sentences. To inspire us David put on two bits of music. After writing for five minutes we were encouraged to read everyone else’s musings, and then we jotted down the bits we liked.

My memory is rubbish, but I remembered the moths in a jar, and the shard of ice in a heart. From an envelope we picked out a title for our short story, this would include all the images from the tablecloth paper. But first we were meant to think for five minutes, before any writing started. Later a few writers read out their pieces. David commented on the similarities of the images, another writer commented on the differences.

The final task was to write a scene from a play. The 10 instructions take 60 seconds each = 10 minutes. This bookend scene started with a character entering the room, and ended with a character leaving. This is known as a French scene.

Here is a list of the instructions (and you can try this at home, folks, it really works!)

1. Describe a room where the source of light is NOT a window.

2. Describe an object, small enough to pick up.

3. Describe a character in the room in 3 words. Describe what they’re doing in 2 words.

4. A second character enters, describe them in 3 words. Make as different as possible to first character.

5. Character 2 asks a question.

6. Character 1 responds.

7. Character 2 now does something to the object and speaks.

8. Character 1 responds.

9. Character 2 says something and exits in some way.

10. Character 1 says final comment.

A few of us read out our scenes, and they all worked. With little time and no explanation, the audience catches up. Our imaginations are limitless.

The light source instantly gives it a setting. One writer wrote about a brightly lit fish tank, which I thought was brilliant. The object has value and is useful for a focus. Making the second character different gives a contrast, and opening with a question introduces tension. Straight away we wonder whether the demand will be met.

The night ended too quickly; a lot of useful tips and some great writing. Tonight was the 10 Minute Night. 10 minute novels and 10 minute scenes.

Emma London 

Pens In Pubs 30 April 2013

This spring the marriage of pubs and writing seems to be popular – there’s clearly something in the air (alongside the hail, sleet, Arctic winds and cannibal football players).

A week ago, we had the inaugural meeting of the Pens in Pubs writing group at the King’s Arms in Easton-in-Gordano.

The wonderful Emma London has already given a detailed and tantalising précis of the activities we got up to, so this blog is stepping back with the wide-angle lens and considering two broader thoughts about the project, like some sort of weird contemplative camera.

 The first thought is about pubs.

Here at The Theatre Orchard we’ve already eulogised about pubs as a place of stories and tales: of the unexpected rubbing shoulders with the comfortingly familiar. The group itself was, of course, born on the back of the fantastic production In Cider Story – designed specifically for pub venues.

Perhaps by chance, three other pubs have come to my attention this week, and they’re all something to do with writing and telling stories.

On BBC Radio 4’s Front Row last Friday (listen to the programme here from 20 minutes in) they asked a couple of theatrical bods to talk about the challenge of putting an Irish pub on stage, as they discussed two different productions currently running in London.

The first is playwright Conor McPherson’s 1997 play The Weir at the Donmar Warehouse and the second is Once (and the third is…no let’s not start that). Playwright Enda Walsh and director John Tiffany are responsible for Once, adapting the 2006 Irish musical film of the same name.

Director of The Weir Josie Rourke talked about performances of the show so far, noticing the stories the characters tell (and it is a big storytelling piece – worth a read) and the atmosphere of the pub itself ‘draws in audiences’, commenting that ‘you can literally see people moving forward.’

In Once, at the beginning of the show the audience is invited on stage to share the pub with the performers, playing instruments and getting whipped into a frenzy of music-making.

Declan Bennett, who stars in Once, notes that it’s a play ‘about community, about people finding each other and sharing their love of music’ and the production tries to reflect that, inviting spectators onto a spit-and-sawdust floor already sticky with beer.

What struck me was that both productions promised to create a wholly involving and quite physical effect on their audiences, but in very different ways.

In one we bash about on stage with performers, joining a temporary community of music and noise; in the other, we are drawn in psychologically by the sheer craft of the stories – by carefully-selected words chosen to spin a gripping tale.

In both cases though, the act of listening (and watching) is transformed into a distinctly physical experience.

The final pub environment is that of playwright David Greig and Director Wils Wilson’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, which began when both were sent packing by the National Theatre of Scotland up to an old pub in Kelso to research possible material for a new play. The production is currently touring internationally to pubs (and other spaces) inviting audiences (as the Royal Court describes it) ‘to indulge in an evening of supernatural storytelling, music and theatre inspired by the Border Ballads, Robert Burns and the poems of Robert Service’.

With Greig’s show, the performance space often is a pub – or becomes one, temporarily – and we, as the audience, are then temporarily cast as the pub’s clientele (although, most likely, if we’re in the pub anyway we already are). We have a part!

So somewhere in the midst of all three of these productions, the real and the imaginary become blended together. We’re in two places at once.

(I find this ridiculously brilliant as a concept and the possibilities make me slightly giddy).

What does all this mean? It means through the power of words alone, our little pub in Easton-in-Gordano has the potential to become a time-travelling arena (think Quantum Leap but with West Country accents) where people are taken on a live journey – a lived journey, really, where you move, think, feel and join in – without having to go anywhere.

 The second (don’t worry folks, much shorter) thought is about writing for live performance.

This is a big leap for some of our writers. It’s a very big deal when somebody else (often more than one person) is going to decide on how to say and shape your words, particularly if you’re used to writing prose.

You suddenly lose control. You cannot dictate anything, it seems. Writers exploring theatre for the first time unanimously tend to feel aggrieved when the answer to ‘how can I ensure it sounds exactly how I imagined it?’ is ‘sorry, but you just can’t’.

In last Saturday’s Guardian Review section, Nick Hytner, the outgoing Artistic Director of the National Theatre was reflecting on his experience of directing Shakespeare.

His opening words should be stapled inside every aspiring theatre writers’ notebook:

‘A novel can tell you everything you want to know about what it’s trying to say, but plays are by definition incomplete. They are instructions for performance, like musical scores, and they need players to become music.’

To create a play, you have to be willing to play with somebody or something else.

The audience. Other actors. The space. The director. A whole creative team.

And they each want something to play with – the writing.

Over time you come to learn that, for those using your words, ‘to play’ does not mean ‘to destroy, corrupt and de-rail beyond recognition’ – but – it’s going to be the best test your writing can ever have.

Really, if it’s beyond recognition but your words are all still there, it probably means the words aren’t doing their job properly yet. Hytner suggests:

 ‘The playwright writes from the premise that the dots can’t be joined on the page, and writes with the confidence of an actor who knows that, if they are any good, his colleagues will do the rest of the job for him.’

Here at the King’s Arms, the colleagues in this first stage are all the writers sat around the table, and sat on our new e-group. 

We’re asking them to play (and play nicely!) with one another’s writing, allowing us to see how to write clearer dots, so that those who encounter it can discover the joins that will ultimately surprise, delight and intrigue even the writer who dotted them down in the first place.

And that West Country Quantum Leap idea is copyrighted, by the way. From today.

Pens in Pubs is a new initiative from The Theatre Orchard as part of our project to Landscape the Arts in North Somerset. We want to find out where the writers are in North Somerset, support the development of their work and find ways to share their creativity with new audiences in the region. Pens in Pubs will culminate with a rehearsed reading of new work on Monday 20th May 7pm at The Kings Arms Easter-in-Gordano BS20 0PS

Pens in Pubs Monday 22 April

Tonight was the first of a series of four writing workshops. These sessions will culminate in local actors performing work written by this group.

We arranged the room in such a way that it would be easy to fit everyone in, depending on how many writers would turn up. This was an unknown quantity. Under the eclectic mix of different sized tables, we discovered the beautiful wooden skittle alley: a secret world lurking beneath painted plywood covers.

At this point shouts from the main bar indicated a football match was under way. Would the noise detract, or add to, the creative atmosphere in the room? Meanwhile, David tacked to the wall 3 sheets of A1 paper….

In the end 14 writers appeared. All of them had, with one exception, come to one of our taster writing sessions.

To start the evening David explained that the outcome of these sessions was to produce a piece of work for the actors to perform on May 20th here at the King’s Arms. He challenged everyone to try and write in a different way from their normal style or in a different genre. We discussed the group dynamic, and everyone stuck a post-it note (hooray for post-it notes) onto 2 large pieces of paper stating what they felt they ‘Can’ do in these sessions, and also what they felt they ‘Can’t’ do. In this way David can ascertain the hopes and fears of the group and prepare the sessions accordingly.

Next, using the third large piece of paper (and a fat pen), David listed the differences between prose, poems and theatre writing, with a large circle in the middle for where they cross over. Then he sent the writers off to explore the pub, inside and out, to think about the performance and to ask themselves the question “What if….”

Here is a selection of some of them:

1. What if the bar was full of drunks swearing.

2. What if TV hadn’t been invented.

3. What if Big Brother was watching us.

4. What if the four men in the bar drinking cider were murderers.

This opened up a discussion about how we could use all the different spaces, and in what ways, for the final performance.

Time for a group poem. David wrote the word ‘Somerset’ on a piece of paper, and we all came up with two words that we associate with that word. He wrote them down creating a word-hoard. Next we all wrote a line using two words from the word-hoard (not your own). We then read them out one by one around the circle to produce our first group poem about Somerset. It worked. The repetition of the phrase “Mendip mist” brilliantly linked the poem together. Read the transcription…

Finally, David spoke about 8 different ways to think about ‘place’. He explained the differences between topography, architecture, geography, location, site and environment in terms of writing. Then he spoke about the dynamic of a space; where is the risk/threat? Lastly, he asked what is the metaphor for the space?

With all these questions still mulling in our heads, the session was over. For homework David suggested we set ourselves our own writing target, and spend half an hour working towards it.

I realised the loud football enthusiasts had not infringed on the evening, in fact they had enhanced the experience of writing in a pub. They were the pub.

I am intrigued to know a) How many of these 14 will come back next week. b) How many will do the homework. c) What creative gems will be produced for our performance on 20th May?

Somerset

Somerset

A Group Poem

by Participants of The Theatre Orchard’s Inaugural Writers’ Meeting

The Mendip mist rises on Beacon Batch

Over the Levels

Slate grey skies tell rain

Cheese and cider under the apple tree

On Bleadon Hill watching cricket

(Under a tree on Bleadon Hill

They say an old pirate is buried still)

The memories of Somerset are deep in my heart

Oh I wish

In the Mendip mist

Mr Whicher supping more cider night after bloody night

Decisions based on cider in the town hall

The early season slate grey sky in Somerset

Favours the county cricket bowlers

Mendip mist settles on the snoozing bumpkins

Under the apple tree

The Mendip mist: the mist of Avalon

Enfolds the cider apples as they grow

The Mendip mist sat down heavily on the Levels

The pirates sat and sipped from a jug of Mendip mist

Ingrid’s eyeliner was slate grey

And her mind was a Mendip mist

Treetops peered across the whiteness

Greeting the church clock towers as if brothers in arms

Mendip mist in Somerset

The Levels

Level as my mood.

Pens in Pubs Wednesday 17 April

If you happened to see a lost city-dwelling-type wandering the rural highways between Wraxall and Nailsea on Wednesday night, clutching a smart phone in desperation and cursing the lack of 3G coverage (Paper maps? What are they?), that was probably me. Walking in the wrong direction, away from where I was meant to be, because I’d got off at the wrong bus stop and set my map upside down.

Big thanks then to Fiona from The Theatre Orchard who recognised the back of my head (probably glinting off her headlights) near a field on the Clevedon Road, fifteen minutes before we were due to start. She nobly held up a queue of traffic whilst I bundled myself – Dukes of Hazzard style – into the front seat of her car, red-faced and out-of-breath and apologising profusely. Me, not Fiona.

It was the most grateful I’d been for the free pint all week.

Pens in Pubs is about finding unknown voices to tell unheard stories. It’s about identifying those writers who are hiding in the nooks and crannies of North Somerset, brim-full of tales and just waiting for the signal to let the literary floodgates open. As the title would suggest, we were meant to just meet in pubs – though apparently I seemed convinced that I’d find one trawling the Clevedon Road at sundown (I did meet a nice farmer though, whose name was Clive. Maybe he was a writer. I forgot to ask).

With the brilliant Emma London and Fiona Matthews by my side, I’ve visited four pubs in the last six days (hic) and delivered four completely different taster workshops in four completely different venues.

From the back-room skittle alley snug at Easton-in-Gordano’s King’s Arms (where we read a sit-com about cider), to the lively Friday night chatter of Nailsea’s Ring o’ Bells (where we heard of a lady near Weston whose house and wardrobe are permanently frozen in the fashion of the 1960s) – then on to the newly-refurbished bar at the Clevedon Community Centre (where the brilliant ‘Plot Ninjas’ exercise was suggested – thanks Aaron) and finally the unique Aladdin’s cave of hunting guns, roulette boards, stag’s heads and fairy lights adorning the walls of The Old Barn in Wraxall (where we heard Brighton Pavilions have an argument with the pond outside its front entrance – no, really).

What’s been fascinating to me – along with the dazzling turnout of 31 writers from all walks of life, bringing with them experience in short stories, poetry, journalism, landscape distillation (apologies to Peter if I got that wrong), sit-com writing, pantomimes and novels – has been how far each workshop has been influenced by the surroundings and the participants.

Anybody who’s been to my workshops in the past is likely to have heard the phrase ‘I really wanted to do this exercise, but…’ I ran out of time. Or you’re all too interesting. Or I talked for too long. Or we got side-tracked by this fascinating question over here under the chair. I over-plan, let’s face it.

So, here, I under-planned. I just stuffed a folder full of workshop materials (post-it notes – check; Sharpies – check; image cards – check; exciting-looking envelopes of instructions – check) and took ‘the swan dive’, as the excellent playwright and blogger Katherine Mitchell would say. I trusted that the right exercises would arrive for the right space with the right people. And I think it worked.

A huge turnout at Clevedon inspired a collaborative writing exercise, using revealing facts from everybody’s lives to create completely new characters: amalgams of those who were present that night. The cornucopia of oddities in The Old Barn inspired an exercise in using objects to create poems. A twenty-five minute interrogation of structure arrived in the King’s Arms, unplanned and (I hope) fruitful to share, but only in response to some beautiful and succinctly-structured material a couple of writers had brought with them. And in contrast, at our very first stop, in the hustle and bustle of the main bar at the Ring o’ Bells at the end of a working week we simply told stories to one another. Less than half the evening was actually spent writing words down.

On Monday 20^th May, four local actors will be reading some work out at the King’s Arms. The work will be written by whoever would like to turn up at the King’s Arms between 7pm – 9pm for the next four Mondays. For one session, or all of them. Up to you.

We have no agenda here. We’ve got actors, but you don’t have to write a play. We’ve got a pub, but you don’t have to write a piece set in a pub. We’ve got each other, so you could co-write something, or you could write alone. A poem. A short-story. A song. Something we’ve never seen before.

We might set the performance formally in one space: politely quietly, reverently.

We might use all the spaces in the pub: anarchic, fluid, simultaneous storytelling. Go to the loo, get told a story.

Or we could write one huge piece that everybody has contributed to: a chain story. A chain poem?

Maybe we’ll get the audience to write something in the moment – to contribute their ideas to fill in a pre-ordained structure – real live writing.

Or maybe not.

The options are endless.

Writers’ groups are funny things. There’s plenty of them about, but at worst they can be either impenetrable dictatorships or a flimsy excuse for casual chit-chat with very little actual writing going on. I don’t know what ours will be like. Somewhere in the middle, I hope. But, like everything above, it depends on who’s there on the night. And I know whatever we’ll get up to has already been hugely informed by the generosity, laughter, bravery and grace of those writers who I’ve met so far. Thank you for that.

I’ll see some of you there: pint in one hand, pen in the other.

And if you come across a balding man in a grey jacket next Monday evening, wandering the streets of Nailsea looking panicked, please pick him up and deposit him at the pub. He’s quite harmless.

Pens in Pubs Tuesday 16 April

 Tonight our third session was in the Jubilee Bar at Clevedon community Centre, which was another great venue. It’s a large and spacious bar, and the sun shone down on us (literally) once again. We were the only ones there.

11 people turned up tonight, including 2 who had come to previous evenings. We had another pantomime writer, and a few from various writing groups. One person was looking to set up a new group. The table looked suitable professional with a wodge of loose-leaf paper taking up centre stage, 2 lumps of post-it notes (which were finally used tonight) and a pile of pens. These North Somerset writers, I noted, are not great drinkers. People mostly drank tap water. Cheap dates!

This session differed again from the two previous ones. We chatted very little, tonight we just wrote and wrote and wrote.

As soon as we were all settled, David set us a task to write anything at all for exactly three minutes. He emphasised the point was the quantity, not the quality of the writing. Unfortunately, I had my blogger hat on and realised I was thinking about writing this blog rather than going with the exercise. Will we all end up so intent on documenting our lives that we forget to actually live them? On a positive note, it has made writing the blog today a breeze. Back to the evening. Looking around I saw vast sheets full writing. It is incredible how many words one can produce in a very short amount of time.

We moved swiftly onto another 3 minute exercise, this time responding to the word ‘Pubs’. Again a lot of words were written in the allotted three minutes. I realised two random things; firstly, only one of us is left-handed and secondly, that I like writing in writing workshops. Then finally we had to write for three minutes about what sounds we could hear. This was quite a tricky request as it suddenly went incredibly quiet, but everyone battled on nevertheless.

After we recovered from this writing marathon, David explained that these different tasks exercised different parts of the brain: the subconscious, the abstract and the senses. He didn’t mention the hand muscles. We read out one line from our own writing, a line that particularly appealed to us, and put altogether it sounded like a poem.

The next two exercises focussed on creating characters. David fired out a lot of questions, and without thinking too much about it, we wrote down answers. In this way we built up a fully formed character with a back-story, a personality, some friends, a job, an aim, a desire and even what they have in their pockets. In this way these imaginary characters came to life. It is so interesting to hear how other writers have interpreted David’s questions.

I was very excited because we used the post-it notes. David has been promising to use them since we started these sessions. Using these aforementioned squares of yellow, we wrote down the name and age of the person we first kissed, and placed them on the table in a row. Next we wrote what wanted to be when we were children and put these down in a row, but in a different column to jumble them up. Then we wrote an object that was precious to us and why. Next a song we loved and why. Finally, where would we like our ashes to be to scattered. We had five rows and twelve columns. We each took a column and had to write a character using these random bits of information. It produced another array of strange and wonderful characters.

My conclusion after tonight is that Theatre Orchard have found their local North Somerset writers. They are in Nailsea, Easton in Gordano and Clevedon having a pint (with a pen).

Pens in Pubs is a new initiative from The Theatre Orchard as part of our project to Landscape the Arts in North Somerset. We want to find out where the writers are in North Somerset, support the development of their work and find ways to share their creativity with new audiences in the region. Pens in Pubs will culminate with a rehearsed reading of new work on Monday 20th May 7pm at The Kings Arms Easter-in-Gordano BS20 0PS

 Emma London is a writer, theatre professional and Workshop co ordinator for The Theatre Orchard.

Pens in Pubs Monday 15 April

The second of our taster writing sessions. Would anyone turn up tonight? We needn’t have worried, because we had 7 new writers, plus 2 writers who had come to our previous workshop. It was strangely comforting to see their familiar faces.

The setting was the skittle alley at the King’s Arms in Easton in Gordano. We are lucky that this is going to be our base for the next 5 Mondays. It has a great feel about it, spacious but intimate at the same time. It has it’s own private bar, from which you can see the main bar, so you’re quiet but not excluded from the rest of the pub. The slightly old fashioned feel (because of the wooden skittle run) is counter balanced by the bright light shining through the many windows. There is also a feeling of spring in the air.

We all introduced ourselves. Amongst us we had a pantomime writer, a nature and landscape writer, an insurance salesman and an aspiring scriptwriter. Everybody has a story. I loved the one about the actress in The Sound of Music who insisted on wearing ALL the nun outfits. This session people shared their own bits of writing, which they’d brought along. This was in response to the woman at Friday’s session who’d wanted to share her poetry. The outcome was we only did one writing exercise.

David insisted on 2 rules for these readings:

1. To the reader: Never apologise for your work, just read it.

2. To everyone else: Pick out one thing you liked about the piece and share that.

Personally I find it difficult to listen to prose being read out loud (for me it is meant for private consumption), even by the best performers and quite honestly most of us aren’t performers. Having said that it was intriguing to hear the short stories and the snippets from longer pieces. And the story that ended with the Typhoo tea was a triumph. I felt the script reading worked better (that is meant to be heard) with people taking different roles.

A discussion on structure followed the readings. It was interesting to listen to David’s explanation about the difference between story, plot and narrative. This is because his focus, when he’s writing, is structure. Mine is always character lead, which means I desperately need more structure. Most writers, it seems, have their own unique obsession and this influences their decision about what they want to write (be it prose, poetry, plays etc). After the session David worried he’d spoken too much, but I found him fascinating and helpful.

Finally, to round up the evening we did a writing exercise focussing on our own neighbourhood. Firstly we wrote a list of five things that are near where we live, then five textures and, finally, five emotions.  We then wrote a stanza using these lists. We had to use a specific amount of words on each line: 1357531. Having strict rules for a task always forces writers to become very inventive. Everyone managed to write a succinct, and often amusing, poem which we all shared. These were fun to hear.

It was an interesting session and so different from the last one. On Friday we told stories and did more writing exercises. Tonight we mainly listened to people read out their work. I preferred Friday’s session.

Tomorrow we go to Clevedon.

Pens in Pubs is a new initiative from The Theatre Orchard as part of our project to Landscape the Arts in North Somerset. We want to find out where the writers are in North Somerset, support the development of their work and find ways to share their creativity with new audiences in the region. Pens in Pubs will culminate with a rehearsed reading of new work on Monday 20th May 7pm at The Kings Arms Easter-in-Gordano BS20 0PS

 Emma London is a writer, theatre professional and Workshop co ordinator for The Theatre Orchard.

Pens in Pubs – Friday 12 April

Written by Emma London

Tonight was the first taster writing session of Pens in Pubs presented by The Theatre Orchard in partnership with Theatre Writing South West. We had no idea how many would turn up, or maybe nobody at all….

I got to the Ring O Bells in Nailsea at about 6pm; checked we had a table reserved in the corner, and then set up a tab, so I could buy everyone a drink for when they arrived. At 6.30 David Lane appeared. What a nice man. We immediately discovered we knew a few people in common.

At 5 to 7 there was no sign of anyone. Where were all the North Somerset budding writers? I went around all the patrons in the pub asking if they were, by any chance, waiting for the writing workshop. Alas, they all looked confused.

7 o’clock on the dot 4 people came towards us. “Pens in pubs?” they asked. Yes, yes, we replied.

Amongst them were a couple; he was the writer, she came to support him. She joined in valiantly until her sore hand prevented her from writing any more. There were also two people who were the only members of a writing group (do two people equal a group? Discuss.) Another chap joined us. He wanted a cup of tea. Finally, half an hour later, our sixth member of the group arrived. She was a storyteller and a writer.

We all introduced ourselves. Mostly it was a short biography, some of us added a story, or a snippet of information. Everyone was, obviously, interested in writing, some of us into poetry, some into short stories, and some travel writers.

David asked us to tell a story, one we have told many times before. The story you don’t have to think about because you know it so well. Most of us began “this is how I met…”

We heard a wonderful tale about a rampant cockerel and one about a group of women writers only interested in writing erotica.

By 8pm we all felt relaxed enough to start some writing exercises.

David read out the beginning of a sentence, leaving us to finish it off however we wanted. He did this 6 times and then we read out two of our favourite ones. Every one had written such different and varied things. Sometimes the stricter the boundaries the more the imagination is freed.

The next task was writing a duologue between two people, starting each sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. Again amazing conversations came out of that task, for example one focussed on sleep and one on exotic food.

On to haikus. David gave out pictures and we wrote haikus (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables) around the image. Having to be so concise really focuses the brain.

Finally, our last task was to write a monologue. Taking as a starting point an image from someone else’s story. David gave us specific instructions as to tense and point of view. I wrote a first person monologue in the past tense. Again a huge array of ideas came out.

Suddenly it was 9pm and the session was over.

One of our writers had wanted to share her poetry. At the next session we’ll remember to give time and space for people to share their work.

We’re hoping some/all of our writers from tonight’s session will come to further taster sessions next week

Pens in Pubs is a new initiative from The Theatre Orchard as part of our project to Landscape the Arts in North Somerset. We want to find out where the writers are in North Somerset, support the development of their work and find ways to share their creativity with new audiences in the region. Pens in Pubs will culminate with a rehearsed reading of new work on Monday 20th May 7pm at The Kings Arms Easter-in-Gordano BS20 0PS

 Emma London is a writer, theatre professional and Workshop co ordinator for The Theatre Orchard.