Everyword festival moves to new venue
The Everyman may be coming down brick by brick but its spirit lives on, as its new writing festival Everyword goes ahead this year at sister theatre the Playhouse. For anyone aspiring to be a writer, wanting to see a new play in development or wanting to work with the UK’s leading practitioners, Everyword 2011 is a two-week whirlwind of events, readings, discussions, debates and workshops. Internationally acclaimed new writing company nabokov return to the Everyword festival with a work in progress presentation of Liverpool playwright Michael McLean’s new play Grotesque Chaos. Paul McGann takes on this one man show which will be an unflinching look at one of Liverpool’s most controversial sons: Derek Hatton. Expect an exhilarating clash of live action and animation in the Playhouse Studio on November 17 and 18. This year’s festival will -- in case you've missed all the hubub thus far -- coincide with the 100th birthday of the Playhouse on November 11. With this in mind, critically acclaimed High Hearted Theatre have been commissioned to create a piece to be performed on the day to celebrate the centenary of the Playhouse Repertory Company. Set in different spaces around the building, this performance will be unique to the Playhouse and its history. The piece will feature new work by Liverpool Playwrights Chloe Moss (The Way Home), Helen Blakeman (The Morris) and Jeff Young (Rag and Bone – Everyman Unbound). Everyword will also feature First Words, a creative project with tutti frutti productions, Dukes Theatre Lancaster and Sheffield Theatres, which nurtures and develops writers to create theatre for children aged 3-7 years. Six writers, including Liverpool’s Laurence Wilson (Blackberry Trout Face) and Esther Wilson (Ten Tiny Toes), will take over the building for one special day and invite children to come along and open their imaginations for the creation of new theatre especially for them. The Everyman and Playhouse’s current writers on attachment will all present their current projects during the festival. There will be rehearsed readings of Keith Saha’s Cornershop Homesick Blues, The Deafening Silence by Ella Carmen Greenhill and Scarlett and the Silent Disco by Colette Kane. Former Everyman Young Writer Kellie Smith will also present a rehearsed reading of her latest play The Moment You Stop. Throughout the two-week festival there will be workshops during the day to inform and inspire aspiring writers. Leading voices from the industry will lead these events including Punchdrunk, BBC Writersroom, Soho Theatre & Writers’ Centre and writers such as Kaite O’Reilly and Mike Bartlett. Everyword has seen the first readings of many new plays that have progressed to full-scale productions, which, in the past year alone, include Tiny Volcanoes, Dead Heavy Fantastic, Endz and this season’s The Swallowing Dark.
