Derry Playhouse Writers Newsletter Vol. 1 - No. 2 April 2001 * 5 - 7 Artillery Street, Derry BT48 6GR * Editor: Margie Bernard We Are Almost One-Year Old! May 3, 2001 marks the anniversary of Derry Playhouse Writers' formation. On that date, one year ago we met for the first time. During this year we have gone from strength to strength. We have met weekly; written and adopted a mission statement and constitution; held our first AGM and elected officers. We have applied for and received our first funding grant (See DPW Showcase Reminder). Our mailing list has grown to over 50 writers who have either participated in one of David Gothard's Master Classes over the last five years and/or attended one of our weekly workshops. We will hold a celebration in May with date, time and place in the next newsletter. DPW Website: Our Website www.derryplayhousewriters.org is in developmental stage but will shortly be on-line. Designed and maintained by Donsplace Multimedia and Video located in Silicon Valley, USA, the website can be viewed in its production stage at www.donsplace.com. Order books from our website! We have a link to Amazon.com on our website and if we order books from this link, DPW will receive up to 15% of each order with the average order generating 5%. Amazon will automatically deposit this percentage in our Bank of Ireland Account whenever it reaches a total of œ10. Also, please recommend titles that will be of interest to our members and we will list these on the site. Congratulations to: Madeline McCully who's poem The Other Place was published in the Sunday Tribune on April 1, 2001. Madeline is also the featured poet in the current edition of Fingerpost Magazine Lena Lyle who was interviewed on the Eamonn Friel's Saturday Afternoon Show BBC Radio Foyle, March 31, 2001. Friel and Lena discussed her childhood memories and writings, in particular her in-process autobiographal novel provisionally entitled Shifting Sands. Bridie Canning was the featured poet in a recent edition of Fingerpost Magazine Aisling Doherty for her new position at Channel 9, the Derry community television station. You can ring her at Ch. 9 at 02871 89900. If calling from the Republic it's 04871 89900. Also, a poem of Aisling's was selected for the Poetry in Motion series sponsored by Yes! Publications, which are displayed on Derry buses. She also participated in the launch of the new series. Patricia Roe Doherty and Jonathan Burgess for their performance in the play, Under the Carpet staged at The Playhouse on March 22-23, 2001. The play was written by Patricia Byrne of Sole Purpose Production and co-directed by her and Dave Duggan co-founders of SPP. We were also introduced to a young actress, Caoimhe Farren, who is worth keeping an eye on. To be included in future newsletters, send us your success stories. Annual Perseverance Pays Award: We must be willing to submit our writings for publication, production, or performance but in so doing we face the possibility of rejection slips. Therefore, to lessen the sting of rejection, DPW has established an annual Perseverance Pays Award which will be given annually to the person who has received the most rejection slips! This will be awarded at our Annual General Membership Meeting which will be held in September 2001. Contests and Competitions: National Poetry Anthology: Accepting three poems of no more than 20 lines and 160 words each. If you want a reply enclose second class stamp with your entry. No entry fee. Deadline 30 June 2001. Up to 200 winners representing different towns in the UK and N. Ireland will be selected. Submit entries to: United Press Ltd. 1 Yorke Street, Burnley BB11 1 HD. Weekly Internet Short Story Contest: Each week a short story will be selected for publication on www.story-tellers.co.uk. The winning entry will be paid œ100, with the annual Best Story receiving œ1,000, plus a œ500 Second Prize and a œ300 Third Prize. On-going entry and entry forms can be downloaded from the above website. The Phillip Good Memorial Prize short story competition closes August 21, 2001 and open to all over 18. This year's judge is Elizabeth Chadwick. Entries, up to 5000 words, accompanied by an entry fee of œ5 per story, should be sent to The Competition Secretary, QWF, PO Box 1768, Rugby CV21 4ZA. Moonshine Prize for Fiction for best short story of up to 2500 words. Closing date is July 31, 2001. Details at www.moonshine-prize.co.uk. Enclose œ5 per story with each entry. These should be sent to: The Moonshine Prize for Fiction 2001, PO Box 353, Chesterfield, S42 6GX. The Chesterfield Film Company's Annual Writer's Film Project (WFP). This competition offers fiction, theatre and film writers the opportunity to begin a career in screen writing. Up to five writers will be chosen to participate and each will receive a $20,000 stipend to cover her or his living expenses. Writers are chosen by competition and are evaluated on the basis of prose and dramatic writing samples. Selected writers form a year-long screen writing workshop using their storytelling skills to begin a career in film The Writer's Film Project originated through Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and is co-sponsored by Paramount Pictures. Entry Fee: $39.50. Deadline: 15 May 2001. For details contact www.chesterfield-co.com. The above is a partial listing. If you know of any other contests we should consider entering, please submit them to DPW. DPW Showcase Reminder As we have reported in the past, DPW has received a grant from the Northern Ireland Arts Council to fund a DPW Showcase at The Playhouse on Thursday 14 June 2001, 8.00pm, co-directed by David Gothard and Ellen Factor. Please submit work(s) you wish considered for inclusion. These may be mailed or left in our mailbox at The Playhouse. We are particularly interested in those of you who wish to present your work as a performance piece. We are also seeking people interested in working on the various tasks involved: stage production, event publicity and producing a publication of featured writings. Expertise sought but for those with no prior experience this will be a great learning opportunity. And, as this will be a collective effort no one person will be unduly burdened. We need your input & help. To volunteer please contact Ellen Factor either by telephone at 028 71 284 984 or via email at efactor@hotmail.com. The success of this, our first DPW venture, depends upon all our efforts and will pave the way for future grants to conduct other projects. Weekly Workshop: Please remember to attend our weekly, lively, informative and instructive workshops. As a reminder we meet every Wednesday from Noon until 4pm. Please come share your work. We are particularly helpful to those of us who want to try out our work-in-progress. For those of you who work come during your lunchtime (bring sandwich) and we will accommodate you on a priority basis. Management Committee: Chair: Ellen Factor 028 71 284 984 Vice-Chair: Vacant Secretary/Treasurer: Margie Bernard 353 776 0001 Ann Keys Colton 028 82 247 404 Bridie Conefry 353 755 1288 Joe Duggan 028 71 360 754 Eugene Floyd 028 82 238 709 Don McCamphill 028 25 638 682 Mentors: David Gothard and Brian Foster. The Vice-Chair position will remain vacant until filled by the Management Committee at its next meeting. Miscellaneous Announcements: The Chancer. The new issue of The Chancer magazine is hot off the press and can be obtained at Context Gallery at The Playhouse. These will also be available at the weekly DPW workshop. This issue features works by several DPW members. One of its founders, Joe Duggan, is also a founding member of DPW. Joe Lucas' play, Once A Man, Twice A Boy, written and performed by himself, will open at the Irish Arts Center in New York City on April 11, 2001 and run until May 13, 2001. Joe met with DPW and discussed script writing when he was here last year for a staging of this play at The Playhouse. Visitors from Afar: Black Sheep Theatre Founder, Dennis Bohr, of Boone, North Carolina (formerly a resident of Kentucky) has been attending our weekly sessions this month. We did a script-in-hand reading of one of his newest in-progress plays. He will be acting in his one-man play The English Whore, under the direction of Mary Anne Maier at The Playhouse on 19 - 21 April 2001 at 8pm. Mary Waters from the Washington, DC area, attended DPW's workshop on 28 March 2001 and we did a script-in-hand reading of the first act of her play, If We Shadows Have Offended. Mary who has been a member of a writers group in the US said she was most impressed by the supportive informality of our group and the variety of written works presented and discussed by those present. Future Workshops David Gothard. We plan to have David with us again in June to conduct one of his inspiring Master Class at The Playhouse. David's Master Classes, under the auspices of EUROCAT over the past five years at The Playhouse, was the spark which ignited the formation of DPW and he is one of our most valued mentors. David doesn't merely teach, he helps us to unfold what we want to write and to write it well. Yabo Yablonsky. He will hold a Master Class for DPW and also direct his play, Jews Without Money, at The Playhouse using local actors in November 2001. Yablonsky has been the director/writer of numerous stage, film, and television productions as well as a novelist and poet. Currently based in Los Angeles, he was awarded the San Geordio Prize at the Venice Film Festival for Jordi which he both wrote and directed. Yablonsky is also a member of the Writer/Director Unit of the Actor's Studio in NYC and LA as well as the New Dramatists Committee, NY City. He will be with us for approximately six to eight weeks in October/November 2001. We are also hoping to bring Barbara Alexander, Agent/Producer and Shirl Hendryx, writer/director, also from Los Angeles, to conduct workshops in their respective fields sometime early in 2002. One of Shirl's current plays, The Last of Jane Austin, has been adapted to film by Disney and is currently in production staring Olymphia Dukakis and Marion Ross. THIS IS YOUR SPACE, HELP US FILL IT.