My Radio Play Square With The House is being broadcast on Adam Crowther’s BBC Upload show this week!

The broadcast will be at the following times:
Thursday, 21st August on BBC Radio Gloucestershire & BBC Radio Wiltshire from 6pm and from 7pm on BBC Radio Bristol & BBC Radio Somerset.
Saturday, 23rd August on BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Radio Wiltshire, BBC Radio Bristol and BBC Radio Somerset between 6-8pm. You can listen on your radio or via the free BBC Sounds app.

Not only can you hear the play again, but I will also be interviewed by Adam.

In Square With The House brother and sister Jack & Ali arrive at the lake to scatter the ashes of their late father. Having forgotten to ask permission, they must dodge the park staff, confront a crisis in their relationship as well as dealing with their feelings towards their late, estranged father. The play was written/recorded as part of my Virtual Residency at Lake 32 in the Cotswold Water Park, arranged by Dialect, the Stroud-based development network offering learning and publication opportunities to writers in rural and edgeland places. It was wonderful program to get involved with and a lot of fun making it work.

Thanks to Katy Sorensen and Adrian McPherson (of Cirencester Theatre Company) for doing such a good job.

Another radio play The Destiny of Shoes gets another lease of life when it’s broadcast this Saturday evening on BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Radio Wiltshire, BBC Radio Bristol and BBC Radio Somerset between 6-8pm. You can listen on your radio or via the free BBC Sounds app.

Grame Bruce Fletcher plays both of a pair of shoes undergoing an existential crisis!

So, it’s all over. Read throughs, rehearsals, rewrites, planning… and finally the performance. Was it the gleaming theatrical perfection I had imagined beforehand? No, but my director and cast (all volunteers) put it over well and with genuine passion. Was I afterwards bombarded by offers from theatre directors and agents? No. I specifically emailed Wireless Theatre Company (to whom I pitched the idea back in January) but none of the strangers appeared to be them. But lots of people turned up and they all seemed to enjoy it and – just as importantly – to get what it was supposed to be about. I sensed much surprise at what the play was about, at how I had chosen to put it over.

Now that all the stress and anxiety of the process is over and done with, I can put the script aside for a while before I decide what to do with it next. Some genuinely interesting and useful things came out of the read-throughs and rehearsals, not all of which could be actioned in time for the performance. A number of moments in the script basically just didn’t work, and these had to be changed so that the whole narrative make sense. Lines I added for the minor characters began throwing up ideas about Fathers and Sons and I would like to develop these further.

One moment that sticks out during the final rehearsal was the sudden sense of being totally redundant, that the whole thing was now out of my hands, that I was no longer needed in order for the production to go ahead: I had served my purpose.

My short monologue PATER EST TESTUDO will be performed by Scratch Theatre at the Greenbank Pub, Easton, Bristol on Tuesday, 10th June. It’s one of a series, each featuring a character interacting with a gravestone. Previous monologues have been performed at the Bolton, Octagon and the Cockpit, London. The title translates as Father is a tortoise, a reference to my legendary Latin teacher Mrs Galloway who once tried to make us sing Christmas carols… in Latin.

I have always loved writing monologues, inspired by Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. I love the way the characters put themselves across, the stories emerging organically along the way.

For five years Gillian has secretly visited cemeteries, in search of graves with her missing daughter’s birthday in the forlorn hope of maintaining some kind of connection…

Yet more exciting news: my radio play Bread will be broadcast on Adam Crowther’s Upload slot on the following times:
Thursday (13th March 2025) BBC Radio Gloucestershire & BBC Radio Wiltshire from 6pm
Saturday (15th March 2025) BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Radio Wiltshire, BBC Radio Bristol and BBC Radio Somerset between 6-8pm. You can listen on your radio or via the free BBC Sounds app.

Bread is an everyday story of marriage, murder and fresh bread. It was recorded for (and broadcast on) Corinium Radio in 2015 so it’s great that it’s getting another shot in the limelight.

The cast are Jenny Carr, Grame Bruce Fletcher and Ian Kubiak,not forgetting the late, great Chloe of Midnight Storytellers.

Very exciting news, my radio play ‘Ten Famous People from Swindon’ is to be broadcast on the BBC. Thursday 6th February 2025 on BBC Gloucestershire & BBC Wiltshire from 6pm.

Saturday 8th February 2025 on BBC Gloucestershire, BBC Wiltshire, BBC Bristol and BBC Somerset between 6-8pm.

Ten Famous People from Swindon is a ’road movie for the radio’. Dad is driving son Carl to dad’s house in Swindon for a scheduled weekend. Both have things on their minds: Carl has something he doesn’t want to talk about while his dad has something he has to mention but can’t. Over the course of the journey, can they begin to build bridges and repair their relationship?

Thanks to Stanley Kayley and Andrew Duncan for their excellent performances.

What if you could have a fixed term marriage, what if such a thing existed? Just how easy would it be for two people to go their separate ways after five years together? And what would happen if one of them had second thoughts about ending it?

Aluminium is a 10 minute play telling the story of Lucy and Michael on the day their five year, fixed term marriage comes to an end. Michael reveals something he really should have mentioned sooner, and Lucy discovers that there’s a lot more to breaking up than she ever expected.

Aluminium will be performed as a rehearsed reading by scriptLab/Evolve at the Theatre Royal, Bath as part of the Elevate Festival on 21st March 2023 at 7pm.

After all these months walking around Lake 32 – audio recorder in hand – it’s become something of a second home, a calm and refreshing place to spend some time. It’s not always quiet – until you start recording sound you don’t always appreciate how noisy our world is. The sounds of aircraft, dredging machinery and passing cars frequently override the ambient sounds of water, wind and birdsong. But the happier sounds are there too, the swimmers and kayakers chatting as they go, the people by the cafe, the triathlon runners being encouraged as they approach the finishing line. Laughter carries surprisingly well across water!

The biggest surprise is how quiet the water is. In much of my recordings, it’s not always obvious they were made at a lake at all; listening back to them they could have been made almost anywhere in the countryside. In some ways, Lake 32 is almost too peaceful for a storyteller. Conflict-free situations do not make for good drama, so over the year I had to create my own.
Something Purple was about a father and son who can’t get to the lake due to COVID lockdown restrictions. Square with the House was about a brother and sister forced to visit the lake as executors to scatter their estranged father’s ashes.
Lucy is Leaving is more ambitious, a story of the Lake’s past, present and future. Conflict between two men compelled to cooperate, finding in the lake a neutral space in which they can begin to put their differences aside. Conflict between two ancient wise women coming to terms with the scars caused by the Lake’s creation. Conflict arising from a mother’s concern for her daughter’s future, especially its connection to the Lake.
All three threads are linked by the Well Dressing, created by the mysterious Lucy whom we never meet, but to whom there is clearly more than meets the eye.

I have really enjoyed my residency and as it draws to a close, I would like to thank everybody who answered questions from an odd bloke bearing a fluffy microphone, especially Dan, Jo and Paloma. It’s a very special place, run by very special people.
Thanks also to Juliette of Dialect for inviting me to take part, for encouraging me throughout the process, for connecting me with producer Kirstie Davies who’s feedback was invaluable.
Special thanks also to Cirencester Theatre Company who performed in all 3 of my plays, and who helped make each piece as good as it could be.
I never got as much done as I had initially hoped, partly due to COVID, partly to issues at work, but I have enjoyed every moment I spent there and I will be back.