Still mildly high after Thursday night’s recording!On arrival at the venue, I was whisked away to meet the cast, Belinda and Orlando, plus other actors Jilly Bond and Tomos James, also director James Barry, everybody full of nice things about the plays. Food had been provided but I was too light-headed to be hungry.
Time to relax and chat to fellow winning scriptwriters Ben White and Georgina Pitts (Gillian Palmer away at sea), nice, funny people, I can only wish them well. We had to do some more interviews, both recorded and live with Louise Peters, plus a brief Facebook Live video. We were finally led into the auditorium for the performance at 6:20.
The plays had all been rehearsed and recorded earlier in the day: these recordings plus the live versions would be used for later tweaking/broadcast. Louisa ran the whole show, aided by James Barry.
Ben White’s ‘The Family Way’ first, and good fun too. A simple premise, based on Ben’s own life story: a father with tickets to see Southampton play Man United in the cup final at Wembley… except that his pregnant wife is due to give birth on the same day.
Georgina Pitt and Gillian Palmer’s ‘Searching’ had a looser structure, with two old friends determined to have fun during a trip to the Isle of Wight.
I had to stood up and introduced ‘Sky Pilots’, although I sounded a little on the quiet side (according to the video on Twitter). Not as many laughs as the other 2, most of the laughs coming in the middle third. Still, people seemed to like it, Paul Marchbank and Sarah Sullivan (both from Southampton Solent University) very complimentary.
I was reluctant to leave and break the spell. Now the wait to hear what they sound like on radio…
To be continued…
Stephen Connolly Writer 
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