Saturday Shorts 3 at The Bristol Folk House

The place to be this Saturday 9th June at 7.45pm is The Folk House on Park Street, Bristol watching Saturday Shorts 3. Tucked away behind the Children's Hospice shop and Nomad Travel (if you’re walking up the hill and you reach the Spar, you’ve gone too far!) you will find a haven of creativity and this Saturday it will be the venue for a showing of 6 new short plays.

The 6 plays have been selected from over 200 entries and will be produced as script-in-hand performances, directed by Pameli Benham and Duncan Bonner. If you’ve never been to a script-in-hand performance and aren’t sure what one is, the plays are performed with costume and props, but the actors maintain the script in their hand as they perform. It may sound distracting if you have never watched one, but when I am in the audience I forget the actors have scripts, they just become part of the action.

It’s a brilliant opportunity to watch new work which may not otherwise have the opportunity to be performed, or before it’s picked up for full performance. It also provides feedback for the writers, who can see how an audience responds to their work and may make alterations based on the reaction.

The actor folk for Saturday Shorts 3: (top row) Alan Coveney, Jason Bailey, Me - Annette Chown, (bottom row) Duncan Bonner, Marie Clifford, Paul Currier

I performed in last year’s Saturday Shorts and I had a great time so I’m really looking forward to this Saturday. The plays selected for 2012 are as follows (the descriptions are from the Bristol Folk House website http://www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/whatson.php):

'Our Space' by John Yates - A bizarre pair tell us of the life they lead entirely within the boundaries of their own home.

'The Philosopher Barber' by Belinda Dixon - A moving comic monologue about rites of passage, the power of words, and a nice, neat short back and sides.

'Welvis' by Stephen Rhys Gage - A down-at-heel entertainment agency turns out to have a more sinister side.

'Tescoville' by Katherine Mitchell - A tense comedy in which a man is held hostage by his ex-partner who is seeking the child support money.

'Joe. Morag. And an Urn' by Andrzej Wawrowski - A touching comedy in which an estranged couple scatter the ashes of the adult education tutor who brought them together.

'The Hunt' by Alan Harris - A strange and atmospheric tale in which a young man rescues his sister from a life as a hound.

Duncan preparing to be The Philosopher Barber

I will be performing in ‘Tescoville’ and ‘The Hunt’, and at the time of writing this, I know as much about them as you do, but from their descriptions, they sound great, so I cannot wait until Saturday!

Tickets are £6 and available from the Bristol Folk House (T: 0117 926 2987)

http://www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/whatson.php