On the hunt for new plays

on the hunt for new plays

having trouble getting your play read?
not famous enough for the big guns?
a bit too edgy for the rest?
or just never sent that big idea to anyone?
then fear not. Dirty Protest is here.

If you have a play that needs a little help standing up, and would like to workshop it with professional actors, Dirty Protest can help. We're looking for a full-length play, to produce a staged reading of, along the lines of our last full length staged reading - The Bells of Shoreditch.


We plan to offer 2-3 days workshopping the play before rehearsing, and staging in front of a paying audience. We are looking for a play with more potential than polish, that has minimal staging requirements, with a realistic cast size, and around 1 hour in length.
As ever we operate on a shoe-string.

Send your plays to info@dirtyprotesttheatre.co.uk by 20 June

Tim on going back to the Roundhouse and looking out for the newcomers

Looking forward to the next DP at the Roundhouse, we've got four fantastic writers.
And Joel unearthed a couple of newbie crackers for our last show.
It's strange going to the Roundhouse because almost it's like the most pure distillation of DP, usually when we find a cherrypopper, I might help them with some notes on their play and pass a draft back and forth, but it's quite ad hoc.
As is our nature.
But with the Roundhouse new writing course the first time writers are really well supported, by weekly tuition from Joel and support from each other in the class.
It means that the cherry poppers are really really geared up for the experience rather than being slightly overwhelmed which can happen when we take control of it.
One of our last cherry poppers Melissa Manteghni looks like she might get representation from Cassorotto Ramsay, which is a bit like playing your first game of football and Real Madrid coming along and saying 'fancy a meeting?'.
Roll on Saturday...Dirty Tim

Dirty Protest...back to the Roundhouse

So we've been invited back to the Roundhouse this month and we're hugely excited about it

The theatre have a whole weekend of political themed works aimed at getting young people engaged in the forthcoming election - and we've been asked to get some great writers together and put on a night of plays with the theme of Counted

As always we are delighted by the writers/directors and actors who are willing to give up their time and offer up their talents to take part - and this time is no different

Jack Thorne - whose film Scouting Book for Boys is currently in cinemas and is lined up to pen the Skins film is writing for us
James Graham (Tory Boyz, The Whiskey Taster, new play The Man opens THE MAN at the Finborough on May 25th as part of the theatre's 30th anniversary.)
Ed Hime (Skins)
Atiha Sen Gupta (What Fatima Did?)
plus writers from the Roundhouse's new writing course (As we write hopefully the talented Joel Horwood is giving them some last minute advice about their first plays

In the directing chair will be Dirty Protest's Mared Swain, Drywrite's Vicky Jones

Actors: Alex Beckett, Kezia Burrows, Phoebe Waller Bridge, Richard Taylor and Adam Redmore

Tickets are ONLY £2 and are on sale now from Roundhouse box office. But we're in the Dorfman Hub which is going to be a snug squeeze and a bit like our original yurt nights, so we're trying to tell people to book now.
I hate to turn people aways on the night - and it's always me who gets stuck with that job

So will be back in a few days with some updates from our writers - as I'm aiming to keep this blog updated

Dirty Claire

Dirty Protest and Chloe Morris Presents...Out With the Old

Our first show at the CAI went off with a bang. It was the first time we've re-staged a group of plays so it was a strange experience watching our Welsh cast tackle the plays. Erin, Matthew and Helen did a cracking job although Erin seemed to adopt a 'shuffle and see' technique to keeping her script in order. Matthew, ever the gentleman was poised at every moment to hand her his readily sequenced page. We always have a debate in DP about what the best venue is for our own particular style of presentation. So far we've done a yurt, two nightclubs, a bar, a kebab shop, three theatres and a forest. All of which have been fun in their own right but none of which have been definitive for us. The good things about CAI was that we got to have a stage, which offered much more opportunity for direction, and there was more space for our audience. It wasn't so stuffy like a regular theatre, but it wasn't the intimate 'may I have my knee back' vibe of the yurt. A thumbs up from us but the hunt goes on for that magical venue that ticks all our boxes. Strong set of plays this time - still think Colette Kane's was my favourite though, marvellously performed by all 3.
Looks like we're going back to the Roundhouse in April - but this time in the Hub...watch this space...T