Dirty Protest

On the hunt for new plays

2010-05-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-10T02:54:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T04:53:00.000-07:00

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

A selection of photos from the Dirty Protest press shoot. The brilliant Jon Poutney was behind the lens

2008-06-30T05:17:00.000-07:00

Countdown to Latitude

2008-06-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

We're getting closer to Latitude

The webste is up and running, check it out at www.dirtyprotesttheatre.co.uk

Plus we are pretty much sorted on all of the plays, Tim is just finalising the last play with the writers who submitted entries. So thank you so much for all your plays.

We are taking press shots tomorrow with three of our fantastic actors, Lee Mengo, Aled Pugh and Mared Swain (the lovely Dirty Mared). If you are in Cardiff don't worry if you see a girl in a bikini and a man in a shell suit posing in the park. It's all for Dirty Protest

Very lazy of us.....

2008-06-08T04:20:00.000-07:00

Well, we've been a bit rubbish with blogging.

Since we last posted we have held two brilliant Dirty Protest nights.
We took over the Sherman - our first time in an official theatre space. We were invited as part of the Springboard new writing festival. It was the first time we performed fully staged plays and this is where our new stage manager Ellie Carter really became indispensable. She is obsessed with pegs, washing lines, fairy lights and camouflage. It the best DIY way to make a set. We also welcomed actress/writer/director Mared Swain fully into the Dirty Protest gang. She directed the very dark play from new writer Sam Bees. True/Fiction Theatre's Matthew Bulgo was behind the helm for Colette Kane's Carnival and our very own Dirty Catrin was in charge of setting Dirty Tim's first play for the company - The Whole Truth.
We're taking Tim's play to Latitude next month, with the second and third part written by two more Welsh writers (names tbc)
The night was packed out, we've been told we were the best selling event of the festival and everyone stayed to party afterwards in the foyer and then onto Buffalo. The bar had made special Dirty Protest cocktails for us - everyone was questioning what the Worthers' Orginal was doing in the bottom of the glass though.

Then on May 29 we took over Ten Feet Tall in Cardiff for Dirty Directors' Protest. Using a play commissioned by London group Drywrite we gave six Welsh directors complete freedom to stage Phil Porter's Repeat. The short plays from Adele Thomas, Mared Swain, Simon Harris, Julie Barclay, Kit Lambert and Gareth Bale couldn't have been any more different. One person fainted - we couldn't work out whether it was because of the heat or the fact that Julie Barclay's play had an interesting interpretation of "something disgusting". Either way, well done Julie.
The venue was packed, with people queuing down the street in the rain 30 minutes before.

But there is no rest for the wicked and we are all ignoring the sunshine and are working on our upcoming performances at Latitude, Wales Millennium Centre and also the Dirty Picnic - to celebrate our first birthday

Today we are making our first official website, which involved giving the brilliant Steve Salter some cups of tea and lunch while he ignores the sunshine and sits quite close to the computer playing with logos and leopard print.

Things we need to do before Latitude Festival

1. Get the plays all finalised. Two down one more to go
2. Pick our actors
3. Take press pictures - which will hopefully involve a wood and some very dirty actors. Watch this space and we will post them up.
4. Ellie has to make costumes, source props and make a kick-off banner. You won't be able to miss us when we hit Latitude
5. Hire a van and make some mix CDs

There's probably more to do. But that's enough for the moment.

Dirty Claire

The Countdown....

2008-03-23T10:42:00.001-07:00

Next month we will be taking our theatre company out of the rather cosy confines of Milgi's Mongolian Yurt and heading into a grown up theatre.

We started this company less than a year ago as we couldn't find any great new/experimental writing in Wales that would appeal to our age group and blooming heck has it grown quickly. I think we thought the first performance was a bit of a coup - it was sold out, we turned people away, we had an award winning writer (Ed Thomas) premiere his first work for four years, another writer Kit Lambert got his play commissioned for a short film and our first time writer got a job out of it. But it's just got bigger and better since then....

Now we're heading out of our cwtchy confines of the Yurt and are going to be putting bums on proper seats at the Sherman Theatre in April. Not that we are getting all stuffy mind - there will be plenty of surprises. And then it is off to Latitude Festival with us to party and put on three plays in the woods.

It's a learning curve for all of us - a writer, a journo and a director - and we are collecting a merry band of experts and friends along the way. So as we learn we'll be blogging as we go. Hope it is interesting and fun.....

Dirty Claire