Hard Places Young Writers’ Project
The ‘Hard Places: Young Writers Project’ began in Mumbai in 2011.
Theatre directors from Tinderbox Alley and the Mercury Theatre ran workshops with emerging young writers in the UK and India. The theatre companies then guided and mentored them to write their own short plays inspired by the themes of Farhad Sorabjee’s ‘Hard Places’, which runs at the Mercury Studio from the 5th -15th September.
Following ongoing dramaturgical development, the scripts were completed in summer 2012. From these scripts, Mustaqeem Khan’s ‘A Place of Wild Roses’ is produced in full by Frequency Theatre. A documentary called ‘Borders’ was also produced, which features our favourite extracts from the plays and collates them with interviews with creatives involved with project to produce a piece of audio theatre.
To read the full story of the project visit www.tinderbox-alley.com
To listen hear either ‘A Place of Wild Roses’ or ‘Borders’, please get in touch with Tinderbox Alley. Descriptions and credits of both productions are included below.
Borders: A Documentary
What are the greatest borders we face in life? Are they physical, or more often emotional or psychological?
In 2011 Tinderbox Alley Theatre Company with representatives from the Mercury Theatre ran writing workshops in Mumbai for young writers. The workshops were inspired by the play ‘Hard Places’ by Farhaad Sorabjee which explores the theme of borders. The young writers were then asked to write scripts using borders as their starting point. The result was a broad and eclectic range of stories. In this audio documentary we have produced extracts of some of the young writers scripts, alongside interviews and insights into the Hard Places project.
I Can’t Go On, written by Divyesh Vijayakar, Directed by Vicki Weitz. Performed by Ricardo Mussi (Shashank) andAndrew Livingstone (Priyesh).
Butterflies of Bricks, written by Ayesha Nair, Directed by David Hanson. Performed by Vicki Weitz (Seera), Alistair Ward(Soldier 3), Jamie Sillitoe (Mason 2), Bethany Sharp (Mason 1) and Eric Bridgewater (Soldier 1).
The Backyard Sale, written by Karan Shetty, Directed by Vicki Weitz. Performed by Alex Willis (Vijay), Richard Bland(Rajeev), Victoria Charles (Tripti), Ben Powell (Harish) and Natalie Songer
Narrated by David Norton, the Interviewer was Rich Chilver.
Featured interviews Farhad Sorabjee, Gari Jones and Ayesha Nair.
A Place of Wild Roses
Written by Mustaqueem Khan.
Directed by Barbara Peirson
Performed by:
Liz Mullen (Narrator); David Garlick (Captain 1), Nicholas Barton-Wines (Jawaan 1), Alistair Ward(Jawaan 2), Robert Price (Captain 2), Thomas Edwards (Operator 1) and Darryl Crawley (Operator 2)
Siachen, the highest battlefield of the world. In the inhospitable mountain no-man’s land between India and Pakistan, a captain and a jawaan (private) drink tea together… not so very far away another captain, and another jawaan do almost exactly the same. The captains from both sides know each other, help each other out, joke together; yet each man knows that at any moment they must expect to be given order to shoot the other.
Written by Mustaqeem Khan, who took part in “Hard Places Young Writers Project”, “A Place of Wild Roses” is a play which explores the borders which we create amongst ourselves, and how easy it is for us to cross them when we choose to.
Produced by Bethany Sharp and Rich Chilver.
