Peter Tinniswood Award, 2007
For plays broadcast during 2006; presented Thursday 18 Oct 2007.
pictures from Imison and Tinniswood awards 2007
The Tinniswood Award of £1,500 was jointly presented to:
Not Talking by Mike Bartlett, BBC Radio Drama, R3
A powerful, contemporary drama that both shocks and edifies. The author cleverly weaves together
dysfunctional characters and diverging timelines to create a compelling narrative where two different
generations of characters seek a dubious and at times dangerous consolation in “not talking”.
Repeat: Radio 3, Saturday December 29 2007
To Be A Pilgrim by Rachel Joyce
A radio play whose deceptive simplicity conceals a rich, complex emotional tapestry. A man goes out to
post a letter, but feels compelled to carry on walking. What follows is a radio pilgrimage that
surprises and empowers both central characters and listeners alike.
Will be repeated on R4. Date to be confirmed.
ABOUT THE WRITERS
Mike Bartlett (not to be confused with Michael Bartlett, author of many radio plays in the
1980s) is currently writing a new play for R4 and his five part series The Family Man has recently been
broadcast on Woman’s Hour. Theatrical productions include Artifacts which won the Old Vic New Voices
Award 2006, and My Child which was recently performed at the Royal Court. He is now writing The Love
Contract for the Royal Court Main House.
Rachel Joyce has written extensively for radio. Her most recent plays include Feather (R4),
Quintessence (R4) and In the Wind (R3). Rachel is currently adapting Henry James’ The Portrait of a
Lady for R4’s Classic Series and other adaptations include the highly acclaimed The Professor by
Charlotte Brontë (Woman’s Hour, R4). Her short television film Rockabye Baby was made by Channel 4
as part of the Dogma series and Rachel is working on a new drama for television. Before writing she
worked as an actress playing lead roles at the RSC and RNT.
The Tinniswood Award honours the best original radio drama script broadcast during 2006.
Shortlisted:
Pearse Elliott: Last Suppers
Richard Lumsden: Man in the Moon
Mike Bartlett: Not Talking
Thomas Crowe: The Internet Wants a Chat
Rachel Joyce: To Be A Pilgrim
Marcy Kahan: Twenty Cigarettes
The prize of £1,500
is donated by the ALCS and judges are Gordon House (Chairman), Jan Etherington and Lynne Truss.
The presentation of this award, by Leslie Phillips, took place on the evening of 18 October at the
British Academy, London. Plays will be rebroadcast on BBC Radio 3,
4 and 7 and will be available from the BBC website 7 days on-demand.
Information sent by Jo Hodder, Society of Authors - thanks, Jo.
NOTES
NOT TALKING....2006
By Mike Bartlett, R3.
By creating a fractured twenty-first century 'family', who tell us what they cannot tell the world and each other, the play tackles the broad themes of when to fight, protest, talk and when to remain silent.
James was a conscientious objector during the Second World War. Sixty years later he discovers his wife took quiet revenge for the affair he had at that time. Mark is a young soldier about to go to Iraq who meets Amanda, a fellow soldier, at a party at his barracks. The violence that occurs that night haunts them both.
Mike Bartlett is currently writing a new play for R4 and his five part series The Family Man has recently been broadcast on Woman's Hour.
Theatrical productions include Artifacts which won the Old Vic New Voices Award 2006, and My Child which was recently performed at the Royal Court. He is now writing The Love Contract for the Royal Court Main House as well as participating in the prestigious Pearson Playwrights Scheme.
THE INTERNET WANTS A CHAT
by Thomas Crowe (World Service)
As the internet becomes conscious there are those in the real world who are not happy. Air Vice Marshal Brooke forcibly recruits two IT experts, Frances Rassell and de'Lillon Hoyle, to help contain and eradicate Binge- someone who wakes up in the virtual world, goes for a trip down the datastream, and makes some radical changes as he witnesses the best and the worst of the internet. When Binge tries to interact with the real world, by attempting to befriend two people from a chatroom, he realises he's incompatible. Lonely and sad, he goes back to bed, comfort eats and turns himself off.
A play about the futility, loneliness and potential dangers of the virtual world.
Thomas Crowe's The Internet Wants A Chat was broadcast on the BBC World Service. His other radio plays include The Last of Their Species Tell The Scariest Stories (R7) and 'The China Play' included in The Seven
Wonders of The Divided World (R3).
Thomas is a literary adviser at the Gate Theatre and has also written, acted and directed for theatre. Professional productions include Photos of Religion and the critically acclaimed Yørgjin Oxo - The Man (The Latchmere); and readings of his plays Bilston Service Station By Night (Royal Court), The Laugh (Riverside Studios) and The Corridor (Paines Plough).
LAST SUPPERS....2006
By Pearse Elliott, r3.
Jonah Toomb, a famous chef, is on Death Row convicted of murder. Like many before him, Jonah Toomb has strayed spectacularly off the straight and narrow and washed up on the Row. Everything in his life has now gone: wife and daughter, celebrated restaurants, successful career, nothing is left... except maybe... his ability to cook. A Last Supper? Jonah vows to ensure that on the night before their execution each of the convicts will have one divine culinary experience. Bit by bit, one small chink of humanity creeps into that most forbidding of environments, Death Row.
Pearse Elliott won the BBC Young Playwright of the Year Award for radio drama in 1996 and since then has continued to be broadcast by R3 and R4.
BBC NI Drama produced his television drama, Pulling Moves (BBC 3). Pearce wrote the feature films Man About Dog, The Mighty Celt and Shrooms. He is currently working on a screenplay adaptation of Last Suppers for BBC films and a new TV series Hang the DJ (RTE).
TO BE A PILGRIM
By Rachel Joyce, R4.
Since retiring, Harold has not moved from his chair. Then out of the blue he receives a letter from his old secretary who is dying of cancer. Stirred,
Harold sends Queenie a card. "Have faith," he writes; "though in what I do not know. Yours, Harold Fry. To the
amusement of his wife Maureen, he sets off for the post box in a pair of walking boots. Arriving at the end of the street, before he has had time to think, he is walking all two hundred miles to Queenie.
But is Harold's trust in his ability to cure Queenie really enough? Is there any longer such a thing
as faith? And how does his wife fit in with this new Harold? Harold discovers that it is only in feeling his way
through distance that he becomes reconnected with the world. But nothing can reconcile him to what he realises
at Queenie's bedside. Except, possibly, Maureen...
With Anton Rodgers as Harold, Anna Massey as Maureen, and Niamh Cusack as Queenie. Producer
Tracey Neale.
Rachel Joyce has written extensively for radio. Her most recent plays
include Feather (R4), Quintessence (R4) and In the Wind (R3). Rachel is
currently adapting Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady for R4's Classic Series. He has adapted The Professor by
Charlotte Brontë (Woman's Hour, R4).
Her short television film Rockabye Baby was made by Channel 4 as part of the Dogma series and Rachel is working on a new drama for television.
Before writing she worked as an actress playing lead roles at the RSC and RNT, including the award-winning Fuenteovejuna.
TWENTY CIGARETTES....2006
By Marcy Kahan. 18.08.06. Comic play, 55m, about a guy whose girlfriend will not marry
him until he gives up smoking. With Anton Lesser.
.......BBC publicity:
...in the psychoanalyst’s chair he must name the 20 most
significant cigarettes in his life. "I would rather not
discuss my mother", he says of the person who gave him the first
one, an occasion she paid him attention. "Now we’re getting
somewhere", comes the reply.
Marcy Kahan's comic play finds Oscar in the therapist's chair. To help him give up the evil weed and marry his girlfriend, Oscar must describe the twenty most important cigarettes in his life - and we are taken on a journey back through his formative years and the decades that shaped him.
From the freedom of the sixties to the conservative eighties, Oscar, we
discover, has never been able to hold down a relationship or a career; he has only ever been faithful to one thing - his cigarettes. As we watch the death of liberalism, Oscar contemplates his own mortality. The therapy does not work, but when Suki tells him she's pregnant, Oscar takes one last long drag on his cigarette and settles for the future.
Marcy Kahan has written numerous adaptations, episodes for Westway and over twenty original plays for R4, R3 and the World Service including The Uncertainty Principle, which was commissioned by BBC World Service to mark the millennium, and the Sony Award-winning Everybody Comes to Schicklgruber's.
Marcy's television film Antonia & Jane (BBC) secured a theatrical release and won the Chicago Film Festival's Gold Plaque Award.
Theatrical work includes the Perrier Award-winning Intimate Memoirs of an Irish Taxidermist (Donmar) and the stage version of When Harry Met Sally (Theatre Royal, Haymarket). Marcy is currently participating in the 2007 Jerwood opera-writing programme in Aldeburgh.
MAN IN THE MOON
By Richard Lumsden, R4. Verse drama, with Tom Courtenay.
Morris Cookson has been happily driving a bus through Derbyshire all his working life. But when another driver falls ill, he agrees to take some
pensioners on their annual weekend holiday to Scarborough. Whilst sampling the delights of ice cream on the beach and playing the penny arcades with the lovely Esther, who is accompanying her elderly mother, Morris recalls his previous visit as a small boy in 1969, when Neil Armstong was walking on the moon and his parents were in the process of splitting up.
Back in his village, haunted by the ghosts of his past, Morris takes a
midnight stroll across the moors, and attempts to come to terms with the recent tragic events that brought his blossoming relationship with Esther to an end.
Richard Lumsden has written three plays for R4: the Imison Award shortlisted John Dodd Gets Taken For A Ride, Good Place For Fishing and Man In The Moon.
Richard co-wrote the television drama series Wonderful You for ITV. His theatre plays include We Could Be Heroes, Skeletons and most recently The Fall & Rise of Lenny Smallman at the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford, which will be produced at the Arts Theatre, London later this year. As an actor Richard has worked in TV, film and theatre. Recent TV appearances include Nathan in the Emmy Award-winning Sugar Rush and The Catherine Tate Show.
Most of this information sent by the Tinniswood Award organizer, Jo Hodder, of the Society of Authors. Thanks, Jo.....ND.
