NE playwright in summer of readings of new plays in Scarborough

Published: 13 June 2017
Reporter: Peter Lathan

Alison Carr Credit: Ian Forsyth

Newcastle playwright Alison Carr will feature in a summer of readings of new plays at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, which starts next month. The plays in the series will be read by actors from the theatre’s summer season shows and will offer a glimpse into the future of potential new productions.

Carr’s play Caterpillar will be the first to be presented, on 3 July. In the play, which was recently shortlisted for the Theatre503 Playwriting Award, amateur aviators descend on a seaside town to launch themselves into the sea.

Claire, meanwhile, is looking after her mum following a stroke. She didn’t want to come back to the town she grew up in and now she’s putting off going home. Simon, a guest at their B&B, is here to fly in tribute to his late girlfriend.

Her first full-length play Iris was performed at Live Theatre in April 2016 and won her the Writer of the Year award in the Journal Culture Awards in May of this year.

Other productions include The Soaking of Vera Shrimp which won the Live Theatre 40th Anniversary Bursary in 2013 and then transferred to the Edinburgh Fringe; Remains, part of Bolton Octagon's Reveal Festival this year; Fat Alice at the Traverse in Edinburgh both as an Edinburgh Fringe production and as part of the A Play, A Pie and A Pint series, and Noise, also at the Traverse, where she is one of the Traverse Fifty, a group of fifty emergent playwrights commissioned by the theatre to create 500 word plays for its 50th anniversary.

The play will be read by Sarah Pearman, Gurjeet Singh and Heather Stoney.

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