My play BLACKOUT is being performed!

Produced by Sell A Door Theatre Company with Greenwich Theatre and The Royal Borough of Greenwich, this collection of ten short plays spans every category from online dating to meteor showers, from people trafficking to driverless cars. Meantime is an evening of theatre inspired by the culturally and historically rich, Greenwich, and written by ten young and promising new writers.

The culmination of a year of studying and developing their creative writing skills, Meantime brings together the newly formed shows of these developing playwrights with a company of professional actors, set designer, and director, Roy Alexander Weise, winner of the 2016 James Menzies-Kitchen award for young directors who's version of The Mountaintop is currently on at the Young Vic.

Roy Alexander Weise also had this to say about the program today: "Before becoming a director I was an actor. And then somebody gave me the chance to write a play. Suddenly I realised I had a voice. I realised how politicised and sensitive I was and that my thoughts and opinions mattered. There was nothing more satisfying then hearing audiences laugh and cry with us. This is what we are hoping to do for these brilliant, diverse, exciting first time writers. Give them a voice. Let them know that their narrative is just as important as those of the past, of today and of those yet to come."

Going from OCD to Brexit, set in clubs and classrooms, this eclectic, powerful collection of new work inspired by Greenwich and written by the young writers living there makes up Meantime and represents the cultivation of new and burgeoning Greenwich talent. On the program itself, one participant said, "I have learnt reams about storytelling from the tutors, watching plays, and from the challenge of writing my own. I'm so proud to have finished my first real piece, and I plan for it to be the first of many". These new plays backed by a professional cast and crew are a showcase of the future faces that will be shaping London Theatre.

I felt so proud of all of us who worked on the film. The great thing about our team was that we all got on so well and we were all on the same page about what we wanted to film to be. It was so great to see that all our hard work paid off. It also gave me the confidence to keep on writing, to see the issues about the refugee crisis resonate with people in the room make me realise the power of film. The London Film Festival is such a great platform for so many great filmmakers, it is one of the greatest feelings to to be able say that something I wrote was shown there especially in a year where they were celebrating 'the year of the strong woman'.

My thoughts on the amazing Ken Loach.

The masterclass with Ken Loach was very inspiring. One of the most important things Ken Loach taught us was to ‘find the real thing’. As a director or a writer Ken Loach told us to find the truth in our work. Instead of finding actors to play builders or community workers, he stressed that we should go into the communities and find the real people. He expressed that people who have the real experience are capable of playing the characters in his films. I think this is why Ken Loach casts many non-actors in his films such as Kes and The Angel’s Share. I agree that achieving authencity in your films is not an easy thing to do but if you achieve this you are able to open your film to people who able to trust and identify with your characters.

As a writer I found the way Ken Loach works with writers very inspiring. He said that when you work with a screenwriter it should be a private thing. It should just be the screenwriter and the director working on the script. I found this refreshing because when you work on something and it is passed around it is altered by other people’s judgements until sometimes it becomes something very different from what the director intended. I do think its important to get feedback of your work from people you trust, but also think it’s great when the director and the screenwriter are the only two people working on the script because that way your intended message is not changed.