Writing Apprencticeship Opening

Let's Hear It for Chippy Lane

The best of adjectives are rich in timbre. “Feisty” is a nice one, its meanings divergent on the different sides of the Atlantic. In the USA it is lighter, tending towards touchy, quarrelsome, frisky even. “Full of nervous energy” is kind of right. On this side the meaning leans towards spirit, determination, the ability to bounce back.

Whatever, I like feistiness, because it is good. It is good for organisations and it is good for culture. The last show I reviewed, 2nd May, was broadly complimentary. But the review also said that getting bigger did not necessarily mean better. In fact I preferred a show of eight years back. Patrick Young, instead of taking umbrage, said maybe the point was valid.

In late 2017 Lucid took a production to Gwynedd. It was one of the year's best, but somehow just did not click with the north's best critic, regrettably now retired. Simon Harris, instead of withdrawing into dismay and hurt, entered into online dialogue with his critic. Young and Harris- and they are representative of all the voices that really count in Wales- can do this for a reason- inner conviction. Feisty is as feisty does.

I like Chippy Lane. Whether the full productions are any good, it is up to others. The company has yet to grace a Ceredigion venue. But I was at the scratch nights, March 2019 and February 2018. I like the spirit. I like an artistic director who stands in front of a live packed house and tells real live people, what she is there for and what the company is there for. Whether Chippy Lane will be here in five years' time is anyone's guess. But in 2019 they come with an advantage, at least for us who sit in an audience. They like theatre, they really do.

They are not doing badly. “The grass roots of Welsh performance are irrepressible” is a sentence they like to repeat. It was mine, in 2018, which is nice. But the company has a lot of followers saying good things in different ways. Guardian, Stage, Wales Arts Review, Arts Desk, Exeunt, What’s On Stage, GetTheChance, Arts Scene in Wales, Western Mail is not a bad list to have earned in three years. The Cardiffian took a view: “Rebecca is pioneering opportunities for women writers from Wales to champion their abilities and break through the boundaries and stereotypes of writing they have previously been confined to.”

The full credits for the company have not appeared on this site before. Chippy Lane is made up of Becca Hammond, Jacob Hodgkinson, Sophie Hughes, Andrew David, Sophie Melville, Rhys Warrington, Lucas Pardue. Whenever I view the wayward grip of the establishment, the sogginess, the snobbishness, the lack of ambition I look at this list, and it cheers me up. It cheers me in the same way that “Sinners Club”, “How to Win Against History” and “Sugar Baby” cheer me. And Alan Harris, author of that effervescent last piece, is on board for Chippy Lane's new initiative,

So the announcement: “we are on the lookout for a ‘WRITING APPRENTICE’ to join us on our next theatre project’s R&D process.”

The brief is work in Cardiff, 10am -6pm, 21s-25th October 2019, supporting the R&D process alongside director, dramaturg, producer. Criteria are listed below, submission by July 1st 2019.

author:Adam Somerset

original source:
01 July 2019