Actor Awareness: Scratch Nights

For two years now Actor Awareness has been presenting new writing nights with set themes tackling a wide spectrum of issues covering equality and diversity. This includes class, race, gender, mental health, LGBT and more. This ensures a wide range of topics are discussed and we are sourcing important, topical and socially relevant stories. When selecting the scripts we source plays that don’t stereotype or discriminate allowing artists to break away from stereotypical roles and castings.

From these scratch nights we pay the creatives involved Equity Minimum, as on the fringe circuit this is very rare. We also only advertise our casting calls via social media, therefore people do not have to subscribe to fee paying sites that exclude a wide range of people. This creates a more accessible route into the industry and we often give people their first credits. We are keen for new talent emerging in the industry to not be excluded due to financial constraints with opportunities such as this.

Actor Awareness also plays a strategic and crucial role in supporting, guiding and mentoring artists with their work.

Supported plays/productions

As a result of these scratch nights, Actor Awareness has helped support many new pieces of work - extended from the 15 minutes to full length productions – which have gone on to perform in the professional sector.

Some of these include:

‘The Staffroom’ by Michelle Payne, Theatre N16/Queens Hornchurch and Edinburgh 2017

‘Speci-Man’ by Jayne Woodhouse. Canal café and The Fatsoma, Guildford 2017

‘The Monologues of a Tired Nurse’ by Stephanie Silver.. Edinburgh 2016/Barons Court Theatre 2017/ Wandsworth and Camden Fringe 2017.

‘Our Big Love Story’ by Stephanie Silver. Next March 2018, 3 Week run at The Hope Theatre

‘Birth of a Nation’ by Dave House. SlamX 2016/Theatre N16 2016

‘Worsooz’ by Catherine kay Barons Court theatre 2017, our 1st published play

‘Come Die With Me’ by Vicky Connerty. The Vaults 2017/ Barons Court 2017

‘C’est La Vie’ by Stephanie Silver. Barons Court 2017/TheatreN16 2017/ The play won open submissions script Australia March 2017, opening to 4-star reviews.

New Writing Festival

Actor Awareness has also presented two new writing festivals at Theatre N16 in 2016 and Barons Court Theatre in 2017 and we are aiming to present a third next year. The festivals took 15 minute pieces chosen from our scratch nights and then each writer was given a month to prepare a one hour show. This is a great learning curve for actors to become proactive drivers of their own careers and knowledge about how to mount a production. Our festivals run over one week with two one hour shows each evening. We invite industry professionals to be present and all companies receive 100% of box office takings.