"Judith Adams' script is dense as thick, black treacle but has the lightest of touches, melding myth and poetry with the everyday..." Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
2011/12
New Commission
A West Yorkshire Playhouse project.
South Riding - An English Landscape by Winifred Holtby
published (posthumously) in 1936
Dramatised for ensemble performance by Judith Adams
"I want to do something hard, muscular, compact, very little emotional and then the emotion hammered into style. Metal work, not water colour." Winifred Holtby.
directed by Alex Chisholm
For performance in the Quarry Theatre, 2011/12
The Drama Division, School of Music and Drama, UoH
Affiliated to teach on MA courses within the Department of Theatre, Drama and Performance: Writing for Performance and Ensemble Physical Theatre, Training and Performance.
An AHRC application for a 5 year Fellowship is in progress, to research and evolve new ideas for playwright training and the embodying of text, exploring the practice and pedagogy of contemporary playwrighting (outside the convention of the 'well-made play') in the areas of: dramaturgy (through interrogating my own workshop-based word-creation processes) and psycho-physical training (exploring, with my university colleagues, a new, body-based module for playwright training)
The University supports this exploration, focused around two personal projects with cross-art form content: Lady Purple and Burdalane (see below), through involvement of staff and student personnel, and by allowing use of their studio spaces and facilities wherever possible.
2010/11
Dramatisation of the novel by Karen Blixen
BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Serial
Produced/directed by Gaynor Macfarlane
August 2009
"Judith Adams is the perfect choice to adapt Muriel Spark's sly and tender novel about a group of young women living on little more than hope and euphoria..." Guardian preview
SPARK ADAPTATION FLAMES INTO LIFE *****
Monday, August 17, 2009
".....we have Stellar Quines' masterly Girls Of Slender Means, the result of producer/director Muriel Romanes commissioning the playwright Judith Adams to adapt Spark's slim 1963 book.....this graceful production flows ....the performances are faultless....Spark gave Adams' first draft her blessing; and she has brought the text bitingly alive and as savagely brilliant as ever." Metro, NADINE MCBAY
"Scotland's leading women's theatre company has succeeded in bringing together a fascinating first-ever stage version...in a strong and thought-provoking adaptation by Judith Adams....a powerful and gripping contribution to this year's Festival debate on the idea of enlightenment...." Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman ****
"packed audiences are lapping up Judith Adams' fine adaptation in a poetic, deliquescent production by Muriel Romanes....the mood, and sense of history, is spot on....there's a gallery of outstanding performances led by Maureen Beattie...brilliant newcomer Melody Grove as their poetry-reciting conscience, and Candida Benson as the sexy Selina. A show with a big future, I'd guess." Michael Coveney, WHAT"S ON Stage ****
"Adams's script is beautifully fractured, and Muriel Romanes's production....has a fevered quality that feeds the idea that 'death is just a tick away'" Lyn Gardner, The Guardian ***
NOMINATION for BEST ENSEMBLE at the Festival: The Stage ****
"there is no doubting the clarity of vision..." Oliver Farrimond, Fest.***
Between VE Day and VJ Day, as the war-shaken May of Teck Club collapses in its very own peace-time holocaust, the world loses the last vestiges of its torn and tattered innocence, slips between the sheets with Mammon and goes to the Devil as simply as a beautiful young girl slips into the chiffon folds of a bartered Schiaparelli dress for her night out.
Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive John Updike, New Yorker
Music Hall, Assembly Rooms, George Street box office
box office: 0131 623 3030
www.assemblyfestival.com
6th to 31st Aug 2009, 2.50pm
Producer/director: Muriel Romanes, Stellar Quines Theatre Company
Funded by Scottish Arts Council and Assembly Festival
(MORAL: "It's just a matter of time" Muriel Spark The Girls of Slender Means)
September 23rd - 26th 2009
Inspired by Bach's Goldberg Variations
Text exploration towards performance at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield of MA Ensemble Physical Theatre students, led by John Britton
With Chris Coe
University of Huddersfield
Workshops funded by Arts Council England (Yorkshire), Whitestone Arts (Yorkshire), Fifty-Nine Productions (London/NY) and the University of Huddersfield in January and May 2008.
A team of playwright + video/film designers, dancers, puppeteers, performers and musicians explored the physical and linguistic/aural text of a dramatisation of Angela Carter's The Loves of Lady Purple,
July 12 - 22
Based at HOLLYHOCK Arts and Retreat Centre (BC CANADA)
Leaders:
Margie Gillis: Dancing from the Inside Out
Tedd Robinson: Functional Movement
April 8th-17th
"Stones have been known to move and trees to speak" (Macbeth)
Physical Training, Ensemble and Macbeth
Leader:
Au Brana Cultural Centre, Pauilhac, South of France
The University of Huddersfield has generously agreed to fund a major feasibility study as Stage One of a full-scale professional production of the full performance-based text.
Facilitator and director: John Britton, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance and cracking good at impro and Being Appleton.
May 2008
Local, national and international artists assembled for two workshops hosted by the University of Huddersfield Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance in January and May 2008, for a total of 7 days.
These workshops were funded by Arts Council England (Yorkshire), Whitestone Arts (Yorkshire), Fifty-Nine Productions (London/NY) and the University of Huddersfield
17th April 2008
RADIO CHOICE/PICK OF THE DAY: Times, Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph
...an atmospheric heart-breaker of a play.****
A fictional version of Charlotte Bronte's Brussels experience
BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play
pr. Jonquil Panting
17th April 2008, 2.15pm
CAST:
Rosie Cavaliero/ Laura Molyneux as Charlotte Bronte
Julian Rhind-Tutt as Monsieur Heger
Mark Meadows as Chapelle
David Shaw-Parker as Priest
Anne-Marie Piazza as Mary Taylor and Sophie
Elaine Claxton as Mme Heger and Tabby
Discussion on Bronte Blog