Judith Adams : Playwright & Dramatist : Home Page

SOUTH RIDING

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

AFFILIATED PLAYWRIGHT - UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD

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.

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OUT OF AFRICA

2010/11

Dramatisation of the novel by Karen Blixen

BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Serial

Produced/directed by Gaynor Macfarlane

THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS

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)

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VARIANCE

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

THE LOVES OF LADY PURPLE

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,

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DANCE WORKSHOPS / CORTES ISLAND / CANADA

July 12 - 22

Based at HOLLYHOCK Arts and Retreat Centre (BC CANADA)

Leaders:

Margie Gillis: Dancing from the Inside Out

Tedd Robinson: Functional Movement

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STONES WORKSHOP / FRANCE

April 8th-17th

"Stones have been known to move and trees to speak" (Macbeth)

Physical Training, Ensemble and Macbeth

Leader:

John Britton

Au Brana Cultural Centre, Pauilhac, South of France

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BURDALANE ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE PROJECT

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.

John Britton

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LADY PURPLE WORKSHOP PHOTOGRAPHS

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

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