Waiting for your break? (From Stroud News and Journal)

Waiting for your break?

CHELTENHAM'S Everyman theatre, not content with just getting the Gloucestershire Christmas season off to a fine start with its pantomime, has also cooked up a winning scheme to occupy the wintry nights of any budding writers in the county.

In a brand new partnership with Bristol's Show of Strength Theatre Company (SOS), the Everyman are searching for anyone who can write about waiting as part of a competition, in which the winner's piece will appear in their very first project, Anyone Can Write Five Minutes.

The title says it all; just write a monologue that lasts no longer than five minutes with the theme of waiting and, as long as the entrant has a Gloucestershire postcode, they can enter the competition.

The winner's entry, along with 19 others, will be performed in the Everyman's Other Space studio at the end of March.

The monologue could be about any sort of waiting; waiting for a bus, waiting for life; waiting for death; waiting for a sneeze. The only limitations on pieces are that they have to be no longer than 1,000 words (approximately five minutes), written for live theatrical performance and a new piece of work.

The project is rapidly spreading along the M5; in addition to Gloucestershire and Bristol it will run in Taunton and Exeter with each location producing the work of twenty new writers.

Entries must be received by 12 noon on Friday 6 January - a deadline fixed to encourage those who may be inclined to use the festive season, and all it brings, as inspiration to put pen to paper.

All entries must be sent to WAITING, SOS, 74 Chessel Street, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 3DN.