During the summer, Paul Hine and I got an Arts Council England Grant for the research and development phase of our multi-media theatre idea around young people’s use of internet porn, called Project XXX. I recently spoke at the Pornified Conference about the project, and there is now a blog for the project: www.xxxprojectxxx.wordpress.com

We’re currently writing the first draft of the script after some fantastic workshops with young people in Crewe and Bolton, and some great improv workshops with lovely actors Gary and Holly – who were absolutely brilliant to work with and we look forward to working with you in January at the Octagon.

I am also working on a new play that is in very early first draft stages, and next Sunday I am workshopping a play at Edge Hill with Bill Hopkinson, Kevin Dyer and some fab 3rd year performing arts students – this play has had many incarnations, it’s on about draft 5 – so I am hoping the workshopping will really help.

I finished the CF project this year, and the UNESCO Youth Arts E-Journal accepted a paper about that from Helen K at Lime and myself, so that should be out soon.

So lots has happened, and I will get some more work up on this very soon!

Kim x

Over the Christmas break, I was working on my PhD – still a lot of work to do there, but now I’ve managed to get all my chapters drafted, so now I just need to work on them properly. I also worked on a short play Activ8 at Bolton Octagon commissioned me to write – about Slipper Safety Awareness for older people! It is a really serious issue, but so hard to write about in a serious way! That’s had its first performances today, so I hope they went well! I ended up writing two versions of a play for it, and we decided which one we’d go for at the auditions, and then I worked that one up for rehearsals. 

Now we’re into January, and it’s back to working properly – at Lime as artist and project manager, MMU and OU as teachers, and Creative Partnerships as a Creative Agent. This doesn’t leave me much writing time, and the next few weeks are planned down to the last minute almost, just to get some writing and reading time in there. I want to get the radio play sent out, carry on sending out the theatre piece, and then work on two short stories, one for the VS Pritchett and one for the Bridport, and also a new stage play for the Bruntwood. I did think about 24:7 this year, but want to concentrate my head a bit on the PhD work, as I should be looking at completion of that by the end of 2009 – scary, as its been going on for so long, but necessary.

I’ll get another update done for February some time, I reckon.

Once that is over and done with, I should be a little calmer. I need to rewrite the last scene of the play. I toyed with the idea of inserting camp, drag singing moments for Corrinna, David and Steven, to intersperse scenes, but apart from amusing me I can’t actually see what they would add to the piece. The last scene needs to be better, and I have hand written a new start to scene 2, so overall that seems good.

So, my jobs for October and November are:

1. Rewrite scene 2 and scene 5, and find a new title for the play

2. Write a first draft of Chapter 5 of the PhD, and start to review books for the literature review.

3. Collate the work I have for the PhD.

4. Broker artists for the two creative partnership schools I’m agent for.

5. Continue with the Library playwriting group.

6. Start a new artist on a new Lime project, and work on the magazine launch in Salford and the theatre piece in Manchester. Also, assist the new training facilitator and start sending out the Dr Sober packs.

7. Teaching and marking at both MMU and OU.

8. Get the Victoria Square book design approved and get sent out for print.

9. Visit my family!

Not much there then! At least I haven’t got any more mad visits to London, although I am being interviewed by the MEN and BBC Manchester tomorrow – but for Dr Sober, not anything else!