New Writing Gets Due Applause at Riverside Studios

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Series of plays commissioned by Sky Arts for HDTV

Riverside Studios has been showing a series of plays commissioned by Sky Arts for their high-definition television programming section.

The series started with The Typist a story of a photographer, Mary Parks (Gemma Jones) who loses her sight and employs a young typist Fit (Toby Bakare training at Identity Drama School, the UK’s first black drama school) to buy heroin as she loses the will to live. Fit, is a Nigerian conservative Muslim who initially, is shocked at her request. A bond develops between the two characters which is skillfully explored by Rebecca Lenkiewcz, the playwright and directed by Bijan Sheibani.

Ghost, is a satire about two women who have cancer and use positive-thinking to rid them of the disease, with a compelling performance by Juliet Stephenson.

Hens was a comedy about British-Muslim women with an identity crisis out for a hen night in Paris. Lots of women changing their clothes on stage kept at least, the men in the audience, amused.

Crocodile a psychological drama with Sinead Cusack and Corrine Sylvester is about the deep motives behind a woman who slaughters her own child in cold blood – and the lawyer who tries to understand why. The plays are all being screened this summer by Sky Arts 2 HD as part of their attempt to develop cost-effective programming without compromising on artistic values.

July 8, 2010