Music is a human history, and recording of past tragedy and success, a personal philosophy and a record in more ways than one. It is a diverse and democratic medium. Changing, not only with the outer ‘current’ but the rhythms deep within itself – moulding a literature vibrant with imagery. I am a passionate, not only listener, but participant in what some people may stereotype as ‘dated’ music, yet the ‘date’ being part of the interest, an amazingly accessible opportunity to access another decade in my very own way. I am intending to explore some select lyrics and their distinct illumination of a rich British history, not just facts and figures but the social values and themes which remain interlocked within our recognition today. I think music is not only a dyadic listening experience, but an opportunity to listen to the self and our own values. A speech for society synchronised to sound.

The growth of popular music of an increasingly political charge is especially attributable to 1950’s, and evidently, 1960’s Britain. There is excessive debate in terms of whether 1960’s Britain witnessed a ‘social revolution’ – a time of the growth of fast cars, fast lives and music equally fast in wit. Yet also the pondering of a slower, somewhat more sinister contemplation of an increasingly ‘liberal’ and even ‘permissive’ society about a concentrated London core was underway. In many instances, the British public appeared the very row of witnesses themselves, to instances of moral concern, for example ‘The Troubles’ in Ireland and the involvement of America in The Vietnam War which led to extensive loss of the lives of innocent Vietnamese civilians. Following the Cold War closely after World War Two, international tensions between communism in the East and the capitalist West fissured social stability, international aggravation over issues such as immigration accentuated by the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech by Enoch Powell in 1968. The rise of such controversial figures was documented by (quite controversial figures themselves!) the Rolling Stones, in their semi-satirical, politically-fuelled song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. Lyrics leaching out a personification of the devil, highly tensional following the publication of ‘Honest to God’ by philosopher John Robinson, which proposed the development of what is now known as ‘situation ethics’ and questioned the moral absolutism of Christian doctrine. Some conservative religious believers criticized ‘Honest to God’ in terms of what they believed to be the attempted justification of a new approach to God and undermining traditional values, somewhat ironic, if considering the song, of a population who ‘fought for ten decades/ for the God’s they made’.

Sympathy for the Devil’ ultimately spits an expression of grief to a society which is its own fiend and yet ignorant of it. This is emphasized through the jeering ‘What’s my name/ I tell you one time/ you’re to blame’ – the intended irony through the minimalist musical background and imperative lyrics, pleading in the need for society to listen to the words, not the sugared accompaniment. The ignorance of humanity is a painful but popular theme for crafted song lyrics – the ironic intention to challenge us with ‘why?’. For example ‘The Smiths’’ ‘Nature is a language/can’t you read?’ in their song ‘Ask’ implies a growing social ignorance to our native arts, culture and environment.

Lyrics seemingly morph to a mouthpiece of society, The Rolling stones with their infamous ‘tongue’ logo seemingly ‘twist’ such to a graphic portrayal – telling of ‘When the Blitzkrieg raged/ and the bodies stank’ in ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. The harsh verb use suggests the moral chaos of past conflict was still the case within the so-called ‘social revolution’, a bitterly inconsistent state of affairs in which ‘every cop is a criminal’- Jagger ultimately expressing student spite at the police put-downs of revolutionary-style activity in the LSE.  The song literally screams at the political establishment in their ignorance of the cause and cost of the affluent society, the generic ‘man of wealth and taste’ strung up with a historical thread. This is followed by ‘Killed the Tsar and his Ministers’ an evident reference to the fate of the Romanov Dynasty following the 1917 revolution in Russia – an evocation that the documentation of social discontent in popular music can be especially striking in illustrating political thought. 

The Beatles lyric from ‘Revolution’ ‘But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao/ You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow’, continues the political theme, forging an evident plea through simple guitar rhythms and colloquial ‘yeahs’ and ‘alright’ that the communist ideology is not compatible with the traditional British public. Instead, with a proposed British traditionalism as an escapism from the crazed Counter culture of the Hippy ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967, The Kinks responded, with, who other, than Queen ‘Victoria’?

Demonstrating nostalgic cravings at their best, lead vocalist Ray Davies manipulates a husky baritone about the ‘Long ago/life was green/sex was bad/ and obscene’ of ‘Victoria’ in a demonstration of the traditional British gentleman’s longings for the British Empire, rapidly disintegrating following India leaving the Empire in 1947. Such an ‘obscene’ perhaps notable in the instances of political violence accumulating in the 1960s’, for example the assassination of J.F. Kennedy, a subject for ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. This is pleaded by Mick Jagger in the haunting ‘Who killed the Kennedy’s?/When after all/It was you and me’, in again, a re-iteration of the corruptness of the culture. This theme similarly echoing through the almost painful harmonies of ‘Happiness is a warm gun’ by The Beatles – the terrible irony in John Lennon’s later assassination in New York, 1980. I believe the above examples emphasize lyrical diversity and the power of the communicated language to empathize the very rawness of social feeling.

Such rawness is particularly chilling continuing into the 1970’s, the decade of Poll tax and Punk, Thatcher and the Falklands War. a number of factors of moral discontent raged, ringing through the lines of David Bowie’s ‘Sweet thing’ a song from the album ‘Diamond Dogs’ based about the depiction of a social dystopia in George Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen-Eighty-Four’. The very unity of literature and music writhing the very fabric of society emerge through the poetic ‘Like a portrait in flesh/that trails on a leash’ from the above song, a simile with the slur of ‘s’ and sharp ‘t’ repetition suggesting the narcotic influence. This accumulates through the song in the depiction depraved Soho alleyway where beauty is the only drive for domination – sexual indecency and drug use. Bowie having had such experiences himself as a figure idealized for his persona as the captivating ‘Ziggy Stardust’ from which he then retreated in the desperate lament of ‘I’m not a piece of teenage Wildlife’ in the song ‘Teenage Wildlife’ illustrating the growing power and almost predatory nature of youth which accumulated into Punk music and style as ultimate rebellion against the political establishment.

Yet challenging of a social establishment is perhaps no better documented than in the infamous ‘Queen is Dead’ by The Smiths in which Morrissey pounds out irony of musical expectancy in ‘So I broke into the palace/ With a sponge and rusty spanner’. This perhaps not only a critique of what he perhaps believed to be a fickle institution of monarchy, but also relative to the so-called ‘Michael Fagan Incident’, of an intruder who broke into the Queen’s bedchamber in the early hours of 8th July 1982 – an evident sneer in the face of the tabloids also.

But why all the paranoia, you may ask? The case was seemingly all-too-evident for Morrissey in his lament ‘I’ve got the 21st century breathing down my neck’ from the overt positivity in the titling of ‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’, a critique of a social facade gently powdering over the inner rot of what he found to be ‘fame, fame, fatal fame. Here the fricative is almost predatory in force, however, from a man whose self-history consists of (I) ‘sat in my room between the ages of sixteen and twenty one and did what most people would consider quite negative’ – music is a poetry, a social soul which releases not only the celebratory, but the sceptic. Lyrics provide an especially poignant cry thick through and from the injustices of society – they take what it has to offer, instruments, love, and life experience and twist it into something to be perceived as potentially more meaningful. From the appeal against The Vietnam War in 1967 with The Rolling Stone’s ‘Gimme’ Shelter’ and the provoking lines ‘Rape/murder/ it’s just a shot away’ emphasis of the perhaps literal knife edge or gun-butt Harold Wilson and the Labour government of the 1960’s wavered upon in terms of pressures to send British Troops to Vietnam. The troops were not sent. The political power of music still echoes in our ears today, perhaps more relatively than you think.

There persists relativity to both adults and children – music as a potential social scale to play out the game of how far we have travelled. ‘A dark sarcasm in the classroom/ Teacher leave us Kids alone’ – the illuminative brilliance of the rough drawl of a group of school-children in Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ forms the ultimate expression of a want for childhood individuality against the rigid institution of 1960’s and 1970’s educations. Fuelled by arguments over the tripartite education system in Britain, an increased focus satirically suggested in the song itself through a recording of a helicopter surveying the school grounds and the ultimate inference of the surveillance of music as a social history, and in turn, the endless opportunities for empathy we can potentially all make use of today.

Emily Oldfield.

~

More articles for LWH by Emily can be found here:

http://www.lancashirewritinghub.co.uk/2012/04/a-hall-of-mirrors-an-exploration-of-writing-and-the-creative-mind-by-emily-oldfield

NEWS RELEASE

BEATLES ARE JUST THE TICKET FOR PLAY FESTIVAL

Beatles fans who have a way with words can show how the Fab Four have inspired them – and  they could win a tasty £150 for their efforts.

 The Ticket to Write Festival will stage five specially selected new short plays about the group in a script-in-hand showcase to be held in Liverpool in July. The best three of these will be  rehearsed and fully staged in a final in August.

 This year is an important 50^th anniversary year for The Beatles and is being celebrated by many events in Liverpool and elsewhere.

 And now the party will embrace drama at the city’s Lantern Theatre using the talents local actors and directors to stage the Festival.

 A  £150 prize is being offered for the winner of the event being managed by Outsider Theatre Company, led by Michelle Taylor,  in association with Ace Drama. There is an entrance fee of £10 per play.

 Michelle directed “Swim” which won best play in this year’s Liverpool’s Write Now festival.

“Beatlemania may be a headline from the past but the lives, works and music of Liverpool’s favourite sons still resonate not only in this country but throughout the world “ said Jamie Gaskin, a Fringe Theatre fan, who dreamt up the imaginative event.

 “I learned that such is the widespread fondness still felt for the lads that a regular number of new plays are offered each year. So why not harness this creative energy and give playwrights a chance to stage their work?”

 Plays should be 15 – 20 minutes long, can include music, and have up to four characters. The selectors will favour simple sets, props and technical needs in line with the tradition of Fringe Theatre.

 It can be fiction, fact faction. The plays can combine comedy, drama, pathos and of course include music although these should be able to be simply staged.

 “We have already had interest from one local theatre about reprising the final in another part of Merseyside, so writers could expect their work to be given a wider airing.” said Jamie.

 DEADLINE 25 JUNE 2012.

For further details and full entry terms and conditions visit www.acedrama.co.uk  or e-mail: tickettowrite@acedrama.co.uk

Congratulations to David and Debbie!

Debbie Walsh graduated from Edge Hill’s Writing Programme in 2011 with a Master of Arts distinction and was awarded the Rhiannon Evans Poetry Scholarship in the same year. Debbie lives in Lancashire.

Her work can be seen online at Limbo Quarterly and Female First and will appear in the next issue of barehandspoetry, which will be available online.

Congratulations on jointly winning our competition, could you tell us a little about your writing? Do you have a preferred form or genre?

I enjoy writing short fiction and essentially my love is for poetry. I have a problem with work defined merely by genre and think the creative process more fluid than that. I think we all write to make something which is essentially new. The idea that I am trying to recreate  experience has been superseded by the notion that I am, in fact, articulating filtered experience into structure, which might give it form, making it new. In this sense the work endeavours towards an evolutionary architecture that, necessarily, dilutes the past and builds podia towards the future.

As a recent graduate how have you found developing your career as a writer and what are you working on at the moment? Are you leaning in any particular direction?

I truly believe that success as a writer depends on factors such as luck, contacts, bags of confidence and that ability isn’t the only factor. Developing a writing career takes time for most people and I’m one of those people.

At the moment I’m looking to place my poetry collection, ‘Nimbus Movements.’ I’m entering my shorts in a few competitions and I’m researching towards a proposal for PhD so that when an opportunity arrives I stand a fighting chance.

- – -

David Hartley describes himself as a nugget of Preston resting in the valley of Manchester trying to write stories that no-one else has written before. He is also part of FlashTag Manchester and along with other live appearances has also performed at previous Word Soups.

His blog features a lot of rabbits and can be found at abarrelroll.blogspot.com. He also runs the award-winning film review site screen150.wordpress.com. you can also look here, theexplodingsupermarket.wordpress.com, or here twitter.com/lonlonranch

So, congratulations on being joint winner of our competition – I’ll start be asking what you will be doing as part of National Flash Fiction Day?

Thanks! Its a great honour and I’m overjoyed that you enjoyed my story. On National Flash Fiction Day I am doing quite a wild thing. I, and my writing cohorts Flashtag, are going to spend the day hiking around Manchester city centre reading Flash Fictions to whoever happens to be out and about. We’ll be popping up in numerous locations and charting the whole thing on Twitter (@flashtagmcr). It’s going to be great – just hope it doesn’t rain! Then in the evening I will be joining my pals at Bad Language Manchester for the climax of their Flash Fiction competition at the 3 Minute Theatre in Afflecks Palace. And then I’m going to bed to sleep for hours and hours and hours.

How do you see yourself developing your writing further – what does the future hold for David Hartley the writer?

My future – well, I’m going to keep writing Flash as I enjoy it so much. But I’m also expanding out to longer pieces. Got a few short stories on the boil, as well as a novel (although that is simmering more than boiling at the moment!). I’ve also got plans to put together a Concept EP with my younger brother who is a musician. I’m very exited by this latter prospect as its quite an experimental thing. And it takes me back to writing in my favourite genre – good honest old-fashioned Sci-fi. So, there’s lots going on, but that’s how I like it!

Debbie and Dave were interviewed by Mikey Goddard who has been volunteering at the Lancashire Writing Hub.

We are pleased to announce the winner of our Flash Fiction Competition. Thank you for all the fabulous entries which made picking a winner a very difficult task. In total we received seventy five entries – all of a really high standard, reading them was a rewarding process – so thank you everyone!

In the end we have had to choose two joint winners who are; Debbie Walsh’s Alone, and David Hartley’s The Haunter, both published below.

Alone

An Ink pen.

An A4 pad – Inspiration?

I’d write about world events but that’s just repetitive. I’d write about love but it always ends the same way. I’d write about life but ditto.

“Why don’t you just wake up an’ face the facts girl, you’ll never be a writer…”

The kettle’s boiled, again. I like the cooling droplets flaking past the spout. Everything’s clearer in the space after noise – except the story.

Outside I can see clouds cramming before a shower. I can see the flick and flack of wings, the rushed movement as I ghost the stillness.

Inspiration?

There’s a cast spreading, a pustule, on a slice of cheddar in the fridge. I could eat it. It might be mind-altering? It might be toxic to the point of near death and then I’d have a story. If I keep heaping thoughts into the blankness of white paper how will I ever fill the space?

Space. That’s it. Where all odds separate, begin.

The Haunter

You get to choose where to haunt so I pick your parents place, these fizzling fingers primed for revenge, these wisping arms super-charged with poltergeist powers. I envisage myself appearing in the bathroom mirror; a fleeting glimpse of my bloodied snarl as your mother takes one of her stubbornly long showers. I’m going to flick your dad’s tools on at midnight, let the drill drop square into his dog’s head, pin the carcass to the door of his precious workhouse, spin the hands on the clock as he weeps for forgiveness. I will be satellite interference on the Adult Channel, an unseen mouse fraying router wires, ecto fluff clogging sinks and drains, cracks in crockery cutting lips, slicing toes.

But I arrive to discover that at some point during those three distant years they had quietly and quickly moved house. Now, I’m stuck with a lovely old couple from Burnley who collect cat ornaments. I catch the things they drop and do nothing more.

-

Also shortlisted were;

• Tony Noon’s Simile, an experimental and playful piece about ‘John, the Simile Killer’, whose fourth victim is memorably ‘melted like microwaved cheese.’
• Zoe Mills’ Journal of Sam Wicks, a thoughtful story whose protagonist’s sense of difference and isolation is resolved by the chance purchase of a book on Wicca.
• Jeanette Greaves’ Friendship, two friends re-united after taking different routes after college re-united later in life. An excellent twist suggests that not replacing a jar of coffee could prove fateful!

• Interviews with the winners David Hartley and Debbie Walsh are to follow.
• Thank you again for all your entries, and good luck with your future writing! Mikey Goddard (volunteer at LWH).

Thursday 24th May 8pm – Tickets £5 / £3 concessions

Script4Stage is a new way of making theatre that brings the writer, director and actors into the same creative space from the first draft of the script. Their workshop programme and public events are based on the working practices behind the sell-out successes of Thrasher (The Royal Exchange Theatre & Camden People’s Theatre) and Burnt (Contact Theatre & National Tour).

Director Wyllie Longmore (www.wyllielongmore.co.uk) and Playwright Conor McKee (www.conormckee.com) host a sharing of extracts from four developed plays and a Q&A about the process behind this Arts Council Funded initiative.

This is a unique chance for actors, writers and directors to get involved and find out more about this new way of working.

The first sharing will be at The Lowry 3-5pm Wednesday 23rd May (Tickets £4/£2). Book your tickets at box office.

Further workshops and sharings are here at The Continental, Preston 8pm Thursday 24th May (Tickets £5/£3) and at The Dukes, Lancaster 8pm (Tickets £4, £2) Thursday 31st May.

This post was submitted by DavidM.

Benjamin Judge (Photograph by Gill Moore)

Biography: Benjamin Judge lives in Littleborough. He is one fifth of Manchester’s Flashtag Writers. His stories have been published in various places. He believes cheese is the answer to most of life’s problems. His blog, Who the Fudge is Benjamin Judge? won the Best Writing award at the Manchester Blog Awards. If you would like to stalk him or talk to him on Twitter, he is @benjaminjudge

Introduction: The LWH theme for May is Place. Signs in Chip Shops by Benjamin Judge is the the fourth Place piece  to be commissioned by the Pretend Boss.

Ben Judge is very glamorous. Well okay, he’s quite dapper,  it’s just that I’m going to go on about how glamorous Sarah-Clare Conlon is next week and I’m already on a warning from the Political Correction Constabulary.  Ben was my first and (between you and me) best virtual friend; we were blogging friends for years before we met last September.  I admire his work ENORMOUSLY and I’m so pleased (and only a little bitter) that he won that blog award.  Ben wrote a story called 50 Stories about Sting which he read at Word Soup. It made me cry with laughter. If the Political Correction people saw that story I think they might lift my court order. They might even offer me a job.

(I think The Sting Thing might get an official airing at the Prestwich Book Festival - you MUST attend!)

Signs in Chip Shops

A handwritten sign on the wall of the chip shop reads, “Our pies are NOT microwaved. They are WARMED.” It is positioned just around the corner from the industrial microwave they use to heat the pies.

This chip shop does not exist, or rather it does, but not like this. The chip shop exists but the sign doesn’t. I can picture this particular chip shop but you cannot. All you can see is the sign. But you have begun to sketch a chip shop around it. I see my chip shop and you see your chip shop. This doesn’t matter. All chip shops are fictional. All chip shops are the same.

The floor? Ceramic tiles the colour of malt vinegar.

The walls? White paint. Adverts that portray meat-and-potato pies as exciting new advances in molecular gastronomy or as solutions to years of marital strife. Posters for school jumble sales, printed on orange paper.

The ceiling? A mystery. Who has ever looked at a chip shop ceiling?

The counter? A strip of metal, folded and hot to the touch: an extension of the vat of oil beneath it and of the glass cabinet sitting above it. A glass cabinet displaying a battered sausage and a selection of pies in red, blue, and silver foil cases.

Behind the counter? A jar of pickled eggs on a white plywood shelf. A cardboard box full of plastic forks. Jars of Daddies sauce available to buy for £1. And the signs.

The chip shop signs. The chip shop signifiers.

If I write about a chip shop it will be an amalgam of dozens of actual chip shops. My version of a Platonic chip shop form is pieced together from chip shops in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and various seaside towns. It sells peas but no battered Mars bars. It usually has two sorts of curry sauce. Since I moved to Littleborough, it has started making its own cheese and onion pie. You have your own imaginary chip shop, your own jigsaw of memories.

All chip shops are the same. All chip shops are fictional.

I was asked to write about place. More accurately I suppose, I was asked to write about writing about place. Let’s pick a place. Let’s say Manchester. Let’s say we are going to write a story set in Manchester, and let’s say we are going to have a scene within that story set in a chip shop. Now, somebody reading your story in Swansea may never have visited Manchester, but they will have visited a chip shop, so how do we describe this one?

We don’t. We describe one thing in it. Don’t fight the fact that your reader is picturing a different chip shop; use it. The first paragraph of this essay – a description of a sign – is enough for the reader to start building a picture of a chip shop in their mind. All we need to do is paste some new thing onto that picture. This all sounds a bit obvious, but it is worth remembering that as writers we can only gently push the reader’s imagination toward picturing something, and that whatever they do picture can only ever be formation of things they already know.

To describe a place we only need to describe the one thing that makes it different from everywhere else.

I have fixated on chip shops because I like chip shops, I have fixated on signs because they are rather obvious signifiers, but I could have chosen anything really. If I say ‘public swimming baths’; you will think of a swimming pool. I do not need to say it is a large rectangular hole with water in it. I only need to tell you about the line of crimson tiles where the water laps the sides, or the single grey plaster floating on the surface, or the hexagonal windows in the ceiling.

To pull a place from the abstract I need a single detail. To make a chip shop real, to make it tragic or absurd, I only need a sign on a wall.

“We do NOT give change in ANY circumstances. PLEASE DO NOT ASK.”

“Have you tried our scampi?”

“This is a chip shop. NOT A BUS STATION.”

“Please keep your dog on a lead.”

“Let us know when you enter the shop if you want plaice or fresh roe.”

“When was the last time you had peas with it?”

“Welcome to the church of the chip.”

“Grab a microphone and give us a song! Tuesday night is Chip-aoke Night!!”

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, we no longer serve Margaret Drabble.”

“Our chips are ABSOLUTELY NOT made out of potatoes.”

30 May and 17th June 2012 at Aumbry: Emma Jane Unsworth, reading , while the restaurant’s chefs serve up a meal based on food in her debut novel Hungry, the Stars and Everything (sadly, both these Aumbry events are sold out)

 Doors Open 8.00pm

Open Mic 8.30 – 9pm

(£4 / £2 students/unwaged/concessions )

 @ The Storey, Lancaster

The Literary Line-Up:

 Vicky Ellis – Poetry

Vicky is a prize-winning performance poet and a storyteller.

Her novel ‘The Colonel and the Phallus of Incomplete Mortality’ is available on Kindle or in paperback.

 Jim Turner – Poetry

Jim Turner is likely to ‘lead us up a mountain or two. Many of his poems take inspiration and setting

from trips to the far north of Scotland, but whilst maintaining a descriptive integrity he

achieves the happy knack of humanizing the landscape. .

 Tim Wilderspin – Prose

Tim moved from London to Lancaster to write a book, called ’1988′, in which he tells the true tale

of that year which saw him try to blow 35 grand as quickly as possible with a suicidal friend.

Along the way, they accidentally (yes, really) became private detectives, solving cases by the seat

of their pants or failing hilariously. It’s a tale both poignant and funny and he will read a couple of extracts from this..

 Marco Pastor – Comedy

‘I have recently turned 18, and found out that the adult world makes even less sense than

that of children. So, I see it as my duty to inform everyone of those petty things ‘normal’ people

simply do not stop to think about.’’

 PLUS MUSIC

 Daisy Barlow

Daisy Barlow is a young singer/ songwriter who creates a quirky and unique sound.

She made her debut at the Open mic in March 2011 and says she is ‘excited to make another appearance at Spotlight’

and will present new material including a recently written tune ‘Oranges’.

 Hymas&Lewis

Hymas&Lewis is poet and performer Sarah Hymas and musician and improviser Steve Lewis.

Together they have been making and performing sound installations for many many hours, and have shared these with

audiences around the north west of England, highlights being in the Mammal’s Room in

the Manchester Museum, The Green Room, Manchester, and in the Storey Gallery, Lancaster.

 They first collaborated at a Spotlight ‘Words & Music’ workshop in 2006 and received an ACE grant in

2007 for research and development – and have been researching and developing ever since.

Compere Simon Baker

 ALL THIS FOR FOUR QUID!

 Lancaster Spotlight is funded by Arts Council England and supported by Lancaster City Council.

 Spotlight works in association with litfest.

www.spotlightlancaster.co.uk

Here’s a map of the pub location if you’re not familiar with it:

http://www.theboroughlancaster.co.uk/contact.html

 The Borough function room is provisionally booked from 7-9pm so there will be plenty of opportunity to eat and drink either before or after the reading.  The only thing that might change is if the pub gets a paid booking, so please email Ellie  Rycroft at  e.rycroft@lancaster.ac.uk on the day to double check in case there’s a change of venue. 

 Organisers would really like to get the wider Lancaster community involved with this play – it does after all depict this area and its inhabitants 400 years ago – so please tell anyone that you think might be interested in taking part, that they are more than welcome to attend.

It is a fabulous play.  If you want to take part in the reading then please print it off from this link and bring it with you on the 16th:

 http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/brome/viewTranscripts.jsp?play=LW&type=MOD&act=1 

 Thanks, and hope to see you there!