Imformation about East End Tales

East End Tales

Sleep in the day, come out at night.
That's when I reckon y'see the real East End.

East End Tales is a series of nine stories inspired by photos and news articles from local papers in east London.

It was written as part of a Half Moon Young People’s Theatre Scriptworks project for Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets, London. The story ideas were developed by a group of Year 10 Bengali girls over a number of weeks through a mixture of improvisation and written exercises, before being shaped and written up in a lyrical style.

The stories range from short contemplations on the nature of east London, through to longer tales of domestic violence, the drudgery of low-skilled jobs, petty crime and high density living.

The play is suitable for performance by any group of young people with a good level of maturity. It is particularly popular with those studying GCSE Drama.

Because each tale is self-contained, it is possible to pick and choose among them to create performances of varying length, without affecting the overall narrative.

http://finkennedy.co.uk/East-End-Tales

 

About Fin Kennedy

Award-winning UK playwright, teacher, University tutor, writer-in-residence, arts blogger and new co-Artistic Director of Tamasha

Fin is a graduate of the MA Writing for Performance programme at Goldsmiths College, London. He writes for adults and teenagers and his plays are regularly produced in the UK and abroad. He is also an acclaimed teacher of playwriting and community arts project manager, with a particular focus on young people's projects in London's East End.

In November 2013 he took up his new role as co-Artistic Director of Tamasha, working alongside the company's co-founder Sudha Bhuchar for 18 months, before taking over fully in Spring 2015.

Fin's first play Protection was produced at Soho Theatre in 2003, where he was also Pearson writer-in-residence.

His second play How To Disappear Completely & Never Be Found won the 38th Arts Council John Whiting Playwrighting Award, the first time in 40 years that an unproduced play had won. It was subsequently commissioned by Sam West for Sheffield Crucible and produced to critical acclaim in 2007. It has since been produced in London, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Melbourne, Auckland, and Portland, Oregon. The play has become a firm favourite with students and amateurs and is among Nick Hern Books' most licensed plays.

Fin's first play for teenagers, Locked In, a hip-hop musical about pirate radio, was produced by Half Moon Young People’s Theatre in 2006 and 2008 and toured nationally, subsequently being awarded the runner-up prize in the 2008 Brian Way Award. His second play for Half Moon, We Are Shadows, was commissioned and toured during autumn 2007.

Since 2007 Fin has been writer-in-residence at Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets, where he is co-founder of Mulberry Theatre Company, for whom he has written five plays. Mehndi Night (2007), Stolen Secrets (2008) and The Unravelling (2009) all premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, while The Urban Girl’s Guide To Camping premiered at Southwark Playhouse in 2010 as part of the SILKWORKS Festival, which Fin also co-produced. Their fifth play, The Dream Collector, was the inaugural production in Mulberry's new on-site theatre in October 2013, while a sixth, The Domino Effect, is currently in development for the Edinburgh Fringe 2014. Mulberry Theatre Company were awarded a Scotsman Fringe First in 2009 for The Unravelling, the first time a British state school has ever received one. Their first four plays are published in a volume by Nick Hern Books.

As well as writing plays Fin also has many years of experience teaching playwrighting at secondary, sixth form, undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has worked for schools, youth clubs, local authorities and theatre education teams in inner city London and beyond, and is also a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College, Central St Martins and Boston University.

Fin writes a well-read theatre industry blog at www.finkennedy.blogspot.co.uk about playwriting, teaching and arts politics. He is also an occasional contributor to The Guardian and The Stage.

In early 2013 Fin wrote In Battalions, an independent report about the effect of Arts Council cuts on new plays and playwriting in England. The report was a response to comments made to Fin by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, and is currently being widely circulated within the industry.

Fin has been an Associate Artist at Tamasha since 2011, for whom he is also producing Schoolwrights, the UK's first playwrights-in-schools training scheme. Fin is currently developing new plays for Bristol Old Vic and BBC Radio 4.

 

[Information found on his website to have a bit of background information about him and his experiences to help with the script and understanding him and the script]