The ‘Checkmate Project'
The ‘Checkmate Project’ was set up to allow talented local artists, actors and writers who were stunted in their development because of social and economic barriers, to develop a piece of professional theatre from their personal experiences.
We met a variety of very creative people with a passion for good theatre that were quite simply looking for an opportunity to connect with other creative people and develop their skills as theatre workshoppers.
We understood that all performers do not necessarily have the experience or the skills to successfully create and launch a show without support. After meeting so much untapped ability in Manchester it was obvious that there was a role for us to fill.
We worked with local talent in the North West and gave them opportunity to invest in the development of a new piece of issue-based drama. The themes of the drama focused on the participants own first hand experiences in dealing with the immigration system in this country.
All the participants in this project had previously had barriers to accessing participatory arts schemes so it was important to us that they had as much flexibility time wise as possible to allow them to all benefit from the acting and script development workshops. Sometimes this meant starting work on the project at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night or at the crack of dawn during the week but it was worth it for the result.
All the participants took part in professional actor training, work-shopping and script writing sessions under the guidance of the professional actor trainer and Artistic Director Darren Gordon, who very kindly lent his time and experience to the project and work-shopper and aspiring professional scriptwriter Miriam Suharwardy whose main aim was to gain experience in script development in a devised workshop situation.
We now have two very strong original scripts, one full-length thriller ‘Check Mate’ and a shorter stand alone one-act play, which is taken as an exerpt from ‘Checkmate’ called ‘Our Story’.
‘Our Story’ focuses on specific true stories from asylum seekers as they took their first steps in Britain and ‘Checkmate’ which includes ‘Our Story’ as part of the full length play and is more of a political thriller and a love story.
We would like to personally thank Phil Mundy for all of his help and support that allowed us to make this project the success it was.
Since the first stage of this project was completed many of the participant have gone on to some degree of personal success in their fields, Naveed Choudhry one of the artists who participated in the project has recently acquired professional artistic representation and has won a role in a professional issue based short film.
Miriam Suharwardy has also acquired professional artistic representation, has gone on to perform in two plays and featured in a writers showcase performance.
Many of the participants have also gone on to develop their own community projects and to participate in local theatre productions.
‘The Future’
We are now looking towards the next stage of this project and are actively looking for opportunities to perform the play in a major Manchester theatre venue in the near future and in as many community theatre venues in the North West as possible.
We are very interested to hear from anyone in the North West who would be interested in having either of these plays performed in their venue or as part of your ongoing community project or scheme.
For more information about the ‘Checkmate Project’ or ‘Our Story’ please contact Joe on 07828 537 991 or send him an e-mail at: checkmate_productions@yahoo.co.uk
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