Hello. so. Orla is now officially on maternity leave. which is very exciting. meanwhile, Pentabus remains buzzing and bustling, lots of things in the pipe line and lots to plan for the next few months. The most exciting thing today was that offically, Pentabus embraced technology with open arms and I had my first skype conversation with Thomasina, with me in my bedroom in London, and Thomasina in the sunny Pentabus office. Hurrah! We had a few teething issues with sound initially, but all in all, a successful endeavour. Because I am unable to get to Shropshire on a regular basis, we will be having Skype meetings every week. How official. So today was pretty monumental, as I’m sure you can imagine.

First meeting scheduled for Thursday. What I find funny about it all is that because you are seeing the other person on screen, it feels like you are watching them, as opposed to engaging directly with them, and I often end up tuning out and then realising that they are waiting expectantly for an answer…….mastering the art of skypage conversation may take a bit of time, but I’m feeling fairly confident….!

In other non computer related news, I went to a very intense but exciting day in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago, to watch the work of the 11 playwrights who are about to finish their playwriting MPhil at Birmingham University. A small ensemble of actors had worked with the directors and writers over 3 days to stage the first half hour of each play. No mean feat, but they did a great job and the work was a really diverse mix. We got to meet and chat to the writers after each session and I am looking forward to seeing where these plays might pop up in the future, I know I would be interested to read a couple as they presented intriguing beginnings!

We are also about to launch WE ARE HERE, a call out to playwrights from all over the UK to send us a play that they think might fit in with what we do, for a potential slot in our 2012 season. Not only is it a way to hopefully find a new and brilliant theatrical voice (or maybe voices) but it will allow us the opportunity to get to know who is out there at the moment, and to identify writers who we might want to work with in the future. It feels really exciting to be putting an invitation out there, with no idea what the response will be. Will we get 7, or 700 scripts? who knows. More details will be posted on our website on 5th July, so if anyone reading this thinks they might have a play we will love, please check it out!

I’m back to Shropshire for an actual face to face meeting next week, so more news then.