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Anthony James
An Actor's Guide to Representation, Auditions and Career Building
Book for aspiring actors, kids and drama graduates on your site? its a guide about what terms means, contracts, casting sites etc. guide for actors that i wrote recently. Whether you are an aspiring actor looking for representation, or someone hoping to build a career in the industry, this guide is designed to help you avoid common mistakes and present yourself professionally.
Paperback and kindle www.amazon.co.uk For more than thirty years, I have worked in the film and television industries, as both an actor and a film agent. During that time, I have negotiated contracts, represented performers, worked closely with Casting Directors, and witnessed firsthand what separates actors, who consistently get opportunities, from those who struggle to gain traction.
This book is not theory. It is practical advice from someone who has sat on both sides of the table.
I hope the pages within give you tips on how to get on the first rung of the ladder, in the film, television, and theatre businesses, from a UK-based film agent's point of view.Paperback: www.amazon.co.uk
Office 7, 8 Broad Street, Devon, EX11 1BZ
Guide to casting and being an actor that i wrote: www.amazon.co.uk
Treasure Island | Blue Apple Theatre | 10-11 June (opening night reception)
Treasure Island
Theatre Royal Winchester
10-11 June 2026
Tickets from £10: https://bit.ly/BlueAppleTreasureIsland [press comps available on request.]
Celebrating 21 years
When Tommy Jessop told his mother he wanted to be an actor, there was nowhere for him to go. Twenty-one years later, the award-winning star of Line of Duty returns to Theatre Royal Winchester to celebrate the company his ambition helped create.
One of Britain's most recognised neuro disabled actors, Tommy remains an active member of Blue Apple Theatre's singing group. This June, as Blue Apple brings Treasure Island to the stage, he will join his mother and founder Jane Jessop to mark 21 extraordinary years.
About the production
Old Jim Hawkins returns to the Admiral Benbow to tell the story that changed his life. With the pub's drinkers stepping into every role, the adventure unfolds from Bristol to a distant island and back again - all before last orders.
This is bold, imaginative storytelling, with a script developed collaboratively by performers with learning disabilities, supported by experienced professional and technical teams.
Performance times
Wednesday 10 June, 7:30pm (opening night)
Thursday 11 June, 12:00pm
Thursday 11 June, 7:30pm (livestream available)
All performances include live captioning.
Press invitation - opening night reception
You are warmly invited to join us for a drinks reception on Wednesday 10 June, 6.30pm-7.30pm, ahead of the performance. Local dignitaries will also be in attendance.
About Blue Apple Theatre
Blue Apple Theatre delivers ambitious, inclusive performing arts opportunities for neuro disabled people across Hampshire.
Founded in 2005 by Jane Jessop after her son Tommy expressed his ambition to act, the company has now produced over 30 performances, tours nationally and internationally, and is Theatre in Residence at the University of Winchester. In 2025, it joined with Minstead Trust.
Independent research (University of Winchester, 2023) confirms the programme creates significant positive impacts in wellbeing, social connection and personal development.
Interview opportunities are available on request.
Provided, with full permission, is a supporting statement by Jane Jessop and some images of Tommy with other Blue Apple Theatre cast members from former productions along with early rehearsal images from Treasure Island. [See Treasure Island Press Release]
Notes to editors: Blue Apple Theatre works with adults and young people who have a learning disability and/or autism and is increasingly using the term "neurodisability" to reflect a broader scope of needs, including acquired brain injury. Learning difficulties such as dyslexia do not constitute a learning disability on their own, though they may appear alongside a learning disability diagnosis.
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THE LAST DAYS OF TRUMP (A Liberal Fantasy)
Coming to the 2025 BUXTON FRINGE FESTIVAL It's 2028 and octogenarian two-term President Donald Trump is finally about to be replaced for good. Will he go rogue like last time, or will a plan to keep him focused on golf, gorilla documentaries, porn, and developing his perfect presidential library avert disaster?
"Do not see this terrible witch-hunt of a play! It's created by nasty people who hate America so very very much!" ~anonymous, Mar-a-Lago, FL (unverified).
This new play begins with a declining Trump watching the results of the 2028 US election that will choose his successor roll in. Yes, it's set in the future! The Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of staff is concerned and engages White-House-intern-cum-Chief-of-Staff Morgan to keep Trump occupied developing his Presidential Library - one without books no less. But the library project reinvigorates Trump and fate hands him a chance to achieve the dictatorial status he craves. But will fate intervene again for the liberals?
Written and directed by Eoin Carney, an early incarnation titled "I, Trump" played at the INDYfringe and Pittsburgh Fringe festivals in the United States to enthusiastic audiences (and a few walkouts by unimpressed Trump supporters). Soon to be endorsed by Elon Musk(?), THE LAST DAYS OF TRUMP is coming to the Palace Hotel in lovely Buxton and IT'S GOING TO BE INCREDIBLE! Less a partisan hit-job than a satire about unintended consequences and the hand of fate, this political comedy explores how we all would love to be a dictator deep down.
THE LAST DAYS OF TRUMP (A Liberal Fantasy)
by Eoin Carney
Friday 18th July, 7-8pm, Palace Hotel, Buxton, UK
Thursday 24th July, 7-8pm, Palace Hotel, Buxton UK
TICKETS
Shakespeare in modern English? The idea may seem blasphemous to many, but its purpose is clear: to make the plays better understood and more enjoyable in the theatre.
Why do English-speaking audiences enjoy Shakespeare less than the rest of the world, as a recent poll revealed? Because the language may be our language, but it is a difficult language, now four hundred years old, fully understood only by scholars. Foreign theatres use modern versions of the bard, so why don't we?
When we read Shakespeare we need the help of notes to explain allusions, obsolete words and expressions, and to unravel Shakespeare's unfamiliar word order. The vast accumulation of annotation his plays have received is proof of that. But in the theatre we have no help of this kind, and although we understand most of what's said, especially in a good performance, there are lines, expressions, even whole speeches that simply make no sense to an audience that hasn't done its prep.
The book of translations, with the three plays As You Like It, Coriolanus, and The Tempest, is available at £9.00 plus postage from:
Take Prospero's speech in The Tempest Act 5 Scene 1in answer to Alonso's 'Your own loss?':
As great to me as late, and supportable
To make the dear loss have I means much weaker
Than you may call to comfort you.
Unless they have studied the text in advance many in the audience will make little sense of that, even if it's well spoken. Much is gained if he says:
Severe and recent too. And furthermore
I have far fewer comforts for my loss
Than you may call on.
So what do directors do? They cut such lines and speeches and hope that nothing is lost.
No one doubts the magnificence, power and everlasting beauty of Shakespeare's language, but in the theatre today its qualities go unappreciated.
It is normal today to see the plays presented in settings other than those prescribed in the text, at different historical periods including the present. Modern dress has long been a familiar resort for companies with low budgets and imaginative directors. So the language should in such cases be modernized too. Productions in Elizabethan costumes will profit all the more from retaining the original.
Hugh Macdonald has provided a solution to this dilemma by translating three plays into modern English. The translations are emphatically not designed for children or dummies, but for grown-ups who would like to enjoy the drama and complexity of the plays without missing a proportion of what is said. The language is serious modern English with a great number of Shakespeare's lines retained unchanged.
These translations are ideal for schools or for amateur dramatic companies and will provide enlightenment and enjoyment for audiences of all ages.
"These vibrant, immediate, dramatically powerful translations carry great power on stage, delivering satisfying jolts of recognition again and again."
Robert Henke
Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature, Washington University in St Louis
Once again, it's that time of year when we look to writers to help us put together an evening of short plays for our Summer Shorts slot (5 - 9 August 2025). You don't have to be an experienced writer or even an SLT member to write and submit, we're just looking for amazing new writing* whoever it comes from.
We're hugely excited to announce that our theme for this year is:
Scale
All plays selected will be written with a nod to that word. Whilst your 10 minute play will be small-scale in duration, you can dream big. Why not write about dinosaurs, reptiles, or giant scaly fish? Your piece could be a big shake on the Richter scale, or on a scale so minute that the props need to be oversized. You might immediately know a way to creatively scale the heights of this writing task, or you might need more time to weigh up your options, but whatever your process, let the scales fall from your eyes and see a way clear to completing a cracking short play.
Whichever direction you go, note that we're looking for a range of tone and genre for a varied evening's entertainment. We want your writing to tip the scales, whether it be period or contemporary, comedy or drama, monologue or ensemble.
And it's not all on you to conjure a mini-masterpiece, if that feels daunting. For those scripts that are shortlisted, we'll also put on a read-aloud workshop to give you the opportunity to hear your words spoken and potentially receive some constructive feedback.
So pick out your pen, or get your keyboard clattering and put together a short play which fits the following important criteria - but please note - learning from our previous experience of staging this multi-play event, we're getting ever-stricter on suitability criteria, so that we can pack in all the best plays and put on the swiftest, most seamless, scaly selection box we possibly can:
Step into a year of thrilling productions! From classic revivals to bold new works, 2025 promises to bring unforgettable moments to the stage. Discover the shows that will define 2025!
John Proctor Is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower
"I loved the John Proctor Is the Villain script when I read it a couple of years ago-it's a play by Kimberly Belflower about a group of Georgia high school girls who are studying The Crucible as they start to notice some parallels in their own community-and I'm excited to see Sadie Sink star in it when it heads to Broadway in March."
-Amanda Hess, The New York Times
Performances begin March 20 at the Booth Theatre.
Learn more
Author of The Comeuppance and Appropriate Comes Back to Broadway with Purpose!
Starring Paul Mescal. Begins February 28.
The play reveals to the very depths the character of Blanche DuBois, a woman whose life has been undermined by her romantic illusions, which lead her to reject-so far as possible-the realities of life with which she is faced and which she consistently ignores. The pressure brought to bear upon her by her sister, with whom she goes to live in New Orleans, intensified by the earthy and extremely "normal" young husband of the latter, leads to a revelation of her tragic self-delusion and, in the end, to madness.
Learn more
Deep Blue Sound by Abe Koogler
Performances begin February 25 at the Public Theater.
On a picturesque island in Puget Sound, we find a town in a crisis: The whales have gone missing. While (unofficial) Mayor Annie searches for a solution, Chris tries to get back together with Mary; John reaches out to help Homeless Gary; Leslie longs for a faraway pen pal; Ali has come home to care for her mother; and Ella has a secret she only wants to share with local journalist Joy Mead, who she barely knows. But what about the whales? Is their absence just a seasonal glitch, or is it a sign of our collective failure to take care of the Earth? Deep Blue Sound is a funny and moving play about the connections we make-and the ones we long to make-to other people, and to the world around us.
Learn more
Wine in the Wilderness by Alice Childress
Performances begin March 6 at Classic Stage Company.
Fortune has smiled on artist Bill Jameson - his friends just introduced him to a model for the final piece of his triptych on Black womanhood. But this woman, Tomorrow Marie, is no mere muse, and she's about to give Bill much more than he bargained for. Set against the backdrop of the 1964 Harlem riot on a hot summer night, Wine in the Wilderness is a rarely-seen play from the brilliant mind of Alice Childress.
Learn more
Posted on 10/02/2025
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