With Alan Bennett due to revive his Talking Heads series on BBC this week, I’m probably not going to be the first Alan people search for when looking to watch a monologue.
I have however dipped my toe into the monologue scene for the first time and my screen debut, Parting Shot, premiered last week.
I’ve been part of the Sunderland Stages project over the past year and I was looking forward to seeing a short play I’d written being performed at The Peacock in Sunderland.
Unfortunately Coronavirus and lockdown intervened and it wasn’t to be.
Out of adversity, comes creativity and I was given the opportunity to submit a piece as part of Sunderland Stories.
It was the first in a series of six monologues by North East writers and performed by local actors.
Sunderland Stories was financed by Sunderland Culture and was yet another initiative driven by Helen Green who has been a fantastic support to aspriring writers in Sunderland.
I was lucky enough to have my script selected and Paul Dunn was selected as the actor. I already knew Paul but we had no contact from the script being handed over to me seeing it on screen for the first time during the premiere.
It’s fair to say that he did a cracking job of it.
It’s had almost two thousand views at the time of writing and I’ve had some great feedback.
Not bad as a first attempt and I’ll certainly be looking to write some more monologues.
A tale of love, loss and relationships, you can view Parting Shot on YouTube.
Alan Parkinson 