Playwright, Musician and Sound Therapist
Working in the Following Genre:
Musicals
Penny was always better at writing off the stage than performing on it! Her first role as a Shepherd didn’t go well at all. She dropped her lamb, stooped to pick it up, wobbled off the bench and poked Joseph in the foot with her crook. Joseph lost his balance and took the others with him. Down came baby, angels and all! The collapse of that whole-school tableau was dramatic and unstoppable. But the experience was a useful lesson for Penny, who found new ways to pursue her love of stories. She won her first National Essay Competition at the age of nine. The prize was a glorious tin of Bourneville chocolates and a child-friendly certificate awarded by Cadbury’s. Encouraged by this success (and armed with her new Bourneville pencil-case), she wrote little plays and made up songs to go with them. Then she persuaded her friends to try them out. |
Those early trials proved to be useful learning experiences for Penny, who later went on to work as a creative activity leader for over thirty years. Today, she still creates and directs performance-based projects, for old and young, in a wide variety of settings. But wherever she works, whether in her front room in Shropshire, in a school in Wales, or at a festival in France, she frequently needs fresh materials to support her - such as poems, songs, music, stories, plays and musicals. So, to find inspiration for her new pieces, she usually starts by picking out a single interesting feature of her immediate surroundings. Then she looks at this feature from an oblique angle and writes about it in some intriguing but relevant way. |
At the turn of the Millennium, Penny used to drive past the hill fort Caer Caradog each day on her way to work at Knighton School. The children there were studying the Romans and Celts at the time and Penny has a lively interest in local history, music, education and performance, so Caradog and the Celts was written out of observation, need and opportunity. Over the years, Penny has accumulated a wealth of useful support resources in this way, and because she loves things that work well and are readily available, she’s currently preparing the best of them for publication. |
The next musical to polish up for promotion is a little gem called Sparkle - Jewel of the Jungle! This lively script was originally written to welcome a teacher from Togo, so it includes some exciting African rhythms and a smattering of bluesy jazz! It worked well then, and it still works now, especially when young performers don’t get too personally attached to their props and can manage to sit still on a wobbly bench… |
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