The London Comedy Writers... the story so far...
In the Middle...
By Chairman Graham Trelfer
When family life came calling, Jack answered, leaving behind a group that was pretty much self sustaining. A chap by the name of Graham took over the reigns and steered the group through a time of unprecedented calm waters. By his own admission Graham was a reluctant leader dreading the role of public speaker as it rolled round every three weeks. We can speculate that this is the reason he gracefully bowed out of the group in 2005 leaving a power vacuum at the top.
This is where I step in. Having unwittingly taken on the role of vice a chair the week before I now found myself at the helm of a group I had been attending for the past couple years. To make things confusing to you, my name is also Graham.
My first act as chairman of the East London Comedy Writers was to change the name. It turned out that many people had shied away from attending the group because they thought it was still based in East London. We rebranded as the London Comedy Writers and got on the web with a forum. This first foray into cyber space was not very successful, although it did give people a place to check us out. Pretty soon actors started turning up asking if they could read. Up until this point roles were dished out to unconfident writers who had little in the way of performing experience. A deadpan reading would literally kill a script leaving all in attendance frustrated and sometimes bored.
With our growing popularity it became obvious that one meeting every three weeks was not enough and so we upped it to every fortnight. We launched a real website. It was pretty basic, but got the job done, there were competitions and a few resources. We experimented with writing as group, but that failed, however, through all this our numbers were swelling and soon the four tables pushed together in the middle of the room could no longer handle our awesomeness and so we rearranged into the now familiar horse shoe shape giving our new found actors a stage at the front from which to perform. Jack must have been proud knowing that group he started now boasted a turnout that packed the room.
Next we flirted with sketches, bookending our meetings with a quick snippet of comedy that opened the doors to more writers. Now new relationships started to blossom, writers and filmmakers began teaming up to produce things, we now had success stories… but little did we know what was lurking just around the corner…
