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Is the Hurst (The John Osborne Arvon Centre for creative writing) some sort of TARDIS? No, there’s surely been a mistake - we’re smaller on the inside!
The Hurst seems to have been at the centre of some sort of time warp for the last couple of weeks.
Kerry and Peter (our new Centre Directors) dashed off to London last Monday (as usual with just enough time to catch their train) for the initial programming meeting of 2008 whilst I spent a few days in the company of Paul Warwick and Ed Collier. “Not THE Paul and Ed?” I hear you cry. Yes the very same - Ex-Centre Directors and lifetime Hurstmen. They’ve hired the centre lock stock and barrel for the Dark Room, a development project for devising theatre companies (now in its third year) and settled into the office as if they had both put on a comfortable old pair of slippers. They commandeered the phone, complained about the heating, and unplugged all the network cables. Once logged into their fancy IMacPod Lap Arts Council funded thingies they adopted that familiar hunched stance emerging from their collective trance only to answer (in bullet point form) my inane questions about the state of their careers/relationships etc.
It’s a pleasure to have Ed and Paul back and the first two weeks of their visit seem to have gone off swimmingly. Once they have impro’d their way back to the big smoke, we will welcome Kings School for a week of prose and performance poetry from Lynne Bryan and Marcus Moore. Our old friend, teacher, committee member and general good egg, Katie Adam has engineered this course with her usual precision. Even though it looks unlikely that she’ll be here in person, I have no doubt her considerable organisational skills and passion for all things creative will shine through. Katie knows the centre so well, we sometimes ring her for advice on repairing the boiler and unblocking the dishwasher…
And then to the open programme, kicking off this year in mid April with a Playwriting course in the capable hands of Tim Fountain and Natasha Betteridge. Following hot on their heels - with Freedom in Form - will be Patience Agbabi and Patricia Debney. We will then be in the midst of a run that will last until December, with the centre resembling anything but a Dark Room..
Editor’s note - We can confirm that the Hurst is not a TARDIS (a Time And Relative Dimension In Space) - the blue police box made famous in Dr Who, and invented by BBC screen writer Anthony Coburn, after he edited C. E. Webber’s script of the very first Dr Who show. The TARDIS was conceived out of budget restrictions - the Doctor needed to travel in something but finances required the vehicle to be simple and cheap to make. The word TARDIS is now commonly used to refer to something that is bigger on the inside than the outside.
And in this respect perhaps, after all, Arvon is very TARDIS-like.
Best wishes
Dan Pavitt
Administrator
The Hurst
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