A FROME playwright recently won a writing competition and will have his newest play, inspired by David Bowie, performed on stage in Winchester in October.
Scott Carpenter, a playwright and former drama teacher at Oakfield Academy, has beaten nearly 200 entries to be named one of ten winners of an annual new-play writing competition at The Chesil Theatre in Winchester.
The theatre invited writers to submit a short play based on or inspired somehow by the life or music of David Bowie.
Scott’s play ‘Strangers When We Meet’, named after a song that appears on two Bowie albums, tells the story of a couple in their sixties looking for love on a first date. In a heart-breaking twist, it is revealed that they are already married, but Alzheimer’s means she no longer recognises her husband. He has brought her back to where they first met in an attempt to stir a memory of their courtship.
Coincidentally, this is not the first time Scott has used a Bowie lyric to inspire his writing. He tells Frome Times, “I’m a massive David Bowie fan, so when I was 18 and wrote and staged my first play at The Merlin Theatre in Frome, I called it ‘Teenage Wildlife’ after a lesser-known Bowie song.
“Fourteen years later, it is great to win a competition, but even more special as Bowie is once again an inspiration.”
Since that first production at the Merlin, several of Scott’s plays have been staged at The Lost Theatre in London, as well as Bath, Portsmouth, Milan and Como in Italy.
‘Strangers When We Meet’ will be performed at The Chesil Theatre, Winchester, on the 8th and 9th October.
