The prize to a North West Writer goes to:

Candy Land
by Ian Kershaw

Synopsis

On the roof of a residential tower block in the blistering heat of a long hot summer, someone has dragged out an old settee. The air is thick with longing…

Sully is 16 and longs to be a woman; dreams of a better life coasting up the Pacific Highway of the Candy Land America of her imagination, free as a bird.

Deb (Sully’s Mum) works at Tesco’s and longs for love, but a quick line and a roof top fuck will do for now. Carl is an unemployed actor, friend to Sully and Deb, longing for someone to share a spliff with, someone like him. He feels his life is dripping by. Joe is trapped in his family’s Indian restaurant business; longs for a life of lazing like Carl’s. Doesn’t expect to find love on a manky sofa on the roof of a tower block to a soundtrack of Rachmaninov and Robson and Jerome, but does.

Mark longs for money, success, sex - thinks he’s got his hands on life’s ladder. Deb’s regular shag. Seduces impressionable Sully with a promise of a trip to Candy Land.

The tower is condemned and the residents have to move on, but with the release of the roof top pigeons and the towers of the estate crashing around them, our characters’ last sunrise on the roof is filled with hope, defiance and a new start. Not quite Candy Land, but something real and good.

Ian Kershaw’s Biography

I was born and raised in Oldham, Lancashire and after leaving school I worked as a carpenter and joiner on building sites around the North West.

I went to the theatre for the first time aged 21 and the next day signed up for a performing arts course at Tameside and Oldham Colleges, I then went on to train as an actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama graduating in 1995 with a BA Hons in Theatre History and have worked as an actor in theatre and television.

I started writing five years ago through ‘Flip the Script’, a monthly playwriting slam at Contact Theatre and my piece went on to win seven months running – this eventually became a full length play ‘Get Ken Barlow’ that was produced at Watford Palace Theatre summer 2005, directed by Lawrence Till.

I also met nice people from BBC Manchester at Contact through the Northern Exposure programme (now known as Writers Room North) and was invited to attend various workshops including Writing for Radio – my first radio play ‘The Autobiography of a Nobody’ directed and produced by Gary Brown will be aired on Radio 4 this Christmas.

I have been selected to be one of eight writers to take up a place on the BBC Writers Academy under John Yorke to write for Doctors, Eastenders, Casualty and Holby City.

I am one of the Royal Court 50 writers (nominated by Oldham Coliseum) to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the Royal Court. I was one of 12 from the 50 to have a piece ‘Like Stubbing Yer Toe on a Tour of Auschwitz’ performed in the Royal Court main house under the umbrella of ‘Angry Now’ that subsequently transferred to Latitude Music and Literature Festival in Suffolk.