Tuesday 29 March 2011

Punky due for launch...

On the 28th of April, courtesy of the Dublin Lord Mayor, Down Syndrome Ireland and RTE will launch the series I created, PUNKY.

No idea which celebrity will be cajoled into doing the honours but it will be an historic affair. The first mainstream animation series, as far as all my research could uncover, that has ever given the main role to a lovely little character who happens to have special needs. And the episodes are gorgeous... with Aimee Richardson bringing Punky beautifully to life.

The series will begin its airing on May 2nd on RTE Jnr. I have the champagne ready and the bottle of Jameson primed -- though seems a little odd to be celebrating the arrival of a pre-school series with hard liquor!

Monday 28 March 2011

A Frustrating Profession...

I have had to accept that a project I spent four years developing will never see the light of day. After four years in development, now that it is mine again, the advice is to let it go. I'm finding it a little bit hard, but there there's a tiny part of me that's relieved I don't have to find a new way into it, a new way of selling it to new producers.

We all have shelves full of material that would be brilliant if it was made. Too many other people have to believe in it too, so much money needs to be invested, and then there's the old shoehorn Luck...

It's all very well telling a writer to dump a project and move one but sometimes it's not the old stuff that's blocking us; it's that we need to see something happen with even one of our brilliant older projects so that we can move on positively and not feel we've abandoned countless prams at the roadside.

Tuesday 8 March 2011

May 2nd, 2011 ... Punky begins on RTE

Yup, the series that bloomed as the germ of an unusual idea in 2007 has finally come to fruition and we have a date for the series to begin. The feedback from everyone that has 'tested' an episode with their kids has been fantastic and uplifting...

It was brought to Kidscreen recently by producer Gerard O'Rourke and the interest is pretty much across the board... The most interesting snippet, I thought was that the Swedish broadcaster SVT has already been getting email enquiries asking when it will be aired there! The word of mouth has begun... pass it on!!

Wednesday 2 March 2011

The perils of bad language

According to my daughter, I used a lot of inappropriate language in this poster (see right panel). Still made her stand underneath it for a pic though!

The UpStart campaign, of which this was just one of hundreds of posters, was a wonderful one to be part of. Everywhere you looked in Dublin, you could come across a piece of writing or a piece of art, all of them stimulating and/ or intriguing. You can see them all at http://upstart.ie/

A bit of background. We were allowed around 122 characters and if accepted, we became part of a campaign comprising some 500 writers andvisual artists, with work reproduced on boards around Dublin that were the same size and shape as election posters and in the same places. It was a way of saying, as loud as we can, that art is part of our lives. It's not a luxury. It's part of the air we breath and the water we drink and we need it, especially now.

My offering came from my play A FRESH GALE AND COLD CHICKEN about the life of George Farquhar.

But the election is over now so they all have to come down. I believe they'll be auctioning all the posters off to pay for campaign costs, and also putting together a night in which actors will read the written works, while the images will be projected on screen.