THE STORY
A woman and her older sister, both in their late thirties, go back to Wales to visit their long-widowed father as he lies dying in his hospital bed.
All three are estranged from each other and as the younger sister narrates the details of their final dealings, she reflects upon her father’s life, realising how little she knew him.
The piece illustrates the aching failure of these remnants to bond finally at the last.
THE WRITER: MARILYN COURT-LEWIS
Marilyn graduated in English at Bretton Hall College, University of Leeds in 1994, and went on to gain a Masters Degree in Women’s Writing and Literary Theory at Trinity College, Carmarthen, and a further Masters Degree in Screenwriting in Liverpool.
Her career was interrupted by serious surgical injury in 1997, about which she eventually wrote a play that was submitted to the Royal Court Theatre in 2003, where it was read by Graham Whybrow; and to the Tricycle Theatre Company, from where Tessa Topolski passed it on, with her strong recommendation, to Francis Stirk at Hampstead Theatre in 2005. All three gave the play a positive response but felt unable to develop it further.
Marilyn wrote a feature length screenplay about the state of women’s healthcare in the UK at that time and about the political campaign that built up around her own case.
For a complete change, she then wrote a series of six 30-minute episodes of a comedy drama about four young women drawn together by a desire to escape the circumstances of their past, an extract of which was submitted to the BAFTA Rocliffe New Comedy Competition in 2014.
Marilyn has had prize-winning poetry published with Forward Press and has done some live performance work. She is now seeking to embrace the digital age and create her own website to start producing her work online. She is currently working on a new comedy.
THE ACTOR – LAURA ROGERS
Laura’s credits include ITV drama Bad Girls (2005), the role of Chastity Green in the BAFTA-nominated BBC mini-series The Sins alongside Pete Postlethwaite (2000), Rockface, Holby City and Doctors.
Theatre – Revelations at the Hampstead Theatre in London, Jamaica Inn at the Salisbury Playhouse, as Rosine in The Barber Of Seville and as Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers at the Bristol Old Vic . She played Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Timandra in Timon of Athens at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. She was in the West End production of The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre as Annabella Schmidt, Margaret and Pamela. She played the role of Kay Summersby in the play Pressure, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh and at the Chichester Festival.