This year’s Essex Book Festival was partly online, partly on site, and wholly excellent. I was in the Zoom for the first event on June 3rd, and again for the Festival ‘opener’ on June 6th (‘We Need To Talk About Essex Girls’), and today I was at the grand closing event at Cressing Temple Barns. I’d booked a place at the talk on scriptwriting at 12.30 and arrived early – to find the car park completely full, with cars directed to park on the grass. The tea-room was almost full and there were people everywhere, enjoying stalls selling books or toys, stalls displaying magic tricks, and a story-telling tent. A tent, containing a series of people telling stories to whoever wanted to stop by (including a dog who had opinions on the story I heard).
Less than an hour after it opened, the Festival was playing to packed crowds.
The script-writing talk was interesting. Neil D’Arcy-Jones focussed on the impact of place on a story, asking us to write a few lines about a place we knew and loved and imagine two characters playing out a scene in that place. One of the others came up with an idea so simple and so full of room for mischief that I’m surprised no-one else has written it.
I came out of the session to find out what the music was all about. BrazilArte (to judge from their team T-shirts) were playing drums to accompany one of their team who was performing acrobatics among the crowd on the lawn. By the time I left, BrazilArte was trying to teach the crowd to dance along with them and everyone was laughing.
The Essex Book Festival has been fun, serious, varied, and really easy to attend. I hope they’ll keep up the same format next year, giving me the choice of sitting in a tent or wood or theatre for an event or sitting in my living room with my cat intent on displaying her furry butt to the entire Zoom audience.
Tomorrow, back to reality… but with ideas for a short script.
Julia Chalkley 