ComedyCityUK: The business of comedy in Manchester

For this month's meetup we are pleased to welcome a stellar comedy panel to CING, who will be looking at the opportunities in, and future of, comedy writing, television and film in the city.

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Working in partnership with Cofilmic (http://www.cofilmic.co.uk/), the comedy short film festival opening at the end of October, we have put together a diverse panel, including comedy producers, film makers and writers to help explore the history and wealth of opportunity that currently exists here in Manchester.

The panel includes:

Jo Blake, Development Producer at BBC Comedy
Katherine Beacon, Head of Development at BAFTA award winning Jellylegs (http://www.jellylegs.tv/), producers of Mrs Merton, The Royle Family and Early Doors.

David Isaac, Writer whose credits include Lunch Monkeys (BBC3), Not Going Out (BBC1), Life of Riley (BBC1), and Scallywagga (BBC3).

Jason Wingard, Director/Filmmaker who, amongst many other things, won the People’s Choice award for his Virgin Media Short film and Best Drama at the Exposures Film Festival.

The evenings proceedings will be chaired by renowned actor/director Walter Melons.

There will also be the chance to hear from Janet Harrison, Managing Director of Cofilmic (http://www.cofilmic.co.uk/), the first comedy film festival in Manchester. Janet will provide details about the festival as well as Cofilmic's ongoing talent development programme, aimed at helping those involved in comedy with technical, professional and business skills.

Janet will also be previewing two of the short films that made it into the Cofilmic festival along with two of Jason's films.

This will be a fantastic opportunity to hear from key figures from the comedy writing, television and film industry, and a great way to find out about how to make your comedy dream a reality.

RSVPs for this FREE event are open now (above), so sign up now to guarantee your place!

NOTES:

Joanna Blake has recently joined BBC’s Comedy North as Development Producer, moving from BBC Comedy Entertainment where she developed quiz and panel show formats. Prior to this, Joanna was Head of Comedy for Freeform Productions where she was responsible for nurturing and developing original narrative comedy. During this time she produced the BBC3 comedy series The Gemma Factor, filmed in West Yorkshire. She moved to Manchester in 2006 to work on productions for Hat Trick North, having spent five years working in their London based comedy department.

Katherine Beacon is Head of Development for Jellylegs Productions, working closely with Craig Cash and Phil Mealey to find, develop, script edit and produce new television comedy. Before joining Jellylegs she was Project Manager for BBC writersroom North and a Producer for BBC Radio 4 and 3.

David Isaac is the writer and creator of Lunch Monkeys, a sitcom which ran for two series on BBC3. He has also written on Not Going Out (BBC1), Life of Riley (BBC1), and Scallywagga (BBC3). He is currently working on a number of sitcom and sketch projects which are in development, and his play (co-written with Peter Slater) The House That Stank of Death, which is running as part of the Manchester Comedy Festival.

Jason Wingard was a regular on the stand up comedy circuit during the nineties, and was runner up in the North West Comedian of the year 2000. After gaining a degree in Film & Photography, Jason produced his comedy short Where to mate?, which won Exposures Film Festival Best Drama and Audience award 2002 and last year his film Bus Baby won Virgin Media Shorts People’s Choice award.

This year Jason had two films shortlisted for the Reed Short Film Competition and is a finalist for a second year running in this years Virgin Media Shorts with his film 2:20.

Other work includes films for BBC Online, Channel K, 2-Entertain and T-Mobile. Writing credits include scripts written with Johnny Vegas, David Isaac and Peter Slater, and comedy scripts optioned by Avalon, Channel K and Channel 4 Radio.

If you were to distill Walter Melons down with a Liebig condenser, take the residue and place it into a vase inside that vase would be one word and that word would be PERFORMANCE!

Walter is a celebrated method actor and retired gymnast - famous for combining Shakespeare with athletics to form the near impossible Iambic Pentathlon and author of “Ready Brecht – Central Acting for Kids”.

His polemical treatise on reversing the polarity of an audience “Inverted Karmas” and controversial portrayal of Ronnie the Milkman in 'The Passion of the Christ' (a scene too controversial ever to be shown) has rendered Walter one of theatres most enduring and provocative figures.

He is the man who managed to get Harold Pinter to stop talking, and was known at Lambda simply as 'The Iceberg' – as his performances would convey masses of emotion by only showing the tip. Come, let him share his tip with you.