Well, StageWrite week is finally here and we are very busy in the theatre rigging, and starting rehearsing. It’s already fantastic to start to see the pieces come to life!!
We will be blogging a lot throughout the week so make sure you keep up!! We are almost coming to the end of our series on the writers but we still have a couple to whet your appetites! So today it’s my great pleasure to introduce you to Danka Throne who, as a staunch supporter of our venture in 2014, she bravely submitted her play, Voucher.
Danka, why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself?
Born in Bulgaria, I have very colourful and rich life experience. I lived some twenty odd years under Communist rule, and then experienced the changeover of power in the Eastern bloc. Sometime later I moved to live in England and got used to a different culture. I met many interesting people, worked as film editor in the Bulgarian Cinema Centre, as a night croupier in a big casino, while also studying part-time Theology up to Master’s Degree during the day and later moved to be a Programme Director for a cable channel. I have been a private English tutor for many years and supply teacher in the UK. I raised my two children, who are young adults now. My heart has always been in the theatre. I grew up close to the Bulgarian Broadway in the capital Sofia and in my teens developed in a master theatre crusher. I did not have the money to finance my need to watch plays seven evenings a week, so I started mixing with the smokers outside after the antrakt, sliding into the toilets inside the building. Than when the second part started it was always easy to find free seat in the dark, many times with the help of the staff, who were trying to accommodate the late viewers. The best news was that there are approximately nine theatres on that street and I changed the place I crashed every evening. I have never been caught and know off by heart the second parts of a number of plays to this day. In many different ways now I make a conscious effort to repay all my tickets from those days.
Wow – that’s some experience. How long have you been writing plays for and what started you off writing?