Linda Hampton, Author at Blackpool Social Club

12 Aug

Seaside Shuffle: local writers pen Blackpool anthology

Linda Hampton0 CommentsLiterature & Spoken Wordauthors, Blackpool, blackpool art scene, books, community, heritage, literature, memoir, Place, poetry, publication, Stories, tea amantes, writers

Local author Linda Hampton (Sailing To The Moon), hosted the launch of a unique collection of writings last week – Seaside Shuffle. As a contributing writer to the collection, she tells Blackpool Social Club readers how work from local writers manifested into a new publication It was a packed house at Tea Amantes Community Arts on Albert Road in Blackpool, as many of the 37 Blackpool-based-or-connected writers, and friends, piled into to celebrate the culmination of nearly a year’s work, the publication of the anthology Seaside Shuffle - an eclectic mix of writing styles, and points of view all summoning…

01 May

Linda Hampton shares debut novel Sailing to the Moon

Linda Hampton0 CommentsGuide, Literature & Spoken Wordauthor, books, creative writing, library, literature, local author, novel, tea amantes

Blackpool author, Linda Hampton muses on the hurdles and bumps in the road that must be navigated to write and publish a book, and invites you to find out more about Sailing to the Moon, her debut novel that took her five years to finish. After five long years of swinging between getting on with it and sheer procrastination, and many, many life events that made it difficult for me to just write, I finished my debut novel, Sailing to the Moon. Sailing to the Moon is a story about the invisible ties that connect two people over a lifetime,…

26 Jan

The Old Electric showcase Blackpool’s emerging scriptwriting talent

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & PerformanceBlackpool, Blackpool and the Fylde College, blackpool arts scene, performance, the old electric, Theatre, workshops

Local actor and writer Linda Hampton was invited to take part as a reader for this live event hosted by The Old Electric, on a cold January night. Each year at the culmination of the annual scriptwriting course offered by The Old Electric performing arts organisation in Blackpool, participating writers are invited to show their work-in-progress to a live audience. Six Blackpool-based writers – George Bamber, Angela Murphy, Amanda Webster, Joshua Shaw, Lyndsey Barlow and Lydia Warrilow - have been developing their stories under the guidance of Melanie Whitehead, Artistic Director of The Old Electric. She has been helping the…

17 Oct

Theatre Review: Noel and Gertie

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & PerformanceBlackpool, grand theatre, Noel Coward, review

Noel and Gertie explores the lifelong friendship between Noel Coward and actress Gertrude Laurence in music, song and storytelling, in this devised entertainment by Sheridan Morley. Through stellar performances from Gary Tushaw (Coward) and Rebecca Trehearne (Laurence), who keep the energy going throughout this two-hour show, we discover the close and special relationship between these two iconic performers. For those of us looking back at Coward’s professional persona and his huge body of work, it might be hard to imagine what the man himself was really like. This show opens a door and invites the audience to step inside his life…

14 Nov

Theatre Preview: Blue Stockings

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & Performance

Blackpool based Willow Theatre Productions returns to the Blackpool Grand Theatre Studio this week with their latest production, Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale. Blue Stockings is the first full-length play by Jessica Swale, written in 2012, and is the story of four young women fighting for education and self-determination against the larger backdrop of women's suffrage. “They say you don’t have the capacity to be scholars. So read everything. Learn everything. Know the philosophers, and then think for yourselves.” It is 1896 at Girton College, Cambridge, the first residential college in Britain to admit women. The Girton girls study ferociously and…

24 Apr

Power Plays Blasts Off

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & Performance

The Old Electric Power Plays festival opened the first page of a brand new book and began taking notes last week. Linda Hampton joined other writers in a trip to Lancaster and returned to Blackpool inspired. What is the collective noun for a group of script writers? An Entrance? A Scene? A Finale? A Plot? An Applause? I put the question to Google and it didn’t have a definitive answer. But whatever the term might be a group of script writers from Blackpool kicked off the Power Plays festival, hosted by the Old Electric, by travelling to The Dukes Playhouse…

16 Mar

Theatre Review: Amy Johnson: Last Flight Out

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & PerformanceBlackpool, blackpool arts scene, heritage, performance, Theatre

Actor and writer Jenny Lockyer singlehandedly flew her audience through the fascinating story of the life of female aviator Amy Johnson with her one-woman show, Amy Johnson: Last Flight Out, at the Old Electric. Linda Hampton reviews and shares a fascinating local connection to the story. Amy Johnson: Last Flight Out celebrates this internationally famous woman pilot and her record-breaking solo flight from England to Australia in 1930. The play touches down on her early years as she discovered flying and went on to plan and execute her Australia flight in the face of huge physical and personal challenges. In…

13 Mar

Theatre Preview: Amy Johnson: Last Flight Out

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & Performanceblackpool arts scene, performance, Theatre

Amy Johnson: Last Flight Out, a one-woman show celebrating the life of the pilot and her record-breaking solo flight from England to Australia in 1930, touches down at the Old Electric on Friday. Written and performed by Jenny Lockyer, Last Flight Out tells the story of Johnson's passion for adventure and love of aviation. The show was originally created for the 2017 Croydonites Festival of New Theatre and has since played a string of sold-out runs in Croydon and toured key venues from Brooklands Museum to Herne Bay. Professor Dawn Bonfield at The Royal Academy of Engineering described the show…

11 Mar

Theatre Review: As She Likes It

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & Performanceblackpool arts scene, International Women's day, performance, Theatre

Chloe Wade Productions’ new play, As She Likes It, pivoted the Hollywood spotlight onto the truth behind the glamour at the Old Electric on Saturday. Actor, writer and theatre maker, Chloe Wade, started writing her play, As She Likes It, alone in lockdown. Four years later the production is in full swing and touring the country. Everything takes time to happen and four years is pretty good going in the theatre world. But the play, which came to The Old Electric on International Women’s Day 2024, also points out that 100 years is too long to wait for change. It…

05 Mar

Theatre Preview: As She Likes It

Linda Hampton0 CommentsTheatre, Dance & Performanceperformance, Theatre

If you thought that Hollywood was all glamour and fame, then perhaps you need to go along to see the debut touring show from Chloe Wade Productions, As SHE Likes It, coming to The Old Electric on Saturday 9th March. As part of the show’s UK tour, actor Chloe Wade comes to Blackpool to tell a story that many may not know - that of 20-year-old dancer Patricia Douglas who, in 1937, was brutally attacked and sexually assaulted at an MGM party. The young dancer took on Hollywood’s most powerful institution and filed charges which were swiftly dismissed and silenced.…