Big Break Diary: The playwright

BBC News Online's Big Break Diaries follow a group of people hunting for their big break in the arts and entertainment world.

This week, would-be playwright Helen Briggs, hoping for success with her play about Antarctic explorers.

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Sunday 8 April

Helen Briggs: Waiting for script feedback

Research pilgrimage to Wheathampstead, a pretty village on the Hertfordshire-Bedfordshire border.

This was the family home of Apsley Cherry-Garrard. A small bronze statue of the explorer stands in the corner of the church.

He is clad in polar costume, hat pulled down over his eyes, gazing out of the window, as if scanning the horizon for a glimpse of Scott and his men returning from the South Pole.

Cherry-Garrard returned to Lamer, the family home in the village, after the Great War. When he fell on hard times, the country estate was demolished to make way for new houses.

It is sad that, apart from the statue, there seems little else to remind people of Cherry-Garrard's historic journey with Scott.

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Sunday 22 April

Writers' workshop at a London theatre. We huddle in a circle of chairs on the stage. The set has been dismantled to reveal a black floor, black gloss brickwork, black canvas backdrop, and random ladders. And it's freezing cold.

Some old timers give tips on getting a script read by a theatre:

1. Bulky tomes the size of the phone book are out - the script reader won't want to open it, let alone risk a hernia lugging it home.
2. Cut those elaborate, long-winded stage directions - they are off-putting to readers.
3. Do your research - send your script to a theatre that puts on similar work to yours.
4. Network, network, network.
5. See and read as many plays as your budget will allow.

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Saturday 28 April

Take the advice to heart and go and see Stones in his Pockets at the Duke of York Theatre.

The backdrop is a film set in County Kerry, Ireland, with two male actors, cast as film extras, playing all 16 parts in the play.

Some brilliant acting and the best curtain call I've ever seen, when the two actors go through their repertoire of characters, then finish it all off with an Irish jig.

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Saturday 5 May

Await feedback on my script, Tom the Pole. It was with much trepidation that I handed it over to some theatre people - like giving a puppy as a present to Edward Scissorhands.

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Sunday 6 May

Sit in on a session with some actors to develop scripts at a local theatre. Then on to the world premiere of the Antarctic Symphony by the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.

The inspiration came from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' trip to Antarctica in 1997. The symphony attempts to capture the sounds of the Antarctic - an avalanche of snow; ice crashing along the bows of a ship; the melting of an iceberg.

Abstract, but the audience likes it.