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# Arts Council funds new play by local author
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/arts-council-funds-new-play-by-local-author-2/
- Published: 2016-10-27T11:33:04.000Z
- Updated: 2016-10-27T11:37:14.000Z
- Description: Writer and performer Rose Collis has been awarded research and development funding from Grants for the Arts, supported by Arts Council England, to create a two-act stage play based on her book Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment.
- Author: Contributor
- Tags: Arts, In The South, News, Previews, Theatre, Rose Collis

## Writer and performer Rose Collis has been awarded research and development funding from *Grants for the Arts*, supported by Arts Council England, to create a two-act stage play based on her book Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment.

[![Rose Collis](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web-600-2-23.jpg)](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/gscene-com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web-600-2-23.jpg)

Rose Collis

**The play will be about** the extraordinary life of **Valerie Arkell-Smith** aka *‘Colonel Victor Barker’.*

Virago published *Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment* in 2001 to enormous critical acclaim:

*‘Excellent… treads a careful line between sensation and sentiment.’…*   **Daily Telegraph**

*‘Rose Collis has delved meticulously…and produced a remarkably gripping and, at times, quite hilarious story.’*   **Val Hennessy, Daily Mail, ‘Critic’s Choice’**

The funding coincides with the start of a two-week residency at the Gladstone Library awarded to Rose after she was shortlisted for its prestigious Writer-in-Residence 2016 programme.

[![web-600](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web-600-102.jpg)](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/gscene-com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web-600-102.jpg)

The *Trials of Colonel Barker* will be developed to rehearsed reading stage, in time for the second (Brighton And) Hove Grown Festival of new writing which takes place March 24 to April 2 2017\. Rose’s current one-woman play, *Wanting the Moon*, was performed during the inaugural Hove Grown Festival in 2016.

Prior to the rehearsed readings, Rose will present two tie-in public engagement events: a free ‘Lunchtime Lecture’ at Worthing Library on February 28 and a talk at Jubilee Library, Brighton (date tbc). All events will have Q&A sessions, and copies of Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment will be on sale.

Participating artists for *The Trials of Colonel Barker* will include **Keith Drinkel, Philippa Hammond** and **Guy Wah.**

Rose said, *“I am enormously grateful to Arts Council England for supporting another of my projects, and also to the Gladstone Library for the two-week residency which will be spring-boarding this exciting new project. Writing this play will provide an exciting and vital challenge in my development as a stage writer, breaking new ground to create my first two-act play, and my first for a cast of more than two performers.”*