A Sidcup actor is taking her career into her own hands by writing and producing two short films to be shot over just three days this summer.

Grace Blackman, who picked up early experience at Bromley Little Theatre and Eltham’s Bob Hope Theatre before going on to study at the same drama school as Will Young, Julie Andrews and Martin Clunes, plans to make a pair of ‘polar opposite’ modern interpretations of Shakespeare scenes.

Room 22 is a stylish neo-noir based loosely on Macbeth and described by Grace as ‘a halfway point between Sin City and The Artist’.

She said: “It intentionally keeps the audience guessing and questioning, first planting the idea of an affair between a man and woman before an unexpected twist from the room next door.”

The second short, Intoxicated, brings A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s lovers into a ‘farcical quick-paced, drunken, love-square, in which the characters are in the glorious chaos of post-party intoxication rather than the traditional love potion.”

Grace plans to shoot both films in south east London with separate casts and crews in just three days in August.

In order to make them she first needs to secure the necessary funding.
She said: “As an actor, the industry I’m going into is extremely competitive, and this fuels my desire to make my own work and take my career into my own hands.”

With an intended release date in local cinemas and at festivals from October, Grace will start crowdfunding mid-May with pledges starting from £1 and rewards ranging from premiere tickets to meeting the cast and crew to copies of the films, names on the credits and even executive producer credits.

Follow Grace on Twitter at @_GraceBlackman

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