Next week sees the beginning of a long-running festival dedicated to local amateur dramatics.

The One Act Play Festival kicks off on Wednesday, February 13, and will run until Saturday, February 16, with each night featuring two plays performed by local theatre groups, all taking place at the Kings Court Theatre, at King Williams College, from 7.00pm each night.

Each group and play will be adjudicated and assessed, with a range of prizes and trophies up for grabs, along with the chance for the winners to perform their play in competitions across in the UK later in the year.

The festival is being organised by the Manx Amateur Drama Federation, and president Michael Lees is excited to see what is in store for this year’s festival.

’We have six very different plays this year, all performed by local actors, and this year one of plays is an original piece, written by one of our local actors,’ said Michael.

The Service Players will perform their play ’Customer Services’, written by Lisa Creighton, who also directs and appears, alongside Howard Caine, Kim Quine and Toby Smith amongst others, on the Friday night of competition.

Elsewhere, teams will perform work by some of the UK’s finest playwrights, including Alan Bennett, whose famous play ’A Cream cracker under the Settee’ will be performed on Wednesday evening by the Rushen players, with Pat Clewis as the independent octoginarian Doris, and Alan Ayckbourn, with the Broadway Theatre company performing his play ’Mother Figure’ on the Saturday evening, featuring Laura Jones, Matt Quinn and Kate Cowley.

The Rushen players will also present Stephen Moran’s ’The Librarian’ on Saturday night.

Actor Howard Caine appears again on the Wednesday night with the Legion Players, alongside Stephanie Gray, peforming James Hogan’s ’Ivy’, and the young group from the Broadway Youth Theatre will perform a version of ’Mrs Worthington’s Daughters’ on Friday evening.

The plays will be adjudicated by Chris Baglin, with the winners of the Northern Arts Rose Bowl for best festival play awarded, amongst many other prizes, on Saturday night.

The winning play can then go onto the All-England Theatre festival, or the British All Winners festival of Plays, held during July this year.

Michael believes that the one act plays can create just as a great sense of theatre as a full length play, and that, even though they are shorter in length, they can be just as demanding to the actors who perform in them.

’The main, obvious difference between a full length or a one act play is that the one act play has to get its message and subject over in a very short time,’ said Michael.

’The full length play can obviously take its time to tell its story.

’The one act plays can vary in length from, possibly, 20 minutes to one hour.

’There is an element of chance in that, in the sense that some plays may work better in a shorter format, but lose something if they were longer. It is a bit of a gamble, sometimes, which works best

’And they can vary a great deal, in that some of them have large casts, whereas we can have had one act plays which have only had one actor in them.

’There have been discussions in the past whether or not that is fair on the other groups, but at the end of the day it is up to the adjudicator to decide whether or not it works as a play with one person. That too is a big gamble.’

Last year, the one act play festival moved to the new venue, the Kings Court Theatre, and Michael believes that acting in a space like that can add to the atmosphere of the play.

’One of the things that acting in a small space, like the King’s Court, that I rather like, is that it focuses the attention on the spoken word much more directly,’ he said.

’It puts a lot more emphasis onto the actors to be clear and precise with what they are saying, and you can listen to it very closely, which can create a very intense and intimate atmosphere.

’You can get into the play lot more, and enjoy it all the more.’

Tickets for the One Act Play Festival are priced £10 for adults per night, with concession £7.50, or £27 for a full festival pass, with concession passes £22, available online from ticketsource.co.uk/kingwilliamscollege.

by Mike Wade

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