The idea for a One Act One Actor Play competition came some time ago when we had completed our first short story anthology with IdeasTap. We agreed with IdeasTap that far from being a mere ‘gobbet of entertainment’, these efforts needed to be pieces of drama that took up contemporary issues and presented them in intriguing new ways for audiences to consider.
Drama is that area of literature where the language can’t just sit on the page; it needs to make the journey onto the stage through the inventive vision of a creative director and an actor who can bring the writer’s vision to life and imbue the text with something that carries part of today in it, a harmony with any discord that the subject matter may present.
The eighteen plays we present in this collection represent just a small section of the vast entry we received before the competition closed in August 2014. Throughout these mini sagas of contemporary life, there is something each script possesses that incorporates the darkness of the second decade of the twenty-first century. We hope that you enjoy reading all of these successful submissions, and that you possibly get the chance to see them performed sometime in the next year or so. The first five of the collection Universally Speaking, The 7-11 Butterfly Effect, Three Sides of a Fence, Fat and Hole are to be part of a collective show directed by notorious Edinburgh Fringe Acolyte Simon Jay in 2015. It is hoped that the other thirteen will achieve similar treatment in the months ahead.
The cover for the competition was designed by Joshua Hibbert and was the winner of our competition run by IdeasTap.
I hope you enjoy the collection.
—Belinda Hunt
List of eighteen winners and titles:
Conor Carroll – Universally Speaking
Don Grimme – The 7-11 Butterfly Effect
Atar Hadari – Three Sides Of A Fence
Robert Holtom – Fat
Neil Chue Hong – Look At Her
Marietta Kirkbride – Hole
J F Cornes – Figmented
Maud Dromgoole – Cake
Heather Lai – Tea Time Story
Ness Lyons – Charity, Reality
Kristin MacKillop – Human Resources
David McShane – Lips
Vinay Patel – The Iguanodon Queen
Eve Ruck – My Name Is…
Helen Shay – Taste
Jane Tipping – Nursery Monologue
Jo West – ABBA Night
Miriam Zendle – Lesson One
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