CAST IRON THEATRE & NEW VENTURE THEATRE ANNOUNCE A SHORT PLAY NIGHT!

The Brighton-based theatre production company Cast Iron Theatre and New Venture Theatre have announced that they are joining forces and launching a quarterly Short Play Night to showcase new and emerging playwriting talent. 

Local, national and international playwrights will be offered the chance to submit short plays to Cast Iron Theatre’s reading team. Those selected will be performed by actors as script-in-hand scratch performances at New Venture Theatre. Audiences can expect outstanding new writing in a black box setting where actors bring work to life for the first time. It’s a night for those who want to see incredible short plays come to life and for those who love grassroots storytelling.

Cast Iron Theatre, established by producer Michelle Donkin and artistic director Andrew Allen, have been running short play nights, fringe productions, poetry evenings and prose nights in Brighton since 2013. Their mission is to provide a platform for new voices in theatre and to bring new writing to Brighton-based audiences. 

New Venture Theatre was established in 1947 and is run entirely by volunteers. It has two spaces, a bar and - in addition to a year-round season of staged plays - runs a drop-in Monday night Acting Class for adults and its own Youth Theatre. 

Andrew Allen of Cast Iron Theatre says: “We’re delighted to be partnering with New Venture Theatre on this new version of our short play nights. The focus of the Short Play Night has always been writing. As a scratch night, writers get the chance to see their work staged in front of an audience and find out what really works. For audiences it’s a wonderful thing to see actors performing scripts that are in their rawest form. Real magic can happen at these scratch nights and they can be just mesmerising to be part of.”

Rod Lewis, Artistic Director of New Venture Theatre says: "We very much welcome Cast Iron for this joint venture that will extend even further the opportunities that NVT can offer to new writers.  We are also happy that more people will  become involved and enjoy our very special theatre. This is fresh, experimental work, with its added immediacy of drama being created right there and then, in front of your eyes.  Exciting stuff!"

The first short play night will take place on Sunday 15th December and Cast Iron Theatre's submission window for plays open now!

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