Off Cut Festival 2012 opens at Riverside Studios

This year’s Off Cut Festival of short plays opens this week at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. Showcasing some of the best new writing in theatre, 4 groups of plays (28 in total) will do battle in a gladiatorial contest to win the votes of a capricious, hard-to-please audience, (that’ll be you) with the eventual winner crowned almighty god of fringe theatre on the 12th of October, (banquet and jousting to follow). You can book tickets here and also read an interview with Off Cut’s organising genius Daniel Brennan on the OffWestEnd website.

My play ‘Armed Forces Day’ is in Group 3, opening next Tuesday the 2nd of October at 7.30pm (with further performances on the 4th and 6th, plus a matinee on Sunday the 7th at 3pm). Its being directed by Ng Choon Ping and the cast are James Unsworth, Darrie Gardner, John Hoye and Zara Radford. I’ve been to rehearsals and it’s shaping up to be really good, fingers crossed it should be something special.

I’m also looking forward to seeing this week’s groups, as the cast of my REDfest finalist ‘Nothing But Mammals’ are both acting in plays. Matt Houlihan is appearing in Personnel by Hugo Plowden in Group 1 and Antonia Reid is in Buzzkill by Annabel Wigoder in Group 2. Fine actors both, I can’t wait to see them on stage again.

So get booking!