Bench Theatre Play Competition

Bench Theatre is perhaps not a terribly conventional amateur theatre company and we like to appeal to our audience's sense of theatrical adventure; we have after all just performed Sarah Kane's "Crave" and Phillip Ridley's "Ghost From A Perfect Place" over a two week stint. Some of us thought that staging "His Dark Materials" just before Christmas two years ago (a six hour epic split over two shows, featuring everything from flying witches to the physical manifestations of souls) might be the height of our ambition for a few years, but a few months ago we decided to run a play competition.
In 2009 the company celebrates it's fortieth year of staging plays, and to celebrate will be offering a whole season under the banner 'State of the Nation'. This will feature one play from each decade of our existance, each one selected by our usual democratic process from proposals put forward by potential directors. Although there are many plays around reflecting Britain in the 00's, we've opted to try and find a completely new piece, never before performed, by means of an open competition.
The winning play will be staged for 1 week at Havant Arts Centre (the small box theatre where we perform most of our productions) in September 2009. We hope that our search will attract plays from far and wide, and so have started this blog so that anyone may follow us where our adventures take us. Taking theatre to new places is a big part of what we try and do, so we welcome you whether you are an old-hand theatrically speaking, or completely new to the whole game.
Along the way we'll try and let you know what we're up to and what's been happening, and some of those involved will share their thoughts and feelings. We're all different, and we can't promise that we'll all agree with each other, but we hope you'll find us interesting enough to stop by again some time and catch up. I get to go first as current Secretary of the company, but you can expect to meet the people most heavily involved in getting the competition off the ground very soon, and no doubt many others who are taking part in one way or another, right up to the point where those acting in the piece let us know how they're finding it.
Thankyou for your company!