Writers respond to Chichester Festival Theatre’s Five Day Plays challenge

His contribution to the lockdown initiative, Blue Moon, has now been recorded as an audio play, featuring Lucy Briers (Forty Years On, Young Chekhov) as Anushka and Keir Charles (Quiz) as Simon.

In the early days of lockdown in March, Chichester Festival Theatre initiated the Five Day Play challenge: writers of all ages were invited to submit an original play written in just five days, the only rules being that it had to match a short brief (for example, a play with two characters, one of whom has a secret to tell the other) and could not exceed ten pages.

Over ten weeks, 300 entries were received from as far away as North America.

Now, a group of professional actors, all of whom have appeared at Chichester in recent years, have recorded four of the winning entries as audio plays, co-directed by Dale Rooks and Hannah Hogg from CFT’s learning, education and participation team.

David, who won week four of the challenge, is delighted that his is one of the scripts to be given the professional treatment.

Writing to the original brief dancing in the moonlight, David, head of English at Godalming College, offers a piece in which sparks fly when the past catches up with a left-wing journalist and a Tory politician at a party conference gala.