SALTBURN Community Theatre, dark since March 2020, is welcoming back a socially distanced audience for Saltburn Drama festival on Thursday, June 10 and Friday, June 11.

Hosted by the Saltburn ’53 Drama Group, and joined by colleagues from the Nidderdale Festival, it will be a festival of one act plays from local drama societies. The event is also the associate first round for the nationwide All England Theatre Festival (AETF), the only one act play festival in England.

The Nidderdale Festival is joining with Saltburn Theatre due to venue issues. Thus, the festival will include entries from Woodlands Drama Group, and Harrogate Dramatic Society; also Scarborough’s Bananadrama Group and Saltburn’s own ’53 Drama Group. All entries are original and unpublished one act plays. Tickets for each evening are £7.50, available from www.saltburnarts.co.uk (early booking is advised due to social distancing limited seating). Performances begin at 7pm, with doors opening at 6pm.

After this preliminary round in Saltburn, two winners will go forward to the regional final in July, also at Saltburn, and then potentially onto the Grand Final at Bridlington Spa in August. There were no AETF events last year, so even though scaled down this year, there is much celebratory fellowship in anticipation of this final, which will be hosted by the Northern Branch of AETF and organised by the Hull and East Riding Drama Festival.

Saltburn’s Sue Pierce has organised the Saltburn 2021 drama festival. A prolific contributor to the Saltburn ‘53 Drama Group as actor, director, playwright, and current secretary, she is also the Northern Chair of the AETF and vice-chair of Saltburn Community & Arts Association (SC&AA).

“In 2020, the ’53 Society were within days of the first performance of the drama festival, marking 30 years of the festival at Saltburn Community Theatre, when Covid struck," she said. "There were no events last year. This year, not all the Northern drama festivals can run: there is only an English national final as Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have had to cancel. So, the North will be side by side with our colleagues from the Central, Western and Eastern regions at Bridlington.

“It will be wonderful to once again present live drama on stage, in front of a live audience.”

Saltburn’s 2021 entries are written by Sue; an ecological fairy tale Once upon a Tide for youth members, and The Fasting Girl, adapted from a short film made via phones during lockdown.

Sue has already written a trilogy of plays about contemporary Welsh events for the ’53 Drama group, two of which have previously reached the AETF semi-finals – Moles and the Habits of Birds about Aberfan and A Tiding of Magpies. She won the prestigious Geoffrey Whitworth Trophy for these scripts, and the latter has been published.

She appreciates SC&AA’s recognition of the festival, and their underlying belief in the value of community creative enterprises. Through SC&AA, Saltburn Community Theatre is facilitating the festival by providing practical support, despite a busy schedule of building improvements and technical changes. “It is inspiring to see how creative individuals and groups – particularly those associated with drama and the theatre – have found ways in which they could continue to create and present work,” Sue added.