Open Submissions Festival

Synopsis

Our brand-new Open Submissions Festival showcases five staged readings, providing a professional platform for the best work coming through our open submissions programme for writers, selected from thousands of plays received every year.

Over a week, we’re inviting audiences to take a unique first look at the new plays our team are supporting and championing in their next steps.

The inaugural festival runs from Monday 7 – Saturday 12 April in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.

Spring 2025 line-up and schedule:

MONDAY 7 APRIL, 7.45PM

very wet
By Mary Higgins
Directed by Katie Mitchell and Ellis Buckley

Rain. Nell arrives at a half-drowned house in rural Scotland to confront Brigid, her dead mum’s ex lover. Rain. Her boyfriend follows. Rain. Four people find themselves neck-deep in a looming eco-crisis and sucked into the currents of the past. Flood.

WEDNESDAY 9 APRIL, 7.45PM

Monument
By Rhys Warrington

Directed by Matt Dann
Associate Directed by Blanche McIntyre

With the eyes of the world watching, a Welsh farming community gathers to vote on whether or not to build a Memorial. But what does this Memorial commemorate? Why is it so contentious? And how, when the time comes, will you vote?

Part fiery town hall debate, part relationship drama; Monument is an epic examination of a rural community (with all its eccentricities and humour) dealing with an unprecedented event.

THURSDAY 10 APRIL, 7.45PM

Memoriam
By Noga Flaishon
Directed by Daniel Goldman and Jessica Lazar

The near-future. Memories can be bought and sold. Rachel negotiates those deals, helping people to share experiences, to heal the gaps in their own lives. She knows her job makes a difference. Until she’s tasked with extracting a precious memory from her own grandmother, Rivka, the last survivor of the Holocaust. She is forced to ask: is this a vital historical record, or commercial exploitation of victimhood? Is reliving unimaginable suffering ever justified? And what has generational trauma done to her family?

Memoriam is a searingly observed examination of remembrance, Jewish identity and the burden of history.

FRIDAY 11 APRIL, 7.45PM

The Shitheads
By Jack Nicholls
Directed by David Byrne and Aneesha Srinivasan

Tens of thousands of years ago, Britain’s earliest inhabitants reckon with care, family, and the weather.

SATURDAY 12 APRIL, 7.45PM

Working Men
By Benjamin Kuffuor
Directed by Nancy Medina

A fatal incident on a council estate leads a team of employees to retrace their steps as senior management, local counsellors and the wider public are in search of someone to blame.

Working Men is about money and social housing. The play looks at how decisions are made for those who have no choice.