After the reading, the audience members give their thoughts and comments on the script - what works,  what doesn’t - giving the writer invaluable feedback for the next draft of the script.

Monday 28 July - Dead Fox Thames a play by Natalia Savvides

Directed by John Derum

Set in the murky corporate world of late 1990s London, Dead Fox Thames is an incisive look at family dynamics, corporate ethics, and personal responsibility.  Toby Thrupp is the quintessential corporate magnate, a latter-day empire-builder in a post-colonial world.  His inept twin brother Stephen remains one step behind, constantly treated as the family idiot.  After making a gruesome discovery at work, Stephen becomes the centre of a police investigation, forcing him to question his dead-end career.  With a penchant for shady business dealings, Toby engages the services of Igor, a Russian vodka importer keen to assimilate into English society.  Toby’s wife Violet is very much a part of the family business, which creates silent tension between herself and housekeeper Gloria.  The London of Dead Fox Thames is imbued with an intoxicating sense of history; the characters live under the cloud of the British Empire, and must confront their own weaknesses and misunderstandings in order to survive.

Monday 4 August - Obedience a play by Peter Fleming

Directed by Jonathan Elsom

For thirty years, Alonso has served as an ordinary doorman for a religious college in Palma.

Now, some people are saying he is the helpmate of the Devil.

Why did he boldly predict a sea voyage by ten young pilgrims would be “golden”, when they were instead kidnapped at sea by pirates and sold as slaves?

Is Alonso a dangerous subversive disguising himself behind an all-too-obedient facade, or merely a simpleton with delusions of grandeur?

Set on the island of Mallorca in Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century, Obedience takes us to a society which is the opposite of our own: from a world of self-expression to a world of conformity, from a time of individualism to a time of self-denial, from a society devoted to self-gratification to a society whose highest virtue is considered to be rigorous, mortifying obedience.

Obedience is a play about good intentions, catastrophic outcomes, and people who aren’t sure which are which.

Monday 11 August - Whirled Peas a play by Jack Williams

Directed by Nick Parsons