The Shortlist for the Breaking Boundaries Short Radio Play Competition is ready and as follows:
Buddha Hat by Clare Shaw
Flamingo by Thoko Masikini
Like Candy From a Baby by Michael Lin
Pride of Rotterdam by Tom Harvey
The Fall by Zoe Grainge
Warmest congratulations to everyone who made the shortlist. All five plays will be performed and recorded in November, at an as yet to be determined venue in Paris (we lost our usual venue, but two months to find a stage is an eternity in theatre time!)
Congratulations on winning the Little Wonder Radio Play Competition 2018! How do you feel? What was the biggest thing you learned?
Thank you – it’s been very exciting! The winner was announced on New Year’s Eve, so a positive ending to 2018. A big lesson in this process is the importance of finding the right medium for a story. DRIVERLESS was inspired by an exhibition about future technology at the V&A Museum where I spent a long time (probably too long!) in a driverless car simulator. I knew there was a story to be told and my first thought was to write it as a stage play for a Twilight Zone inspired evening. However cars on stage are usually portrayed with actors just plonked on chairs, which rarely really works. When I heard about the Little Wonder Radio Competition I adapted the draft stage piece for the radio which felt like its natural home.
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Our first radio play competition for 2019 is now live and accepting entries until the end of May. This competition is aimed at helping two groups who often find it difficult to get feedback and support: writers of colour and writers with disabilities or long-term illness. We are looking for:
- A radio script for a full cast audio drama between 1600 and 2000 words (10 to 15 minutes).
- Requiring no more than four actors. No children please!
- In English, although writers can be from anywhere in the world.
- Written solo or in a group, but only one entry per person/group.
Full details and the means to enter can be found here:
https://www.aboutwriting.org/little-wonder-breaking-boundaries-radio-play-competition-2019/
And are summarised on the BBC writers room website here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/opportunities/little-wonder
The competition is free to enter and at no point will we ask you for money. We no longer offer recording and publication of your work as a prize for the play, because we don’t want anyone to feel that taking part is a form of unpaid work. However, we will talk to members of the shortlist and a few other pieces we like about potential recording opportunities. You can hear last years winning play, Driveless by Annie Fox, here:
Don’t feel left out if you don’t meet the criteria for this competition – we’ll be running a general access competition later his year. And do please read all the instructions before submitting. We’ll be putting up some details about the judges soon, as well as an interview with Annie Fox about what it was like to take part in a Little Wonder competition.
Good luck, and we look forward to reading your plays! Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe so you can keep up to date with the latest news!
I am delighted to announce the winner of the 2019 Little
Wonder Radio Plays Short Drama Competition is:
Annie Fox with Driverless.
Well done Annie!
Driverless is a wonderful, warm and hopeful play with great characters
and a talking car (always good), which provoked a long discussion on the night about
whether or not a certain character was a bad guy. Fabulous stuff.
Warmest congratulations to our other shortlisted candidates:
Steven Lancefield for Final Goodbye, Stephanie Weston Gladiator, Tom Kinney for
Less Than Three and Kris Thompson for Birth of a Hero. There was virtually no consensus between our
judges and a lot of love for all these plays.
You have produced excellent pieces of writing.
I’ll be in touch with all five of shortlisted writers very soon, and we’ll announce the broadcast date for Driverless just as soon as possible. In the meantime, to keep you entertained, here are some clips from Less Than Three, Gladiator and Final Goodbye to give you a taste of the evening. I promise the sound quality is much better through the actual mics than these little video clips! Enjoy!
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