Calling all would-be, budding and established playwrights.
The cornerHOUSE is holding a festival of oneACT plays in May 2026 and is seeking new material to stage in its week-long showcase of original playwriting.
Plays need to be between 15 to 30 minutes long. See the instructions below for guidance.
The deadline to submit your play (or plays – two are allowed per person) is Friday, October 31.
A number of plays will then be selected by a panel of judges out of all those received, and yours may well be the lucky one.
Even if your play isn’t selected you will still get feedback to help you with your future writing.
Numerous subjects have been covered over the 16 years that the cornerHOUSE oneACTS festival has been running, including plays about Elvis, a mouse hunt, a sudoku addict, the
So, get your thinking caps on, put fingers to keyboard and start writing. Then email your plays to cornerhouseoneacts@gmail.com
There is more information on the different parts of the oneACTS festival – including information for directors and actors – under our What We Do section on this website. Just look at oneACTS – New Writing Festival.
WRITERS
- Only people living in the UK are eligible to enter their play or plays into the oneACTS.
- The plays we receive should be submitted by the writer. If submitted by a friend/relative they must include the writer’s contact details for later communications.
- A playwright may submit a maximum of two plays. If more are submitted, only the first two received will be accepted as eligible for judging.
- All plays for oneACTS 2026 must be submitted by email to cornerhouseoneacts@gmail.com
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The closing date for submissions is Friday, October 31, 2025.
- Plays should be between 15 and 30 minutes long. Reading it out loud is the best way to time it.
- Plays with more than a cast of six will not be read.
- Technical (Lighting/sound) requirements need to be within reason as the plays will share evenings with other shows.
- There should be a minimal set. Preference will be given to plays which facilitate speedy set changes.
- All contact details/identifying marks will be removed before plays are read by the judging panel, so they have no idea who has written what until after the final decision has been reached.
- Each play will be read by at least two judges, and every writer will receive feedback, irrespective of whether their play has been selected.
Plays should be submitted in the format below:
1) Scripts should be sent by email to cornerhouseoneacts@gmail.
2) Do not send us your first draft. Reading it out loud – especially with at least one other person – and fixing, amending, redrafting – is one of the best ways to improve your script.
3) No name or contact details should be on the play itself. Put your play’s title as the subject of your email, and then add your name…. eg The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Your name should also be on the covering email on which you should include the title of the play, your full name, address and the best phone number to contact you on.
4) Submit your play as a Word document attached to your covering email. Pdfs will only be accepted if all identifying names and details are removed, the layout is clean and clear and there are no illustrations. Please note. We prefer Word documents.
5) On the play itself, you should head it with the title, a one paragraph synopsis, a character list with brief descriptions and an estimated running time.
6) Also when you list your cast, state if the characters are male or female. Sometimes judges cannot tell by a name. If it doesn’t matter which sex they are, state M/F next to the name.
7) Please state if any of your characters can double up on your cast list. There is a high demand for actors in the festival because of the number of plays involved, so if there is the option of any of the actors playing more than one character it could give your play the edge over those that do not have that option.
8) State ENDS at the end of your play. Sometimes it might not be obvious when a play finishes – especially if it ends in a cliffhanger. This will tell us that we have received every page of your email.
9) If you are submitting more than one play, you must submit each play on separate emails following the same process outlined above.
10) Your play, if selected, may be photographed and filmed for our publicity and archive purposes and as a memento for cast, crew and for you.
Subject to casting
- If selected, your play will be staged – subject to casting. Although we have a lot of people auditioning for the festival, we may not find the actors – under our open audition process – who are the right gender and age for your play – or who have the ability to take on certain parts. We would rather stage our first selected plays than go to our reserve list, so we may change the gender of a character or the age of a character if we have an actor available who we feel would be good in a particular role – and if we feel that this would not have an adverse effect on – or make a big difference to – the play. Obviously, we will then have to modify the script to take into account a change of gender/age.