BEATLE GEORGE WINS OUT IN PLAYWRITING CONTEST

The top two plays in The Ticket to Write playwriting contest were entries celebrating the 70^th anniversary of the birth of George Harrison.

Four of the eight slots in this year’s competition were reserved for such entries. The remainder were general Beatles-themed 15-minute plays.

The event was staged before a sell-out audience at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, on Tuesday July 30.

Margaret Histed

Margaret Histed from The New Forest, Hampshire, took first place with her entry The Night I Met George. (July 30). She wins 150 pounds.

It is a delightfully warm piece about two schoolgirl fans desperate to see their idol – until  real love pops up.

Margaret, who received huge applause at the announcement of her success modestly put much of it down to the Festival’s Artistic Director, Michelle Taylor and her team of actors.

The sell-out Festival was staged at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre where two professional judges and the audience helped to judge the plays.

Runner-up was Tom Glover from Fleet in Hampshire with Vulgar Numbskulls which was about the Beatles receiving their MBEs at Buckinham Palace and what may have happened as George and his dad nervously smoked cigarettes in the Royal loos.

The third was a comedy by one of the two American writers to be selected Maureen Brady Johnson from Ohio. Maureen’s play is a manic physical theatre piece Beatlemania about a doctor's doomed quest to cure a woman of talking only in Beatles lyrics and song titles. 

Chris Jenkins

The strongest Merseyside entry was Liverpool Playwrights’ Chris Jenkins’ whose Digital Age which imagined The Beatles still today limping along with Ringo as the principal songwriter, was joint fourth.

“Michelle and I were thrilled at the warm reception all the plays received and the obvious fun people had looking at various aspects of The Fab Four and especially the “gentle” Beatle George Harrison,” said Festival Director, Jamie Gaskin.

Full details about the event at www.acedrama.co.uk  You can also follow the festival on Facebook (TicketToWriteFestival) and Twitter(@TicketToWrite13).