The festival will take place from the 16th to the 19th April at Halesworth in Suffolk.
The full programme of artists and plays has now been announced for INK Festival’s 10th
anniversary celebration.
This newly announced line up will feature short plays from both established and
emerging playwrights. From radio plays to family events, readings and new writing workshops, the festival is vital in providing access to high-quality cultural experiences in areas where such opportunities may be limited.
Chosen from over 1,000 script submissions, the INK festival will present 70 new short
plays over the course of the four-day festival. Among the highlights are Jonathon Sims’ Trick of Light, a chilling mystery by author and creator of the hugely popular horror podcast The Magnus Archives. This will play alongside critically acclaimed Tom Hartwell’s (Mind Full, The Hope Theatre; Before 30, Underbelly) comedy Proof at The Cut Studio. Renowned Canadian playwright Dave Carley will present the UK debut of a play about gluttony, Sugar Daddy alongside new writing from budding playwrights Jo McNamara, Tom Draper and JP Mannion.
In addition, the INKredibles’ scheme, a running initiative over the past decade of
the festival where a handful of celebrated writers are invited to submit a new piece. This year’s highlights include special short playwriting commissions from renowned writers Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Blackadder, Bridget Jones’s Diary) and Esther Freud (Hideous Kinky, The Wild, The Sea House).
The festival, as ever, will transform Halesworth into an eclectic hub for the arts, utilising unique venues across the town. Two fantastic site-specific plays will be staged on a local bus – Jonathan McCully’s tour group farce Troubled Tours and John Morris’s cost-cutting comedy The Replacement Bus Driver. Five plays will also be performed in The Larder – a working food bank where audiences are encouraged to bring donations. In collaboration with the University of EastAnglia’s MA Scriptwriters, the plays vary from Lorna Veitch’s drama about a young man incustody, 36 Hours, and Darren Robinson’s airport thriller The Bureaucrats. The site-specific work is an incredibly unique element of the festival which highlights the synergy between the town and the festival.
Alongside the short play festival, the organisation will host a vibrant programme of headline events. These include talks with award-winning authors and Bridgerton’s intimacy coach, readings from stories featured in the BBC National Short Story Award, and screenings from the 2025 Suffolk Short Film Festival.
Talking about the news, Artistic Director of INK Festival, Julia Sowerbutts, comments: “In rural Suffolk, in a few weeks’ time, over four days from dawn to dark Halesworth ignites. seventy new plays, forty actors, ten directors, twelve venues — plus poetry, talks, workshops, youth events and celebrities that include Hugh Bonneville, Richard Curtis, Angus Deayton, Esther Freud, Luke Wright, Jan Ravens, Alistair McGowan and Sir Tony Robinson — how could I not be excited?”
To find out more visit: https://www.inkfestival.org/