Eleven top Amateur Theatre companies will perform 12 plays over four nights as they compete in this year’s third Lighthorne Festival of One Act Plays.

It will be staged between June 3 through June 6, 2015, in Lighthorne Village Hall in what has now become an annual event.

The Lighthorne Festival, now nationally-recognised and a member of the National Drama Festivals Association, has once again attracted a top-quality line-up from Warwickshire and wider, including as last year, award-winning Loose Cannons from Anglesey. Also as in previous years, groups will be competing for a £500 cash prize plus the right to send an identical sum as a donation to a charity of their choice.

Lighthorne Festival is reckoned to be unique because of its village setting, its charity-focussed prize structure and cafe-theatre format in which the audience sits informally at tables, a glass of wine in front of them, and a hot supper is served during the interval.

This year’s entrants include, for the first time, Abbey Players from Nuneaton, the Loft from Leamington Spa and Rugby Theatre – all acclaimed for the high standards of their theatre work. Abbey Players have submitted two plays.

They will all be competing not just for the title, cash prize and handsome theirs-to-keep engraved glass trophy, but also for the right to enter the NDFA British All-Winners Finals to be held between July 19 and July 26 this year at the Rhoda McGaw theatre in Woking.

Last year’s BAWF Finals in the Isle of Man featured contributions from two Lighthorne Festival entrants – Caramba from Stratford-upon-Avon, who won the inaugural in 2013, and Lighthorne Drama Group who came second in 2014 but were allowed to go through because last year’s winners, Sudden Impulse from Nuneaton, were unable to take part in the Finals due to a previous commitment to another Festival.

Out of the nine Isle of Man finalists in the One-Act section, Caramba were placed equal third with LDG one place lower in fifth and Caramba’s Tim Guest was nominated for his individual acting.

A One-Act Playwriting Competition, the George Taylor Memorial Award, also sponsored by NDFA, has attracted strong interest from Lighthorne Entrants this year with nearly half the entries being self-written original work. New work performed at NDFA-affiliated Festivals may be submitted on the joint recommendation of the member-Festival chairman and the adjudicator to be judged by a panel with the winner announced at the BAWF Finals.

This year’s Lighthorne adjudicator will be, as in the past two years, Guild of Drama Adjudicators Council member Mike Kaiser. Next year, 2016, Mike will hand over to fellow GoDA member Jan Palmer Sayer, who took charge at last year’s NDFA Finals at the beautifully-restored seafront Gaiety Theatre in Douglas.

For this year’s full line-up see the Running Order in the Entrants section.