Kattreya Sheurer-Smith as runaway bride Kitty and Matthew Squance as quirky zoologist Tom, who finds her stuck up a tree, in the two-hander “Uke Belong To Me”, written by Kattreya and directed by her father, Stephen, which won the 2018 Lighthorne Festival of One-Act Plays with a record score.

Local groups dominate the Running Order for this year’s Lighthorne Festival of One-Act Plays, which will take place between Tuesday June 4 and Saturday June 8, 2019, in Lighthorne Village Hall.

The competition, which boasts the biggest prize in British amateur theatre, has in the past attracted touring groups from as far afield as Anglesey and Cambridge. This year, however, all 12 entrants come from within an hour’s drive of the South Warwickshire village, which will be hosting its seventh annual event this year.

Of those, nine are from Warwickshire, including five from Stratford. Two more are from north Oxfordshire, close to the Warwickshire border, and the twelfth is from Cradley Heath in the BlackCountry. Five groups are new to the Lighthorne Festival. Eight groups will be performing new work.

Festival Committee chair Rod Chaytor said:”It’s great that in the past this still-new Festival has attracted some of the top amateur theatre groups from across the country, as it will again, but I am delighted that this year the prize must go to someone fairly local to our venue.”

The Lighthorne Festival has a £1,000 first prize which, under Festival rules, must be divided equally between the winning group and a registered charity of their choice. The winners also take home a handsome, theirs-to-keep engraved glass trophy.