Tomorrow the curtain rises on this year's Harold Jolliffe One Act Play Festival with six plays going head to head.

The annual festival, formerly held at the Swindon Arts Centre, has moved to the Bouverie Hall in Pewsey this year and runs until Saturday. 

Entries this year include: Pewsey Vale Amateur Dramatics Youth Society with Stonehenge: White Gold and The Accident, Lechlade Players with Last of the Red Hot Lovers (an extract) and Not a Soul in the Place, Athelstan Players with Dig for the Diggers, and the RWB Productions with The Boy I Love.

The festival is affiliated to the Swindon And District Theatre Guild and is one of the preliminary rounds for the All England Festival. On Saturday the winners will be presented with their trophies at an awards ceremony following the festival finale.

Last year Swindon's Quirky Bird Theatre, run by Anna Friend, won the Betty Peck Rose Bowl trophy, for the winning play for the second year running, with their production of That Face by Polly Stenham and the Brenda Lilley Loving Cup for Best Performance by a Youth Group was won by C6 Productions from Commonweal School in Swindon, with their performance of Playhouse Creatures by April De Angelis.

The festival is named after Swindon's Chief Librarian and Curator of Swindon Borough Council, Harold Jolliffe. He oversaw the opening of the country's first dedicated municipal Arts Centre, here in Swindon in 1946. The following year the first drama festival was launched.

The drama groups compete for points in acting, production, stage presentation and dramatic achievement. There are up to 100 points across these criteria and the play has to be more than 20 minutes and less than 55 minutes long. It can be a well known play, extract, new play or an original piece of work by the theatre company themselves.

For more details visit www.swindonweb.com/hj1act. - Flicky Harrison