ACTORS from five theatre companies gripped the audience at this year’s Harold Jolliffe One Act Play Festival.

The festival, run by the Swindon and District Theatre Guild, saw companies from all over Wiltshire perform nine plays at the Arts Centre on Friday and Saturday for a chance to win one of the 13 trophies.

The Betty Peck Rose Bowl for best play and the Swindon Advertiser Award for best original production both went to the Old Town Theatre Company for the play Recidivists, written by Swindon-based playwright Matthew Clift.

Meanwhile, the Charles Grace Cup was presented to Whole Hog Productions for Dream As You Live, by Matthew Clift and Becky Cann.

Both of the theatre companies will go through to another showdown in Pewsey, on April 16, which could put them on course to competing in the final of the All England Theatre Festival, which is being held in Swindon later in the year.

The plays were performed in front of an audience of about 100 people on each night.

Adjudicator Chris Jaeger gave the actors feedback on their efforts and decided on the winners.

Festival director Ashley Heath said it had been another successful event.

“It was another great year. People have this view that Swindon is a cultural desert but all you have to do is turn up to the One Act Play Festival to be proved completely wrong,” he said.

“There are so many good things about what we saw this year. The level of commitment that these men and women and boys and girls put into those festival entries is to be commended and it’s a heart-warming experience.

“And also for the audience members who did come along, even if they didn’t know anybody, they all went home saying ‘I saw some cracking stuff tonight.’”

The Recidivists was about Frank – a bigoted, world-hating, hermit-like repeat offender – who has his solitude rudely interrupted by the arrival of a cellmate, Honey – an effeminate homosexual.

The two, while both being criminals, are polar opposites and are forced to confront their preconceptions about one another by being forced into such close proximity.

Dream As You Live was a journey through the imagination of a young woman lost in a world of film.

As her favourite movie heroes materialise before her, the audience is forced to ask if all is as it seems.

Another winner was The Meadow, performed by the youth group of the Pewsey Vale Amateur Dramatic Society, which scooped several awards, including the The Brenda Lilley Loving Cup for the best performance by a youth group.

The play focused on the lives of flowers in a meadow.

All the awards were presented by Swindon’s deputy mayor Ray Ballman.