INK Festival 2025 will be 24th – 28th April – Save The Date!

Welcome to the Ink website

The UK’s leading producer of original short plays.

We are a theatre company and a charity, based in Halesworth, Suffolk whose aim is to encourage and support scriptwriters, giving an opportunity for writers to submit new work, have it read and then, for some, the opportunity to see their work produced and performed by professional actors at the annual INK Festival. To date we have produced and performed over 700 new short plays for stage and radio.

We hope to see you at INK Festival 2025 which will be held 24th – 28th April

About Ink

What we do

Encourage

Scriptwriting

INK, based in East Anglia, was established in 2014 to provide encouragement and support to emerging scriptwriters, giving an opportunity for writers to annually submit new work, have it read, and then, for some, a chance to see their work produced and performed by professional actors at the INK Festival.

Throughout the year INK offers writing workshops and forums where writers can experience their work read by professional actors with discussion and feedback sessions.

The short play is a remarkably versatile and accessible art form. They are tales of the unexpected, relevant, funny, sexy, touching and disturbing. The pleasure of watching them is that they invariably leave you wanting more – that is rare in an age that doesn’t sit still!

Submissions to INK Festival 2025 will be open on 1 June 2024 Categories will be launch on 1 May. Watch this space.

Perform

The INK Festival

The 8th INK Festival took place in Halesworth, Suffolk 11-15* April 2024 and featured more than 70 short new plays for stage and radio, selected from the annual submissions, from writers aged 8-80.

INK is unique: it produces all the plays that are performed. This year we had an amazing selection of new works with topics ranging from environment, treasure, love, loss, sibling rivalry and everything in between.

There was also an exciting lineup of poetry, comedy, music, short new films, talks, workshops, art, extensive children’s programmes and lots more! On 15* April  we hosted the second INK Youth Festival, a day when local secondary school students can come to experience the joy of live theatre, for free.

INK Festival 2025 will be 24th -28th April 2025

Support

Community

The INK community is formed by our many partners: writers, actors and theatre practitioners, audiences, volunteers, sponsors and supporters.

We are based in the market town of Halesworth in Suffolk. Throughout the year we work within the community to encourage new writing with on-line and in person workshops, youth drama and literacy projects to hundreds of children in and out of schools and tour to rural areas around East Anglia, prisons, care homes and hospitals.

We involve the whole town in the annual INK Festival, with more than 8 performances venues located within the town, and come together with the business community to bring a greater awareness and prosperity to this beautiful area and a huge injection of performing arts into East Anglia.

A colourful image showing INK Festival, Halesworth, Suffolk. 11-14 April 2024

Images from INK Festival 2024

A small selection of images taken at INK Festival 2024.

Find out more

Plays and Programme from INK Festival 2024

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Script Submissions for 2025 are open

We want to hear from you!
Submission categories are out.

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Latest INK News

Script submissions for 2025 is open.

Submission of content is free, and we welcome scripts from writers of all ages, all levels of experience, regardless of background, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, or sexual orientation.    For more details : https://inkfestival.org/submssions-2025/   …

Ross Tomlinson wins Bill Cashmore Award

Ross Tomlinson  a first time writer, who wrote  Lolita Boy for INK 2024  directed by David Frias-Robles won the Bill Cashmore Award for a young writer showing exceptional promise.  Kindly supported by Sasha Bates, Bill’s …

Thank you from INK Festival Team

A huge thank you to all who came and supported this years festival. It was a great success with a record number of new short plays (selected from more than 1000 submissions), performed in an …

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Video & Podcasts

Video Posted on 26.07.23

INK Festival 2023 Film

Video Posted on 26.04.23

BBC Look East at INK Festival 2023