RABBLE Theatre Announce Winner of ‘Find a Reading Writer’ Competition
RABBLE Theatre, Reading’s multi-award-winning professional theatre company are delighted to announce the winner of their annual professional writing competition, Find a Reading Writer.
Local resident Robyn Hunter has won the competition which took place at the end of 2024. Robyn is a current MA Screenwriting student at the London Film School, having graduated from the University of Warwick with a German and Theatre studies degree. She has already written and performed numerous plays, including at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and National Student Drama Festival. She was also a student of the RABBLE LAMDA school between 2017 & 2019 and is very excited to have been chosen as the winner by RABBLE
Robyn Hunter, the competition winner said: “I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have won RABBLE’s FARW Competition. This is a very special, full circle moment for me as my playwriting journey was kickstarted by reading plays for my LAMDA Acting classes with RABBLE back in 2017 and so I’m super excited to come back to them as an adult for Off the Block.”
Dani Davies, RABBLE’s co-founder, said: “Congratulations, Robyn. It's fantastic to see such talent emerging from Reading and especially gratifying that RABBLE played a small part in her earlier journey. She was a remarkable LAMDA student and I'm pleased to see that the panel opted to bring her into this year's Off the Block. Exciting times.”
RABBLE Theatre launched in Reading in 2012 with the new-writing event, Off the Block, at South Street Arts Centre. Now in its 13th year in the same venue, the theatrical celebration of new writing and local talent has become infamous for creating incredible theatre in impossibly tight timeframes.
Starting on Monday morning, 4 plays are written in a writers’ relay. Each writer has 24 hours to write their 20minute play and the last line of one has to be the first line of the next. This year, the final day falls on Friday 31st January, so at 7.30am of that day, the 4 brand new scripts will be handed out to 4 directors, 4 composers and 16 professional actors (split across the 4 plays). The plays will be learnt and rehearsed – with a soundtrack and lighting design – and performed at 7.30pm that night, when the lights go up.
Writing the other three plays with Robyn will be three established local professional writers:
- Becca Chadder: Currently directing the UK tour of Hamilton
- Seamus Allen: Celebrated writer, director and mastermind of Mad Monkey Improv
- Nicky Donovan: Awards include Best Screenplay, British Animation Film Festival
One past participant is RABBLE’s associate writer, Beth Flintoff, recently appointed writer in residence at London’s Royal Court Theatre and writer of many of RABBLE’s plays, including the Telegraph Top 5 and Guardian Top 20 UK Shows, Henry I and Matilda the Empress.
Tickets to Off the Block on Friday 31st January have sold out every year and can be found on this very website.
