Radio drama competition – the results

The judges chose four winners which were recorded on location at Rhosygilwen, and performed live at the festival:

Dust by Yohanan Kaldii;  The Hypnotist by Brendon Connelly;  Under Observation by Craig Hawes; and A Memory of Sammy by Richard Hand.

All four are available to listen to here.

Following an audience vote, the overall favourite was A Memory of Sammy.

Kate McAll is a Sony Gold award-winning radio producer, director, and writer with over 30 years’ experience of making programmes for the BBC.   A Classics graduate, Kate began her career producing history documentaries and literary features for Radio 3 and Radio 4, before turning to drama. In 2005 she became head of the radio drama department at BBC Wales, where she was responsible for developing new Welsh writers and actors. Now freelance,  she continues to produce programmes both for BBC Radio in the UK and NPR in the US.  Current productions include How to Survive The Roman Empire, by Pliny and Me, set in first century Rome, and Life At Absolute Zero, a series of stories set in a fictional seaside town, written by Lynne Truss.   Kate’s recent adaptation of George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda, for LA Theatre Works, played to sell out audiences in Los Angeles.

Derek Webb’s plays include a number of 1-act comedies and dramas – one of which, Another Life, has won five Best Play Awards in 1-act festivals.  His series of full length comedies, featuring the crime novelist/amateur sleuth Agatha Crusty, has had many hundreds of performances in the UK, USA and Australia.

Other plays include: Call Me Dusty – about Dusty Springfield; The Railway Children Lady – about Edith Nesbit; The Lady Vanishes – an adaptation of the classic Hitchcock film, and an adaptation of HG Wells’ The Invisible Man.

Derek has also abridged many dozens of books, for Hodder Headline, Random House and Harper Collins among others, ranging from Jane Austen to Ruth Rendell, and has dramatised a large number of children’s books for audio.

In addition, he is the organiser of the Pint-Sized Plays international writing competition, and a children’s author – his first full length children’s novel called ‘Is‘ – about a girl who thinks she is Isambard Kingdom Brunel reincarnated – is published by Parthian.