The 1st Prize goes to:

Pretend you have big buildings
by Ben Musgrave

Synopsis

1994. Big Buildings are rising in the Docklands. But marooned miles to the east, half-in and half-out of London, Romford has not been invited to the party. Confused about its identity, and threatened with the gradual demise of its blue-collar industry, the inhabitants of the ‘only town in London with its own ring road’ are trying to cope. In a family that doesn’t understand him, Leon is having trouble working out who he’s meant to be, while Danny arrives from India to claim the glorious inheritance his father promised him, to be sorely disappointed. The friendship they forge has painful implications for all around them, in a play that explores growing up, identity, and loss.

Ben Musgrave’s Biography

Ben Musgrave began writing for theatre as an undergraduate, and continued to write until eventually, in 2004/5, he took an MA in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College. Pretend You Have Big Buildings was written during the course of that programme, and extracts were performed in a staged reading at BAC in June 2005. However, the thinking behind the play began during a stint as Writer-in-Residence with Havering Libraries in 2003-2004, where New Mythologies, a book of short stories about Havering's history, was developed with writers from the area. Pretend You Have Big Buildings was also used in a new writing process with El5 Drama School, and extracts were performed by student actors at The Actor's Centre in June 2006. Ben is particularly interested in writing about identity and place, and is currently writing a play set in tornado-struck inner-city Birmingham during July of 2005.

Previous plays: The Melancholy Hussar (a free adaptation of Thomas Hardy's story) at the Etcetera Theatre, Camden (2003); and Love Between the Shelves (ADC Theatre, Cambridge, 2003). A co-written adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, which toured London and Paris in 2001. Ben has also worked as a script-reader for the Soho Theatre, the RSC, Paines Plough, and Theatre 503 and the Queens Theatre, Hornchurch. Since September 2005 he has worked in the Literary Department at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, where he has particular responsibility for Transmissions, the REP's Young Writers Programme.