ITCH Scratch Nights

ITCH Scratch Night Submissions – Terms & Conditions:

Pieces, with a duration of approximately 10 minutes when performed, should be submitted to bacitch@myyahoo.com no later than MONDAY 11^TH MAY 2026 at MIDDAY for ‘Seizure’ (UK time).

Submissions must comply with the following conditions:

Playwrights/creatives should be resident in the North of England or have a strong association with it (such as being born or raised in the region).

Scripts should be submitted as anonymised PDFs (the writer’s full name, postal code and connection with the North of England must be included in the covering email while the script itself should contain nothing that identifies the playwright). This helps us foster an impartial selection process.

Material must not have been performed before – the material should be new.

Only one submission per playwright/creative can be made for each scratch event.

Pieces should be limited to a maximum of 4 players (of any gender – minors will be played by adults and, depending on actor availability, roles written for men may be played by women and vice-versa). We do not use minors (under 16 year-olds) in scratch events so parts written for children will be played by adults.

Actors will perform pieces wearing theatre blacks and script-in-hand.

Plays will be performed in a basic black box set without props or set decoration.

Lighting will be basic (lights up/down) and scripts must avoid special sound cues.

Where set or costume details or a sound/lighting cue is relevant to the audience’s understanding of a scene, stage directions will be read aloud.

Studio Productions reserve the right to cut material which runs for more than 10 minutes when performed.

Playwrights/creatives should be prepared to attend the relevant scratch night in person. They are also asked to attend rehearsals during the day of the event to support the actors and crew in bringing the text to life.

Ordinarily, parts will be played by members of Bingley Little Theatre. Playwrights/creatives wanting to perform their own work are invited to become members of Bingley Little Theatre if they wish to perform themselves.

Playwrights/creatives agree to Bingley Little Theatre performing their material, if selected, in a scratch format and without payment: the scratch format is a research and development opportunity and, as a quid pro quo, the theatre will share all relevant feedback with the writers/creatives.

Playwrights/creatives will receive free entry to the event for themselves only. Family, friends and other guests should obtain a ticket through our booking system.

Playwrights/creators of material selected for performance agree to their names, the title of their material and their image being used in pre- and/or post-show publicity. Playwrights are also asked to promote the scratch event on their personal social media accounts, sharing our publicity materials.

Pieces are selected for performance by Studio Productions, other associated personnel from Bingley Little Theatre and Bingley Arts Centre as well as invited readers. The panel’s decision is final and is on the understanding that feedback in relation to the submission itself cannot be given, such is the volume of material we handle.

Audience feedback from the scratch performance is provided on an as-is basis, we offer no interpretation of the data.

The performance of a piece at a scratch night does not imply any form of contract or understanding that a fuller piece, created in response to the feedback, will be produced by Studio Productions or Bingley Little Theatre in the future. While we would be interested to know how pieces develop, we will only consider them, alongside other materials, in accordance with our normal selection processes.

Studio Productions may elect to publish ITCH submissions in an anthology. In the event this is done, copyright and performance rights would remain vested with the writers while profits from the sale of any e-book or physical media would be donated to Bingley Little Theatre. Writers would be expected to handle their own sales enquiries and any administration associated with the management of their own material. While there would be no payment made for publication rights, writers would retain the right to withhold their material from publication: it would only be published with the writer’s express permission.

ITCH scratch nights are produced in a ‘play in a day’ format: the cast and directors meet in the morning to read through and undertake basic rehearsals with a technical rehearsal in the afternoon. Actors often play multiple parts across the event and do not perform ‘off book’.

While we accept both self-contained pieces and extracts from longer works, our experience is that self-contained pieces work better for the audience and writers should be mindful of this when submitting.

Playwrights are encouraged to join our monthly Script Writers’ Lab for peer support. Writers should understand that being a member of the lab does not confer any special privileges when submitting pieces for consideration, nor does it guarantee that pieces developed after a scratch performance will be taken to full production.