I have decided to produce my play End Game at the Cheltenham Fringe 2025. It’s a radio play, so the plan is to perform it script-in-hand, with some suitable sound effects, in the Green Room at Cheltenham Playhouse on 26th May.
I had pitched it to the Wireless Theatre Company back in January, but when Cheltenham Festival unexpectedly extended the submission deadline for the Fringe, I thought ‘What the hell?’ It’s all too easy submitting scripts to opportunities, but this is a chance to get a piece ‘up on its feet’ before an audience and as it will be performed script-in-hand, there will be less need for the actors to be ‘off book’. I plan to invite Wireless Theatre Company to come see it for themselves, plus any other independent radio producers I can get interested. Worst case, I get some feedback from an audience. Best case, a commission.
End Game is a retelling of the classic tale of the Wooden Horse of Troy, but with some dark twists, plus echoes of the politics of our own time:
Two miles from Troy, Odysseus dreams. Every night since the war began the exact same dream: Iphigineia, Agamemnon’s dead daughter offers him a plan for winning the war, a plan cunning enough to outwit even the legendary King Priam. Every night Odysseus turns her down, appalled by the cruelty her plan involves, the price he would have to pay to return home. But tonight is different. The hero Achilles is dead and with him all hope of military victory. Is Odysseus finally desperate enough to pay her price? More importantly, is he ready to accept who she really is, who he’s really been talking to all these years?
Stephen Connolly Writer 