The MADF Easter Festival of plays 2016 will be a compact 5 day run, full of fun and bringing with it a veritable roller coaster of emotions. This year each team is providing very different material to both intrigue and possibly perplex the audience! We, as a committee, are delighted to have two local groups able to compete and hope this sets a new trend for years to come.  We look forward to greeting old friends from 3 returning teams from across.  They love the island as much as the locals!

As you may be aware the programme usually runs over 7 days.  This is regrettably not possible this year due to a variety of reasons, the main one being that some of our usual entrants from across are running plays this season with a large cast, which makes it too much of a financial burden for teams being of an amateur status, even with the generous financial assistance provided by MADF and much appreciated support from the Isle of Man Arts Council.  In order to prevent this reoccurring, we will be looking into ways to make sure all eligible theatre groups are aware of our annual competition and expect to receive more entries than performance slots next year onwards, so get your entries in early!

We hope all rehearsals are going well and look forward to an exciting 2016 festival!

• Clare Austin, Chairman