Lou Beckett is a playwright whose work often focuses on people who have been forgotten.

Rotten Luck, Lou’s first stage play, was one of three plays chosen in a ten-minute play competition to be funded for a full production by the UK Arts Council. Based on a true story, the hangman tells the tale of a young rogue and his neighbouring cell mate, a church-going woman, in the 1800s. Barroom songs are interspersed with hymns. Will they hang or will fate provide a reprieve?

Bletchley Girls was turned into an audio play after the pandemic stopped the stage play from going ahead. It is the untold true story of Mavis Batey, part of an all-women code breaking team at Bletchley Park. She is hired for a job for which she has no obvious qualifications, plunged into a male-dominated environment, and asked to decipher intercepts which could impact the course of the war. Over 4,000 people have listened to the audio play.

Forbidden Music is the true story of a young man (Michael Haas) who sets out to convince Decca Records to record the music forbidden by the Nazis. His boss agrees to lobby the President on Michaels’ behalf, but he demands a high price. Will Michael agree?

We Can’t Be is an imagined story of two young women who notice that their town’s only statues to women are the tightly clad nubile young females set along shop fronts on the high street. Surely, they think, their town is ready to honour an accomplished local woman. Or is it?

Lou Beckett
www.loubeckett.com