Biography and Notes (further contributions welcome) :

Margot Strickland is an exceptional playwright who deserves acclamation and support. For many years she has worked with tireless dedication to the theatre. She is not content to merely write plays but she also produces and presents her work on the live stage, using professional actors and an experienced production team, funding each project herself without any support. That lack of any public funding or encouragement has often meant smaller audiences than her work has deserved, although she has created a dedicated following in Norfolk, where she works and lives. Margot is no longer a bright young thing but she has energy and determination that belies her years. To bring her work to the wider public Rhapsody, Felixstowe-based publishers, have produced a collection of three of her plays. "Sonnetina" is a romantic two-hander that was inspired from Margot's jury service at Norwich Crown Court. The case concerned a feisty, attractive young saleswoman cold-calling at a garden centre, whose owner was a sad, well-educated divorce. Margot linked this to Shakespeare's Sonnet 15, which is about gardening, and the play is the result. "Olga" arose from a chance encounter with a young man whose mother, an artist, had died, leaving him surrounded with her works. Margot saw this as an example of pentimento, a term for a painting through which is glimpsed an earlier work, and once again Shakespeare's Sonnets, this time number 24, about painting, provided support. "Teddy Twindletail Talks for England" is based on an upper-class poet who lives in Norfolk (who will remain unidentified). Teddy is an affectionate, compassionate portrait of a middle-aged man who is surrounded by books, who has endured poverty, loneliness and his wife's desertion. Sonnet 143 provided the kernel of his soliloquy on his literary pilgrimage. Using her considerable knowledge of the stage Margot Strickland has produced all of these plays in theatres, such as the Little Theatre, Sheringham, the Granary Theatre at Wells-next-the-Sea and the King's Lynn Arts Centre.