TWO new York playwrights, Lorna Welsh and Ruth Walsh, are in the spotlight at the Friargate Theatre, York, tonight (March 7) and tomorrow.

Under the title of New Voices, York Settlement Players present the premiere of Welsh's The Ugly Sisters and Walsh's Before The Flood, two one-act plays from the City of York Council's Six By Six writing project.

Last year, the council's Arts Services department, led by drama consultant Colin Jackson, launched a scheme encouraging new writers to produce drama on contemporary themes set in York.

Lorna, 40, from Lower Poppleton, is a former psychiatric nurse at Clifton Hospital who has taken up writing while bringing up her son, Samuel, now six, with husband Frank.

"When you're at home reading books to Samuel, you think 'Well, I could write better than that!'. So I started last year when I went on a family learning creative writing course at Westfield School," said Lorna. "Although I wasn't particularly interested in writing for the stage - I wanted to do children's books -when I saw the leaflet for this play-writing competition, I thought it would be really good to do it."

She submitted her synopsis; a week later she had won a place on a series of workshops with Marcus Romer, of Pilot Theatre Company, and Riding Lights Theatre Company writers Bridget Foreman and Nigel Forde. "Seeing the leaflet and then doing the workshops has made all the difference to my writing," Lorna said.

Her 45-minute play, The Ugly Sisters, is a reunion drama set in the dressing rooms of the Theatre Royal, where 14-year-old Alice's encounter with 'Aunt Lilly', alias Lionel the pantomime dame, will reveal a family secret: her lost father's mental breakdown.

"It's a play about keeping secrets and the stigma of mental illness," said Lorna. "If that sounds serious, it does end up quite a funny piece."

Ruth Walsh, 33, from The Groves, is a married mother of four children aged three to nine, and is studying an MA part-time at York St John College. "Writing plays is about not being mummy and doing something separate," she said.

Ruth had graduated in 1991 with a degree in English Literature from the University of York, where she had written and staged the play Thebes Under Bacchus. "I re-wrote Euripides, a very student thing to do," she recalled.

She had long talked of writing again. "With children it's so difficult, but one of the other mums at school had seen the Evening Press article about the Six By Six project," she said.

Like Lorna, she benefited from the workshops, and now her play, Before The Floods, is ready with its flashback story of how and why a teenager's mother killed herself. "The aim of doing Six By Six was to start writing again as you can only be a writer if you are writing, and now I've switched from critical theory to creative writing on my MA course," Ruth said.

"Six By Six has definitely been a good idea for York playwrights. A few years ago, before I had children, I did an advanced playwrights' course at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and I remember thinking at the time 'Why do I have to travel to Leeds to do this; why is there nothing in York?', but now there seems to be a feeling of moving forward with creative writing."

The Ugly Sisters and Before The Floods will be staged at 7.45pm, tonight and tomorrow. Admission is £5, concessions £4; ring 0845 961 3000 or pay on the door.

Updated: 11:31 Friday, March 07, 2003