DRAMA is set to take centre stage at Otley Courthouse over the coming weeks.

First up will be the rescheduled Paines Plough, Come to Where I'm From: Otley night on Saturday, April 9.

The event will see four local authors, Emma Adams, Shazia Ashraf, John Hollingworth and Boff Whalley, each perform their own original short play about the place they call home.

Otley resident Boff Whalley was a founding member of the alternative rock band Chumbawamba, and has written several acclaimed touring plays for Red Ladder Theatre Company, including Big Society, starring Phil Jupitus - which ran for three weeks at Leeds City Varieties.

Bradford-born Emma Adams, who lectures part-time at Northern Film School, Leeds, has had three of her plays tour nationally and is currently working on the CBBC New Voices Initiative.

Writer and director Shazia Ashraf, meanwhile, has received mentoring from the BBC Writersroom/Screen Yorkshire scheme: Northern Voices.

And Keighley-born John Hollingworth is an actor - he plays recurring character Captain Henshawe in the BBC show Poldark - and writer whose debut play, Multitudes, was performed in London last year.

An Otley Courthouse spokesman said: "We are thrilled to be hosting such an exciting and diverse group of contemporary writers, and look forward to welcoming them back to the area that inspired their writing."

The event will start at 7pm (doors open from 6.30pm) and tickets cost £8 or £6.

A week later will see a play written by one of England’s most popular playwrights, the award-winning, internationally acclaimed John Godber, author of Bouncers, Up ‘n' Under and Teechers [CRRCT].

His hit play The Debt Collectors will be performed, in association with Reform Theatre Company, on the Courtroom stage from 7.30pm on Friday, April 15.

The comic story focuses on two out of work actors who take up jobs with a debt collection agency only to discover they have a natural flair for extracting cash.

Though despising the job, they need the money and find themselves in a strange world of 'unpaid bills, offers of sex and boozy bailiffs'.

Tickets cost £12 and can be booked by visiting otleycourthouse.org.uk, by calling (01943) 467466, or by popping into the venue, on Courthouse Street.