STAR of Grownups and High Hopes, Steve Meo is leaving the small screen to perform with one of the most talked about new theatre companies in Wales.
This will mark a return to theatre for the actor who hasn't been on the stage for four years.
He said, "So, slightly worrying for you guys, eh? Seriously though I am really looking forward to it."
Meo will join Dirty Protest for one night only at Sherman Cymru as part of the Springboard new writing festival.
Used to acting in front of a live audience on BBC Three's comedy GrownUps - series three is filming at the end of the summer - Meo is excited about performing new work back home and believes that Dirty Protest is shaking up the Welsh theatre scene.
He said, "I think it is great what the Dirty Protest lot are doing and regard it as essential for Welsh theatre, both in terms of giving a voice to new Welsh writers and providing a showcase for up and coming directors. Without these things there would be no future for theatre in Wales."
Less than a year after its inception Dirty Protest has created a stir by challenging award-winning writers - from Ed Thomas to Gary Owen - and newcomers to pen short plays, and pitching them at the MySpace generation - promoting nights on the internet and bringing theatre to bars.
This success that has seen the not-for-profit artists' cooperative be invited to Latitude festival in July and the Wales Millennium Centre for a special Welsh/English night of new plays in the summer.
But before all that the company will be producing its first fully staged performances of short plays by Colette Kane, Samuel Bees and Dirty Protest's Tim Price at the Sherman Cymru.
Price, who created S4C's drama Y Pris and is writing for the second series of Billie Piper's Secret Diary of a Call Girl, has penned the first episode of The Whole Truth.
He avoided writing for the company for a while, but then had an idea for a relay-play.
The 28-year-old Price from Aberdare said, "I've been one of the organisers of Dirty Protest since August last year and I've avoided writing for it for a number of reasons. Partly I didn't want to look like I'd created an event to parade myself like delicate showpony, and partly out of fear, what if mine wasn't the best? Because, all of us, deep down want to be the best. Or at least, not the worst. Which is the same kind of thing, but more British.
"I decided to write this play now for Dirty Protest, as we see this play as the first of three we are taking to the Latitude Festival in July. We see it as chapter one, and we are appealing for writers to come along, watch this play and then write chapter two or three of the story. Hopefully we'll have lots of different submissions and lots of different ways the story goes."
It is a return to the theatre for Price.
He said, "This will be the first play I've had at the Sherman since Cafe Cariad, which was a co-written piece, so it's quite special for me to have a play on in my home city again. But I'm mostly looking forward to seeing Colette Kane's brilliant Carnival, which is play written entirely in rhyme and Sam Bee's debut play In the River. Sam has very unique voice and is someone who the theatre community in Wales needs to start taking more notice of."
The three plays, The Whole Truth, In the River and Carnival, will be performed on Thursday April 17 at Sherman Cymru, Cardiff.
Actors Steve Meo, Aled Pugh, Lee Mengo, Caryl Morgan, Eiry Hughes, Dan Curtis and Gareth Milton will be directed by Mared Swain (Assistant director on Theatr Clwyd's Measure for Measure), True/Fiction Theatre's artistic director Matthew Bulgo and Dirty Protest's Catrin Rees.
Dirty Protest @ Sherman Cymru, Cardiff. Thursday April 17. 7.30pm and 9pm. Tickets £5. Box Office: 02920 646 900
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