DO you recall The Five Seasons, Matthew Wignall's quintet of short plays in the back room at According To McGee that brought together one writer, one new company, one gallery, four performances, five plays, five directors and 14 actors in York in December 2014?

If you do, you will be pleased to learn that Off The Rock Productions are returning with another Matthew Wignall presentation. If you are new to Wignall, equally you should make a beeline to Krumbs Kitchen in Tanner Row, where The Damask Room will be staged from Monday to Thursday at 7.30pm.

"The Damask Room is an evening of short plays inspired by the dark, macabre and absurdly comic side of nursery rhymes," says Matthew. "Like all Off The Rock Productions, all the writing is new and the writers have used nursery rhymes as a springboard for bold, original drama and comedy, with the plays being chosen from open submissions."

The new works have been written by Max Gee, Anna Rose James, Anna Rogers, Jan Sanderson, Matthew Wignall and Jo Wragg and directed by Tony Hipwell, Anna Rose James, David Richmond, Matthew Wignall and Alison Young with a sound design by Alexander King.

York Press:

The Damask Room, running from Monday to Thursday

The cast will comprise Jane Allanach, Natalie-Clare Brimicombe, Dan Hardy, Anna Rose James, Alexander King, Imogen Ruby Little, Clancy McMullan, George Stagnell, Matthew Wignall and Alison Young.

"Out of all the plays I write, short plays are the ones the appeal to me most," says Matthew, who also happens to be writing a novel at present, with 15,000 words committed to the page.

"Unlike The Five Seasons, the plays in The Damask Room have an over-riding connected theme as they're all drawn from nursery rhymes, such as Max Gee's Kagome, based on a Japanese nursery rhyme, which gives it a very visual quality, while Anna Rogers' How Jack Fell Down The Hill looks at why Jill came tumbling after and Jo Wragg's Woman In Shoe is all in rhyming couplets and is really pacy, so the plays are all very different."

Matthew works at Krumbs Kitchen and has taken the opportunity to hold rehearsals there, and now he will present The Damask Room in a room there with a capacity of 25, in keeping with the similarly compact space at According To McGee in 2014.

Among the directors, Tony Hipwell is making his first venture into theatre after working in film; David Richmond is a York St John University tutor; and Alison Young attended the cast auditions and had directing experience too, so Matthew asked her if she would like to direct one of the plays.

The focus on nursery rhymes has emerged from Matthew's love of these stories. "W H Auden once said there are no good books written just for children," he paraphrases. "I've always been fascinated by things that are so engrained in our culture, where, when you return to them as an adult, it's always interesting.

"I studied nursery rhymes for a while, when I was studying limericks at the University of York as part of my English literature degree, where you look beneath the surface and find something more there, something deeper. It's like staring at damask wallpaper, where the more you look, the more you see, so that's why the show is called The Damask Room."

Tickets for Monday to Thursday's shows cost £10 or £8 from ticketsource.co.uk/offtherockproductions; £1 from every ticket sold will go to United Response, a charity that supports people with learning disabilities and mental health needs to live in the community.

Off The Rock Productions work alongside United Response Training, Employment and Consultancy to provide employment for people with learning disabilities. Consequently, people with learning disabilities will have a paid role as part of the front-of-house team.