Warwick Students Triumph at The National Student Drama Festival Awards 2013

The NSDF offers the opportunity for students to be seriously considered by industry professionals, gain contacts and prepare for the real world of the theatre. Some of the most famous names in theatre and entertainment have been through the festival, names like Simon Russell Beale, Michael Boyd, Marrianne Elliott, David Farr, Vicky Featherstone, Stephen Fry.

This year, Warwick triumphed with two separate awards won by students and Warwick-based InDepth Theatre Company wiped the floor with four awards for their new play The Babysitter.

The WUDS production of Pornography sparked debates in the daily Q&As and also in the festival magazine Noises Off , where it was dubbed: “The most intelligent production of the play… since Nubling’s original.” Joseph Henshaw won the Award for Audio-Video Design for the production, brilliantly using multimedia to capture the pornographic culture portrayed in the play, which is inspired by the July 7 bombings. The project ambitiously included a live Skype call between two of the actors and projections from a CCTV camera turned on the audience for the preset, which Henshaw said was, “to simultaneously convey a sense of voyeurism and audience complicity but also unnerve all watching, knowing that they were being watched themselves.”

WUDS production of ‘Pornography’, photo: Peter Marsh

Dan Hutton won The Harold Hobson Award for Theatre Criticism. The Boar spoke to him and asked what he thought made him stand out:

“I wrote about the shows which we saw [at the festival] and each day penned some kind of comment piece responding to the questions and ideas being thrown up by the shows and subsequent discussions. I don’t really think anything made me stand out except the quantity I was writing – there were lots of people writing brilliant and incisive pieces for Noises Off.”

He advised budding theatre critics to firstly stop calling themselves critics, “the term is starting to become unfashionable in certain circles and I think the term theatre-writer is far more helpful” and to “go and experience shows you wouldn’t ordinarily go to and try writing about them.”

Breman Rajkumar’s wrote and directed The Babysitter, which won four awards for Playwriting, Direction, Ensemble Work and the prestigious ‘Festivalgoers’ Award’. Described as ‘an outrageous family comedy’ the play received standing ovations every night, for which Rajkumar praised his ensemble, (Katie Caddick, Thissy Gunasekera, Angus Imrie, Will Kelly and Emer McDaid) who he said: “all showed an unbelievable talent for naturalistic acting.” By using the naturalistic acting technique Practical Aesthetics, the performances were as ‘in-the-moment’ and therefore as comedic as possible.

When asked what he thought made the play so successful at the festival, Rajkumar said:

“Rather than offering a polemic on the issues it explores, it simply seeks to display the journeys of the characters. In this way, both the comedy and the more emotional parts of the play have an emotive effect on audience members. The play also explores the issues from the perspective of the child, the young adults and the parents and therefore audience members from all generations were able to connect with the issues considered.”

InDepth Theatre production of ‘The Babysitter’, photo: Peter Marsh

Rajkumar’s next production Capital, is at Warwick Arts Centre Studio from Wednesday 29 May to Saturday 1 June, starring many of the actors from the cast of The Babysitter. The play is about a secret heist in an investment bank and it drew inspiration for its narrative structure from David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. See Warwick Arts Centre website for more details.

For more information about the NSDF, see the website and the festival magazine Noises Off.