Festivals are an exciting opportunity for us to showcase the talent in The Nottingham New Theatre on both a national and international scale. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival attracts millions of people from around the world to the great Scottish city every summer – actors, directors and audience members alike flock to the Royal Mile to be wowed by amateur and professional shows every single day. NSDF chooses the best plays from around the country to compete in Scarborough each Easter, for the chance to win not only prizes, but national acclaim. So get involved in the festival vibe of your Nottingham New Theatre – what are you waiting for? The New Theatre is a dynamic force on University Park Campus – so why shouldn’t we spread our influence further, allowing more people to enjoy the theatre we are proud to create?
Recent Festival Success
This year we are very excited to announce that three of our shows have been selected to perform at the National Student Drama Festival 2013! The festival held in Scarborough each Easter selects only 11 shows from hundreds entered from across the country and so naturally we are very proud of those teams involved! The event hosts some of the best and most exciting student work from across the country and is attended by thousands of students and young people and droves of theatre professionals and practitioners.
The shows selected are:
Mercury Fur by Philip Ridley (directed by Nadia Amico and produced by Nick Barker)
The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stevenson (directed by Nick Hughes and produced by Lauren Grant)
Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth (directed by Peter Bradley and produced by Wawa Hunja)
Keep an eye on this page for updates on each shows progress in getting ready for the festival and from their experiences while up there!
Past Festival Highlights
NSDF 2011
In 2011, the theatre had four shows selected to perform at the National Student Drama Festival held in Scarborough. This was an incredible achievement as only 12 shows were selected overall out of hundreds of entries from across the country. Our shows were verz well received at the festival, receiving many great reviews and winning a number of awards.
Edinburgh Fringe Festival ’10
The time has come to consider YOUR involvement in The New Theatre’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival productions for August 2010. This year, we are sponsoring two productions – ‘Only One Wing’ written by Lizzie Bourne and ‘The Retreat’ written by Jenni Herzberg, both students of the University of Nottingham and current New Theatre members.
Only One Wing
Directors: Andy MacNamee and Lizzie Bourne
Cast: 4m 4f (multi-roling required of 5 out of 8 actors)
How are you supposed to fly when all you have is one wing? Esther suffers from M.E. but it is guilt which plagues her, believing her illness to be her own silly fault. Trapped in her own imagination, she watches Rye, a fairy born with only one wing, play out her secret fears and longings. Her mother can’t reach her, her friends can’t visit her – perhaps it is only her imagination which can save her from herself.
The Retreat
Directors: Becky Caitlin and Jenni Herzberg
Cast: 2m 2f
Auditions will be held after Easter – NT members, please check this page and facebook for further details nearer the time.
All the information for Edinburgh 2010 – HERE!
National Student Drama Festival ’08
Prior to 2007, New Theatre hadn’t entered NSDF for years, and was pretty much oblivious to its existence. In 2007 two external companies comprised of New Theatre members entered their productions and got selected. In 2008, this success was repeated when two New Theatre Productions were selected for the Festival.
Two New Theatre productions travelled to Scarborough for the 2008 Festival. The cast and crews of Disco Pigs and Proof braved the unseasonal sleet, snow, wind and rain for a week in the Yorkshire holiday resort, and the New Theatre tasted significant success:
Awards:
At the Awards Ceremony at the end of the Festival, Proof scooped an incredible five awards, across all the possible categories. The New Theatre itself also won an award.
- Directors’ Guild Award for Best Director: Guy Unsworth
- Spotlight Award for Best Actress: Anna Wheatley
- Judges Award for Acting: Lizzie Bourne
- Best Sound Design: Nick Breen
- Best Set Design: Guy Unsworth & Crew
- Judges Award for Promoting Student Theatre: Nottingham University’s New Theatre
The cast and crew of Proof all deserve significant praise and respect for their fantastic achievements in Scarborough. These awards are a testament to the professionalism and talent that exists within New Theatre. They also provide fantastic ammunition in the New Theatre’s campaign against the University’s plans to demolish our theatre. And we should all take special pride in New Theatre’s gong: recognition from an external source that what we’re doing – and have known all along – is really special.
The Shows
Proof
by David Auburn
Proof premiered in 2000 and in 2001 it won the Tony Award for Best Play along with twelve other awards in the same year. Proof is a “gripping but witty drama” which explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of mathematics. “All four characters ? whether loving, hating, encouraging or impeding one another ? are intensely alive, complex, funny, and human.” John Simon, New York.
Directed by Guy Unsworth
Disco Pigs
by Enda Walsh
Pig and Runt are two 17 yr olds who share everything: birthday, language, world views ? and that moment when pop songs and life changing orgasms flash by and last forever. On the evening of their 17th birthdays we set out with them to celebrate through the nightclubs of Cork, a city lost in pounding rave rhythms.
Directed by David Betz-Heinemann
National Student Drama Festival ’07
Two plays that were performed in the New Theatre have been selected by the NSDF. The plays, Talking to Terrorists and Cast Aside, will run for a week at the Festival in Scarborough. The NSDF selectors see well over a hundred plays during the course of each year, and only ten have been chosen for the Festival. The fact that two of these ten plays are from The New Theatre is a fantastic achievement.
The plays will be subjected to intense critical scrutiny, and both will be reviewed by The Sunday Times. The New Theatre did not produce the plays, but is proudly sponsoring them both as pretty much every one involved with each production is a member of New Theatre.
Cast Aside was written by the current New Theatre President, Charlie Brafman, and was originally done for The Edinburgh Fringe by his Company, Ankle Productions. It enjoyed a sell-out run and received rave reviews from the Edinburgh press. The NSDF selectors saw the play at its revival early this term in Nottingham.
Talking to Terrorists is a joint production by People at Play and ttproductions.com. Cast from New Theatre members, it went up during the hectic exam season while The New Theatre was hibernating. Although Talking to Terrorists was not a New Theatre production, the Producers are currently considering New Theatre affilliation.
The NSDF Ensemble is a collection of actors and directors who are hand picked from the shows the NSDF selectors see over the year. People invited to join the Ensemble are shown around the Festival by their judge, introduced to people, and mentored for the duration of the Festival. Many people from the two casts and crews have been “Ensembled”, and on top of this, Ben Ford, director of the recent New Theatre production of 4.48 Psychosis, has also been invited.
