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Anyone's Game - National Drama Festival Day 3!
1 August 2026
So Much for Predictions
The third day is finished, and with it the one-act festival. Read our Artistic Director, Jamie’s, thoughts on the final competitive day of the festival below.
The one-act competition is over. Tomorrow there is just one play - a full length one - and finally the awards ceremony to close the festival.
This morning, before any of today’s five plays, Bob Tomson - West End director, Olivier, Tony and BAFTA nominee - ran a fantastic workshop with us on delivering effective theatre. I’ve been reflecting on what he said, and watching five completely different productions today, I think I understood what he meant.
Bob leading the workshop, with Brightlighters in their customary hot pink and sunshine yellow!
Effective theatre, it turns out, doesn’t look like one thing. It looks like five different things, back to back, each one doing something the others weren’t.
It looks like Tigers from Red Onion - a cast of two trusting each other so completely that they could hold a single, unflinching emotional note across an entire play and never once let it waver. That intensity takes a cast who have built so much cohesion together.
It looks like A Handbag from Banbury Cross Players - Specs, alone on stage, playing four characters at once to re-enact an entire scene from Earnest. Sheer, joyful command of the stage that earned spontaneous applause from the audience.
It looks like I Dream Before I Take The Stand from Broadsword Theatre - proof that the hardest trick in the book is simplicity done perfectly. No spectacle to hide behind. Just precision, and an audience reacting out loud because they couldn’t help themselves.
It looks like Bull from Nantwich Players - a red LED outline turning a small stage into a bull ring, and three performances that used every inch of it, that will stay with me long after the lights went down.
And it looks like A Hundred Words for Snow from GAMPA- a piece I’ve loved since I first saw it produced years ago, reimagined here as an ensemble, and somehow more moving than I remembered. LED umbrellas as sea creatures during a dream sequence where Rory floats across the stage was beautiful. Properly got me. Tears and everything.
Bob talked about theatre that makes an audience care. By that measure, every single company today succeeded. Five completely different routes to the same destination.
Which is probably why, after being so sure yesterday - TACT, odds-on, case closed, go home everyone - I now genuinely have no idea. And I mean that as the highest compliment I can pay this festival. There is something to love in everything we’ve seen this weekend. So many worthy winners who could walk away with something on Sunday. And, cheesy as it sounds, everyone here has already won just by being part of it.
This festival is anyone’s game. Which, really, is exactly how it should be.
Tomorrow - the Brontës, and then the small matter of the awards. There’s never a dull moment here.
Jamie
p.s. Here’s a secret snap I took of Karen learning how to fly a drone!
