News
The Last Flight - National Drama Festival Day 4!
2 August 2026
Where do you start when you’re at the end?
The final entry from our Artistic Directors series of posts on the National Drama Festival 2026 - including some fantastic news of our success.
The festival is over. The Aviary has taken its last flight. We’re at the end, so where do I start with this one…?
We could start with the play that ended it. Harlequin Players performed the one full length play of the weekend with Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, and what a way to bring the competitive section of the festival home - epic in scope, beautifully acted, a reminder of just how good this circuit is at its very best.
Or we could start with the spotlight session on the Derek Jacobi Playwriting Award winner - Ste Mc’s Killing Time. We saw excerpts and discussed the process of creating the play. As a playwright myself I found it illuminating to hear Ste’s no nonsense approach to writing.
Or we could start with the awards.
I really didn’t know what to expect. Fourteen plays over four days. We were the opening production and the festival felt like it started for me after our performance. Because of that, I almost had to remind myself we were part of it. But of course we were, and like every other group here, we were winners already regardless of the results.
The results were announced. We won the Technical Excellence award. Our doors, all the LEDs and the wifi control system we built, the circus top, the projection and the risky live TV screen that’s caused me untold anxiety at every single performance we’ve ever given of this play. All of it, recognised. All of it, worth it.
Me, holding our award for Technical Excellence. It’s made of glass though, so you can’t really see it!
We were also nominated for the Adjudicator’s Award for our cardboard cutout stylised props, Liam was nominated as Best Actor and Megan was nominated as Best Actress. And at this festival, on this circuit, against this field, a nomination is not a consolation prize. It’s a genuine mark of a company and cast performing at the very top of what they’re capable of. I am so proud of this team and what they have achieved.
I Dream Before I Take The Stand won the festival outright. Menacing, precise, staged to perfection - it deserved every bit of it. And TACT - my odds-on pick from day two - were runners up. So it turns out my instincts aren’t completely useless after all. Just not quite in the right order.
We could start with any of these things. We could start with the spark of inspiration that’s already set roots in my brain as a possible festival play for next year’s circuit. Or we could start with the friendships and contacts we all made over the weekend.
So many options for where to start.
So maybe it’s time to work out how to end this.
The Aviary is done now. That’s its last performance, its last adjudication, its last award ceremony. Four festivals - Maidenhead, Henley, Welwyn, and now here - and every single one of them has given this play and this company something different to be proud of.
I’ve said it every night this festival and I’ll say it one more time because I mean it every single time. This festival is not just a competition. It’s a community of people who love this ridiculous, wonderful, brilliant thing we call theatre, more than is probably reasonable, and who show up year after year to celebrate it together on the festival circuit. Sometimes that takes you to the National level, and sometimes it doesn’t. But we’re better theatre-makers because of it.
Thank you to the NDFA, to every group who shared their work with us this weekend, to Jan for her adjudications, to Bob for a workshop I’m still thinking about, and to every single member of Brightlight who poured everything into this play from the very first read-through to this weekend’s final curtain.
The birds have flown their last flight. What an extraordinary place to land.
Right. I’m exhausted, slightly emotional, and I still haven’t worked out what I’m doing with the leftover King Size Pot Noodle.
Here’s some photos of us from across the weekend. What a bunch of heroes.
See you next year.
Jamie