The Wilmslow Festival of One Act Plays took place last week and saw a huge variety of plays from all over Cheshire and Manchester being performed at Wilmslow Guild, the adult education centre on Bourne Street.
"The festival is a competitive festival for plays up to forty five minutes long," said Publicity Officer Bill Beton. "This year we had nineteen plays performed over five nights. The standard has been very high, with a wide variety of plays from groups throughout the Cheshire, Manchester and further afield."
The festival is hosted by Wilmslow Guild Players and is affectionately referred to as "The Friendly Festival" by some of the participating societies, many of whom have been entering the festival for years.
The plays were judged by an independent adjudicator, Sarat Broughton, who gave a verbal adjudication about the plays at the end of each night. Sarat originally trained in theatre in York then worked professionally in the theatre in London before moving up to Manchester to take her PGSE in Drama. She is now a freelance theatrical facilitator, teacher and examiner.
"It was touch and go whether we would have all the entries appear on Friday night," continued Mr Beton. "Phoenix Dance and Drama were travelling from Merseyside to perform three plays. Their cast were in a coach and a number of cars and they were all hugely delayed on the M56 because of a jack-knifed lorry. Fortunately we were able to re-arrange the order of plays to allow the remaining cast to arrive, and we did see all three plays performed by the group. We were delighted about this because one of the plays won Best Junior Production."
There has also been considerable local success at the festival, with Wilmslow Green Room winning Best Senior Production for "Bride To Be" and Heald Green Theatre Company winning Best Youth Production for "The Match Girl". There were also local wins for Knutsford Little Theatre and Chelford Players.
The full results of the festival were as follows:
Best Junior Production: Who's Dorothy? (Phoenix Dance and Drama)
Best Junior Individual Performance: Sam Oliver as Maximus in The Tip of my Toga (Knutsford Little Theatre)
Best Youth Production: The Match Girl (Heald Green Theatre Company — Young Actors)
Best Youth Individual Performance: Adam Johnson as Widow Twankey in The World of Pantomime (Whitehead School of Dance and Drama)
Best Senior Production: Bride to Be (Wilmslow Green Room)
Best Senior Individual Performance: Josh Evans-Smith as Darren in Death of a Gerbil (Chelford Players)
Adjudicator's Award: Panto Inc. (Altrincham Creative Theatre School)
The Geoffrey Reed Award for Best Director: Fran Helliwell for The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Cheshire Academy of Performing Arts)
The Syd Mence Cup for a Piece of Theatre Magic: The Extraordinary Revelations of Orca the Goldfish (Nantwich Players)
Wilmslow Guild Players always welcome new members. For further details, call Bill Beton on 01625 520126 or visit www.wgp.org.uk.
Photo: Wilmslow Guild Players in rehearsal for "In The Bag". Left to right: Allie Chadwick, Marion Dean, Sue Chadwick and Caroline Lucas.
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