By the time you read this the Festival will be over - the winners will have been announced and will have performed their play as part of the Speech Day entertainment.

This is the first time that the school has had a Drama Festival. It is being started for a number of reasons. One reason is that it gives a number of boys, who cannot be in the school play, a chance to perform on the stage. It also gives Mr. Crawford and myself a chance to see the talent in the Junior school before we cast the school play. The other opportunity it gives is that the senior actors of the school have a chance to produce and the senior members of the stage crew can design and build their own scenery. This helps the actors to see what problems there are in producing a play, and the stage crew to deal directly with a producer and to try to translate his ideas into scenery. They also have to deal with the finances of putting on a play.

So far the producers have begun to realise that production is not as easy as it may appear. Apart from interpreting the play and putting it over to his actors they have found other problems. Sometimes the cast is not as co-operative as it might be; important actors may be away ill; actors might turn up late and the stage may not be available when they want it. They also have the additional problem of occasionally losing a key actor for a school play rehearsal. However, one can find small groups of boys rehearsing, in many odd corners of the school both at lunch time and after school, every day of the week, whilst on Friday the stage crews can be found hard at work in the workshops on their scenery. They are making a wide range of scenery and props, from a Spanish prison to a hut in the Arctic, and from a machine-gun to a straw bale.

All these trials will seem worthwhile when the plays are performed on December 4th. Father Matthew has agreed to adjudicate this, our first Drama Festival.

C. F. Tufnell.