Brightlight Theatre, performing “Songkeeper” by Jamie Laritz at the Bromsgrove National Drama Festival finals!

Sorry, my small brain cannot keep track of who-I-told-what about my recent long-term theatre project (competing in Drama Festivals) with Brightlight Theatre. So I am writing this for those who I promised to tell about it … but forgot (with all due apology).
I won’t bother repeating what happened at the Woking Drama Festival, October last year … except to remind you that Brightlight Theatre resoundingly won that round and earned a (rare) automatic entry into the national finals. Nor will I bore you with the results of the Welwyn Drama Festival in May this year (which we entered for practice and came 4th, only a few points behind the winner). These are both(?) detailed in early editions of this newsletter.
This report is about the National Drama Festival Finals held in Bromsgrove at the end of July this year. Thirteen companies competed, coming from far and wide: one from Scotland, another from the Isle of Man, and a third from Amsterdam! Yes, really! I heard of other possible entrants who at least considered coming from Geneva and Gibraltar. Incredible. It seems there is a definite culture of Anglophile amateur dramatics in cities across Europe.
I managed to watch all but two of the competing performances and, as you can imagine, with each one already having won its own regional festival, the standard was gob-smackingly high!
The pressure was on! This really was a competition of the best-of-the-best … everyone in the Songkeeper cast was thrilled to be compared with so many first-class companies.
Our scheduled performance slot was for the last of the one-act plays, on Saturday 2nd August, with only one full-length play scheduled the following afternoon (shortly before the Awards Ceremony).
I was very pleased with Brightlight Theatre’s last-ever performance of Songkeeper. Definitely our best. Nothing went wrong. It all flowed smoothly, and the audience reacted positively as they had done to our previous performances (including our public performance at St Peter’s Church Hall, Frimley, just before the finals, on Sat 12th July).
Though we didn’t win any awards at the Bromsgrove national finals, we did manage to snag the joint-2nd-highest number of nominations!
Nominated for Technical Excellence
Nominated for the Adjudicator’s Award (for our puppetry team)
Nominated for Best Supporting Player (Jenny Glaves, combining dance and puppetry)
Nominated for Best Actor (Liam Badcoe)
Nominated for Best Actor (Douglas Brown)
Also…
Runner-up for the Derek Jacobi Award for Best New Play Script “Songkeeper” by our Artistic Director, Jamie Lakritz
(James has since received an offer of a contract from Stage Scripts Ltd to publish it!)
As you might guess, the company which won the most nominations went on to win the Best Play Award, and the other company which received 5 nominations (like us) won the Runner Up Award. Both highly deserved in my opinion.
Although we don’t know the points scores of the other competitors, it seems clear from our trawl of nominations that we scored highly amongst the leaders, likely close to both the winning and runner-up companies. But whether we actually came 3rd, or 4th, or… is only speculation. But given that this was Brightlight theatre’s first appearance in the national finals, I couldn’t be more proud of my fellow cast members.
And yes, if pressed, I might admit that I am secretly pleased that in three consecutive drama festivals, I was nominated in all three for Best Actor (and won the award at Woking). That’s something to bore my grandchildren with, correct?

But maybe they will be more interested to learn what we did with the most challenging ever stage direction: “The whale appears”. If you have never watched our show, I will leave that to your imagination.