The Stage

Forever young - National Student Drama Festival

Published Thursday 23 June 2005 at 14:35 by Aleks Sierz

During its five decades of existence, the National Student Drama Festival has proved itself to be, in the words of its director, ‘the most profilic seedbed of our national theatre’. Long may it continue, writes Aleks Sierz

The NSDF is 50 years old this year. Clive Wolfe - who was part of the first festival, then its director for 30 years until 2000 and is now its president - says: “The mid-fifties were fertile years for British drama. Everyone remembers Waiting for Godot and Look Back in Anger but in between these two, though less frequently recorded, was another theatrical first, the NSDF.”

To mark the occasion, Raw Talent - a celebration of the NSDF’s golden anniversary - has been published. Its editor Andrew Haydon has brought together chapters by Wolfe, Stephen Jeffreys and Ian Shuttleworth, plus reminiscences by alumni such as Timothy West, Tim Piggot-Smith, Alan Yentob, Caro Newling, Simon Russell Beale, Polly Teale, David Farr, Lucy Prebble and festival judge Robert Hewison of the Sunday Times.

Wolfe says: “To my horror, I believe that this is the first time that anything’s been published about the NSDF. The editors of all those theatre encyclopaedias have ignored it for years. When the festival started, student drama was a dirty word. The word ‘student’ put people off. They thought it meant sub-standard. But they don’t know what they’ve missed - the NSDF is the most prolific seedbed of our national theatre.”

What’s the main challenge facing the NSDF? “Finance,” says Wolfe. The festival is funded by various sponsors, principally the Sunday Times, which supported it from the start, and “is probably the longest running continuous arts sponsorship in the world. Fifty years is quite something”.

Andrew Loretto, current director of the NSDF, says: “I’ve run two festivals now and at this stage of the NSDF’s life, it feels like a big responsibility. I’m shouldering this great legacy. The NSDF is unique in the sense that no other organisation has such a broad definition of ‘student’. Our core age-group of participants is 16 to 25 and that covers an enormous range, from post-GCSE to emerging professionals.” And there is no upper age limit.

Loretto comments: “In the last year or so, we’ve set up partnerships with similar European festivals and they tend to feature work only by students who are already studying and are usually in their final year. But the NSDF will happily feature work from A-Level students, or a youth group or a community group, alongside final-year drama graduates.”

The NSDF is unique in that “it enables this kind of access to high-level professional experience, which includes informed criticism and networking opportunities, to students who aren’t necessarily studying to enter the profession. That aspect of the festival can be life-changing.”

In Raw Talent, Timothy West tells the story of how a brief conversation with the Sunday Times critic Harold Hobson in the gents toilet at Bristol’s Victoria Rooms at the first festival in January 1956 “had the effect of determining me to turn down what my father described as a Proper Job and instead chancing my luck in the professional theatre”.

On the other side of the footlights, Michael Billington, the Guardian critic, also says that the NSDF changed his life. In 1960, he wanted to be a director but after his version of Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna was slated by Hobson, whose “eloquence, irony and wit” and “panache and flair” impressed Billington, he decided to be a critic instead.

Loretto adds: “A student who might have only been involved in the arts on essentially an amateur basis, even if they were committed, can come to the festival and be exposed to a range of performance styles, meet one of their heroes and suddenly think that maybe they have a future in the profession.”

The NSDF’s robust tradition of constructive criticism and supportive praise, which Loretto stresses are “both part of the real world”, often has the effect of increasing the students’ perceptions of their own abilities. “The NSDF provides access to that kind of a healthy environment.”

Loretto notes that when he started as director, one of the first things he did was to take the label ‘national’ and look at it seriously. “How representative are we? I’m determined that we should aspire to be as national as possible. I was keen to establish a programme of nationwide workshops, which is now coming to fruition.”

Over the past 18 months, the NSDF has successfully offered a menu of performance-based workshops to theatre groups and drama societies. “This provides skills-based events to students who may not have had access to professional artists.” It’s also a good way of spreading the word about the festival, which is still billed as “British theatre’s best-kept secret”.

Loretto also hopes to encourage more entries to the festival. And although inviting work from abroad is still in its early days, he reckons that “bringing students from other cultures brings a different flavour”. Recent visits of work from Holland have been popular among festival-goers.

The NSDF has the reputation of being a bit risky. “Unless there’s an element of artistic risk, it probably isn’t worth doing in the first place,” argues Loretto.

The festival’s Parting Shots slot, where new work that has emerged during the festival is showcased, started in 2004. “I would hate any two festivals to be the same,” he says. “But our mission remains - how can we best serve young emerging artists?”

For information on how to get involved with the next National Student Drama Festival which runs in Scarborough from April 1 to 7, 2006, go to www.nsdf.org.uk or contact admin@nsdf.org.uk

• Raw Talent: Fifty Years of the National Student Drama Festival is published by Oberon, £12.99.