BIGGEST YET: Plans For Centennial Drama Festival

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 48, 24 May 1940, Page 11

BIGGEST YET: Plans For Centennial Drama Festival

held in New Zealand will soon be under way. It is to be the Centennial Drama Festival, covering in its way as wide a field as the Centennial Music Festival now in progress. Wide as the scope of the British Drama League festivals have been in New Zealand, the scope of this Centennial year festival is to be even wider. To organise it, the New Zealand branch of the Drama League has been co-opted by the National Centennial Council, and has agreed to forgo its own festival festival this year. The usual limits on entries have been dispensed with. The competition will be open to everyone, whether amateur members of drama leagues or not, and the National organisers are doing everything possible through local subsidiary organisations to ensure that no group in any centre, large or small, will be discouraged from taking part in a Festival intended to give the public an opportunity of seeing the very highest standard of dramatic work this country can produce. Entries will be received during June and area elimination contests will begin almost immediately. New Zealand has been divided for the purpose into four main districts: Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago. The organising officers in each centre are: Auckland, T. W. M. Ashby; Wellington, F. V. Sanderson (including Nelson and Marlborough); Canterbury, A, E, Laurence (Timaru); Otago, G. Douglas. all goes well, the biggest Drama Festival ever

_ Elimination Contests Under the jurisdiction of the Drama League in each of these centres, area elimination contests will be organised in all surrounding sub-centres. The selected winners will then play in the centres, and the winners will come to Wellington, to play in the finals about the end of July. Although the ordinary limitations, such as the amateur qualification, have been dispensed with, the Festival will be governed by conditions intended to ensure the highest possible standard. The organisers will only accept entries of plays which are considered "playworthy"; i.e., of sufficient dramatic merit. In the cast there must be at least four main speaking parts, exclusive of "bit" parts. The length of the plays should be from 30 to 45 minutes. What The Judges Will Look For The judges will consider the following points: Dramatic merit and difficulty of interpretation; producer's general interpretation; standard of individual acting; team work of the cast; grouping and movement; deportment and stage technique; expressive value of make-up, furniture, lighting, costumes; tempo; clarity of speech. For the elimination contests, the expenses will be borne by local organisers, who will retain profits. For the provincial semi-finals, preliminary expenses will be borne by the Provincial Centennial Councils, to be refunded from profits, Surplus profits will re-

main with the organisers, but it is expected that every endeavour will be made to assist with the travelling expenses of teams coming from distant areas. For the finals, however, the Centennial Committee will definitely provide travelling expenses to Wellington, -and has offered prizes of £50 and £20 for the first and second teams. Although most of the financial considerations for the area and Provincial contests are being left to the local discretion, the organisers of the finals in Wellington are giving a lead by offering to provide stage drapes and the services of an electrician, although extra furniture, expenditure on the transport of materials, and the cost of special lighting arrangements, will be the responsibility of the teams, Stimulus For Continued Effort Plans for this big Festival matured at a meeting held in November of last year, at which were present Professor James Shelley (Director of Broadcasting), A. W. Mulligan (Secretary to the Centennial Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs), and three representatives of the Drama League: Messrs. W. S. Wauchop, Swan and Tomlinson. In a statement issued then, they said: " The idea behind the national Festival of Drama is not to have a mere sudden activity which will die down on the completion of the competition, but to give an impetus to the study and practice of drama whose good effects will carry on to be indefinitely stimulating."