News
SCDA northern heat to be held in Orkney
05/03/2010 08:50:00
THE SCDA Northern Divisional Festival is to be held in Orkney this year, from Thursday March 25 to Saturday March 27.
Eight plays, including three from Orkney, will be performed at the Orkney Arts Theatre over the three nights. The plays will begin at 7pm each evening.
The festival will open with the Deerness Drama Group's production of Terrorism, by The Presnyakov Brothers.
Aberfeldy Drama Club will then take to the stage with Storm Watchers by Orkney writer George Mackay Brown.
The Studio Theatre Group will round off the night with Cliff's Edge by Paul Beard.
On Friday, Carnoustie Theatre Club will perform Lucy in the Sky by Tony Layton.
Next up will be Amici with Sonny Deree's Life Flashes Before His Eyes, written by Bill Bozzone.
The final play of that evening will be Orkney's own Ad Hoc Players with Bird Calls, Act 1, by Lesley Glaister.
The last night of the festival will see the Atholl Players put on An Incident on the Border by Keiran Lynn.
The Birsay Drama Group (Brough) will then finish off the festival with The Wine Game, an original comedy by Isobel Ross Moar.
Because of a rule which states each drama club can only submit one play
into the northern divisional festival, Birsay Drama Group's production
of Cinderella, which came second in the Orkney heat, will not be going
forward.
The festival's adjudicator is to be Tony Rushforth, who said he is delighted to be paying his first visit to Kirkwall.
Tony studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and
acted with the Harrogate Repertory Company and also directed
productions at the Bradford Playhouse, the Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon
and at the Edinburgh Festival.
For twenty years he was Head of the Drama Department at St Mary's
University College in Strawberry Hill. He spent six months as Visiting
Fellow in Performing Arts at Melbourne University and adjudicated the
Sydney Theatre Festival before returning to act in the film The Opium
Wars.
For six years Tony was the Artistic Director of The Questors
International Theatre Festival in Ealing which enabled him to travel
and see the work of many European companies.
More recently he has been busy directing and also teaching Theatre
Workshops in the UK and in Europe and for the Drama League of Ireland
where his travels have taken him to Dublin, Cork, Galway and two Summer
Schools at Maynooth. Tony writes for the theatre and his plays include
The Kerry Dance, Close-Up, Charade and Seascape. For six years he was a
judge for the National Drama Festivals' New Play Award.
Tony Rushforth has an MA in Modern Drama.
He is a member of The Guild of Drama Adjudicators and has adjudicated
festivals in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and Brussels.