The Nidderdale Drama Festival

On Saturday 18th March Woodlands appeared at the 54th Nidderdale and District Drama Association One-Act Festival at the Frazer Theatre, Knaresborough. Alison Gilmour and Jonathan Hill performed ‘I DREAM BEFORE I TAKE THE STAND’ by the American playwright Arlene Hutton. Julie James directed.

Despite one or two hiccups on the night (we had a slight cock-up with the lighting at the beginning and one or two difficulties with the performance itself) the festival went off with a modicum of success from Woodlands’ point of view.

The adjudicator was excellent and kept all his comments positive or constructive and despite the imperfections, Woodlands came away with the cup for Artistic Originality and Alison won a wonderfully deserved Best Actress award. So we can still just call ourselves the award winning drama group! Julie James was also one of the 3 nominated for best director (Blackburn & Knaresborough being the other two) with which she was delighted.

The group from Blackburn were superb and rightly won the big prize, even at our very best I don’t think we would have beaten them. As Ian Clarke said, in his long history of doing these festivals it was one of the best things he had ever seen. And those of you who know Ian will know that he doesn’t use such words lightly!